See the world from another angle

It will be an unforgettable experience for a landscape photographer to use fisheye lens, especially diagonal fisheye lens (the protagonist of this paper, that is, Quan Huafu fisheye lens, produced a rectangular distorted image of "negative" Quan Huafu). As a stair climber, the author often overlooks the night of the city from the commanding heights. After using the super wide-angle lens for a while, I began to make some new attempts. After thinking and choosing, I decided to buy a fisheye lens. Many photographers are obsessed with the grand viewing angle under the ultra-wide focal length, and the "planet world" under the fisheye lens is another dreamlike scene.

It is worth noting that the focal length of fisheye lens is not as good as that of super wide-angle lens. In the 35mm system, the viewing angle of the ultra-wide-angle lens with the focal length of 14mm reaches114; 15mm fisheye lens has covered the viewing angle of 180. When the viewing angle of 180 is all focused on the Quan Huafu negative, the distortion is inevitable. And this amazing visual effect (barrel distortion) is the charm of fisheye lens. In diagonal fisheye perspective, the object in the center of the picture is usually normal, while the scenery around the picture will be distorted.

Shanghai Yan 'an Road Viaduct

By making good use of this special visual effect, photographers can often demonstrate their ability to discover unique perspectives and imaginative creativity through oblique fisheye lenses. I have photographed urban buildings, streets, stages and natural scenery with fisheye lenses. I hope that through this text, you can learn more about the charm of this lens and gain some experience from it.

First, overlook the city and create a "planet wonder"

The author first used a fisheye lens to photograph the overlooking angle when climbing stairs. From the perspective of fisheye lens 180, more buildings, streets and other scenery in the city are included, and the scene is spectacular. When shooting, I often deliberately lower the angle of view, and then the horizontal horizon will rise upwards, and the whole picture seems to become a small planet, which is very interesting.

beijing workers' stadium

For example, the night view of Beijing Workers Stadium above. I stood at the commanding heights in the southwest direction of the Workers' Stadium and photographed with a fisheye lens: the lights of the Imperial Capital gradually lit up at night, like a planet; In the center of this planet, the focus battle between Beijing Guoan and Guangzhou Evergrande is being staged in the sports bowl.

Second, the different ways of fish-eye street shooting

Fisheye lenses can also be used to shoot street scenes. Although in the eyes of many people, fisheye sweeping the street is unwise-because the angle of view is too wide and the scene is too chaotic, it seems that it is not suitable for shooting street works. In fact, there is no absolute, as long as the fisheye is used well, exaggerated deformation can also become a great pleasure of street works.

Beijing CCTV Tower

In addition, because the fisheye lens can often shoot at close range, it can make the photographer very close to the subject. This close-up shooting makes up for the lack of "disorder and lack of focus", and the practice of "if you don't shoot well enough, it's because you are not close enough" will also make the photographer feel happy.

Third, the sea of stars in the eyes of fish

The diagonal fisheye lens I am using now is 15mm f/2.8. When shooting natural scenery, I often shoot the starry sky and the Milky Way with a fisheye lens. The 2.8 large aperture (relatively large aperture) of this lens makes starry sky shooting more favorable. From the perspective of 180, I can photograph a large part of the Milky Way. Although the horizon may no longer be horizontal, it can show a profound picture of the Milky Way.

Mohe starry sky

Fourth, the rock stage: what you want is exaggeration!

I once tried to take a stage photo with a fisheye lens on the school rock night and got amazing results. Fisheye covers the whole stage, and you can see the performance of the whole band and even the interaction between the band and the audience; When you are close to the musicians in the audience, you can create a strong sense of atmosphere, which is very consistent with the warm atmosphere of rock night that night.

Rock night stage

In addition to some shooting occasions mentioned above, in fact, fisheye lenses have many uses. One of the most familiar is the application of underwater photography. Because of the different refractive index of water and air, fisheye lens can get a completely different perspective effect from that on land.

Verb (abbreviation of verb) Suggestions on using oblique fisheye lens:

When shooting from the horizontal angle of (1), try to be accurate in the early stage.

When we usually shoot, we often don't take the picture level correction seriously, and think that post-processing can do better correction. When shooting with a fisheye lens, especially when shooting from a horizontal normal angle, a slight change will greatly change the scene imaging at the edge of the picture. If you don't take it seriously in the early shooting, the fisheye effect will be greatly reduced in the later correction cutting. In fact, no matter what lens is used to shoot, we should take it seriously in the early stage of shooting and strive to be accurate and error-free.

Beijing south railway station

If you think horizontal framing is boring, you can actually try to tilt your camera a little, and sometimes it can bring some new ideas.

(2) Try to shoot up and down.

The biggest charm of fisheye lens lies in the asteroid-like perspective effect when shooting up and down. Doing so can often avoid a mediocre perspective and make a stunning composition picture that is eye-catching.

Beijing CCTV Tower

(3) Sometimes, the closer, the better.

Recently, the focusing distance of many fisheye lenses is particularly close, which can make the photographer close to the subject. At this time, the subject often has the effect of "big head" (especially when shooting people, although it is rare to shoot like this). I often use this technique when I shoot street scenes with fisheye.

Shanghai Tianzifang

(4) Pay attention to composition to avoid confusion.

Because it contains too many scenes, the fisheye lens often takes a very mediocre picture, which is distorted and horrible, and has no priorities, and often becomes a failure. Therefore, shooting with fisheye is also a big test of the photographer's composition skills.

Beijing Wanfang Bridge

(5) Sometimes fisheye can be used as a super wide angle.

This is my personal whim. When I was shooting high-rise buildings in Shanghai, I had a whim. I shot a seemingly meaningless "failure" with a fisheye vertical view. In the post-processing, I used the lens configuration file and post-correction tools to perfectly correct the distortion, and got a wider scene than usual with super wide-angle shooting. However, the failure rate is not low, and the quality of the whole photo will be greatly reduced because the pixels in the center of the picture are severely compressed and the pixels at the edge of the picture are severely stretched when the distortion is corrected later. This atypical fish-eye play is just an attempt by the author, which is actually not recommended, but you can also give it a try, which is an exercise for the later period.

Shanghai three-piece suit

finally

Please take extra care to protect the lens of the fisheye lens. As the name implies, the front lens of fisheye lens often protrudes. If you are not careful when shooting at ordinary times, you may scratch the lens and cause regrettable losses. At present, there are also some special-shaped UVs specially designed for fisheye lenses, but they are generally not cheap.