The more I look for fisheyes, the more I wish I had a full-frame sensor camera. Maybe someday I'll win the lottery (if I start playing, that is).

Do any of you folks have one of these Russian Peleng 8mm f/3.5 fisheye lenses? Quite a bit more (barrel?) distortion than the much more expensive Sigma 8mm lens, which is kind of the point with a fisheye, as far as I'm concerned. It's also a little faster than the Sigma (f/3.5 vs. f/4; what's that, one stop?). Price is around $250 shipped via eBay.

It's totally manual; auto aperature or focus. That's a little bit of a worry, since I've proven to be incapable of focussing manually when I need to. :-)

http://www.astrosurf.com/buil/fisheye/test.htm
http://www.pauck.de/marco/photo/stuf...g_fisheye.html

 

You could always get a Lomo Fisheye

 

Film? How ... quaint. ;-)

I'm looking at these lenses with your pictures in mind, Juan. I love the shots I've seen that you've taken with your fisheye. I just can't justify the cost; the Sigma's upwards of $550.

 

Just in case you haven't, check out Josh Wardell's Lomo Fisheye shots on flickr.

 

Good stuff!

 

I've looked at it and it's probably a nice fun lens, but it's FULLY manual, so that's pretty bad.

 

But you'd have an enormous amount of depth of field with that. Just guess the distance, set it, and shoot.

Mark

 

Yeah, the more I've thought about that and read about it, the less of an issue it is; just use a smaller aperture.

I wonder how the 350D will register the missing aperture information? It'd be nice if I could, in Av mode, tell the camera what the aperture is set to on the lens and still let it handle setting shutter speed. Not that it's a bad thing to have to deal with full manual mode, but still. :-)

 

That reminds me I need to finish the roll I have in my lomo from the summer! I don't even remember what I have on there.

 

I bought a $60 fisheye attachment on ebay years ago which just screws on to your existing lense. It worked pretty darn good for 60 bucks, but then I got rid of my camera. I still have it waiting patiently until I can get another camera that is not point and shoot.

 

MINIs in bikinis perhaps?

 

I saw a couple of write-ups on those fisheye adapters, but none favorable. I guess "good for 60 bucks" is kind of telling. ;-) The Peleng isn't a bad price, and I think I'll give it a go; my birfday's comin' up, so I'll "suggest" the Sigma and the Peleng to my gifters and see which they bite on. :-) I'd be happy with another CF card, too, however.

Lest I be seen as an elitist snob (hey, it could happen!) I've got nothing against film; in a lot of ways it's superior to digital, but I'm not anxious to add recurring costs of film development to my budget.

 

Let us know what you get on your birthday! Sounds like you've dropped some good hints. Be sure to post some shots, too. Fisheyes are fun. I love my 10.5 mm Nikon. I shot the main picture of the MINI Traveller coverage in issue 2 of MC2 with it. In fact, they cropped it a bit; the original is wider. This shot was done with it, too. The funny thing is that even though I didn't de-fish it, it almost doesn't look like a fisheye shot.

Mark

 

Ooh, *nice* shot! What turn are you looking back at? I think what makes it look non-fishy is that you'd kind of expect the barrier to turn a little, and that's really all the distortion there is in that shot.

As for birthday stuff, I haven't officially dropped any hints yet, but my amazon wishlist is busting at the seams, as usual... :-)

 

Thanks! It's looking back towards Canada Corner (turn 12) from up near the Bill Mitchell Bridge. Right after I shot that, I noticed that I couldn't find my lens cap. I lost it somewhere in those weeds. Half an hour later, I still didn't find it, though I did find a snake.

Yeah, I think it doesn't look obviously "fishy" because, like you say, the barrier does curve there and the trees block the horizon.

The hardest thing is not getting your own feet in the picture.

Mark

 

Good wishlist! I see you're a Top Gear fan. Me, too. And a Harold Edgerton fan, too. His stuff is amazing. A couple of friends of mine worked with his son (doing solid state physics, unfortunately, not photography). GT4 is really fun! You've got a nice collection of geek books there, too.

Mark

 

Ah, ok. I did a track day there in '04 on my motorcycle. I couldn't place the corner, but now I can. Man, that's a fun track. I was just flipping through some of the other pictures in that set and they're really very nice. Great work!

 

fj0, somehow missed your last post. As I said, the more I think about it, being fully manual isn't a huge deal; the DoF is monstrous, so it sounds like you can just stop down the aperture and not sweat the focus too much (or leave it at ∞). However, I'm not sure how this will work with the built-in light meter. *That* could be a bigger issue for me.

 

That must have been incredibly fun. That's my very favorite track to visit and it has to be amazing to ride (or drive) on. It's a great place. The people and the food are really nice, too. I'm so happy that Champ Car is going back there this year. The street courses are fine but those cars are just made for that track.

Glad you like the pics! I've got some vintage stuff from RA from last year, too, here (the Spring SVRA event) and here (the Brian Redman International Challenge). I really can't recommend the BRIC at Road America enough for anyone who likes vintage racing cars.

Mark

 

The best thing about my wishlist is getting stuff from it that I don't remember putting on there. :-) I'm a huge TG fan. Thanks to the wonders of BitTorrent, I never have to watch the watered-down version on Discovery! I don't currently have a TV, however, so DVDs and PlayStation games are somewhat moot. And I'm a geek by trade, so that explains some of the books in there. It's funny; looking at my wishlist, I see a pretty good representation of my interests in there, wildly varied such as they are! :-)

I'm just getting back into photography, so I'm still trying to stock up on the basics. I really need to try to concentrate on *shooting* the basics, and working with what I have, rather than buying lenses and gadgets. I've always had a thing for fisheye photos, however, and I want to try taking some "ghost town" type shots with that 9-stop ND filter.