Here's something you might be interested in.
I've been playing around with a 10.5 mm fisheye lens. This is a specialist lens that gives a 180 degree wide angle shot. The lens is pretty much spherical, hence the name "fisheye", and captures sharp details with a very deep depth of field. The disadvantage of such a lens is that when the image is mapped on to the flat surface of the camera's image sensor, lots of distortion happens. It's exactly the same as when the globe is mapped to the flat page of an atlas and countries close to the edge seem larger.
In the image above, I used a special mapping technique to straighten all the vertical lines in the picture. It gives it a more natural look as building no longer look banana shaped. The technique works great with people, removing a lot of distortion.
The building walls you see to the left and right are actually at 90 degrees to each other. I used a wide angle flash diffuser to light them up and create a frame around the scene. You would think that the picture was taken between two buildings standing close together, but not so.
It's a pity I can only fit a small version of the picture in the blog, because the detail in the full-sized version is amazing!
www.markholmesphoto.com
I've been playing around with a 10.5 mm fisheye lens. This is a specialist lens that gives a 180 degree wide angle shot. The lens is pretty much spherical, hence the name "fisheye", and captures sharp details with a very deep depth of field. The disadvantage of such a lens is that when the image is mapped on to the flat surface of the camera's image sensor, lots of distortion happens. It's exactly the same as when the globe is mapped to the flat page of an atlas and countries close to the edge seem larger.
In the image above, I used a special mapping technique to straighten all the vertical lines in the picture. It gives it a more natural look as building no longer look banana shaped. The technique works great with people, removing a lot of distortion.
The building walls you see to the left and right are actually at 90 degrees to each other. I used a wide angle flash diffuser to light them up and create a frame around the scene. You would think that the picture was taken between two buildings standing close together, but not so.
It's a pity I can only fit a small version of the picture in the blog, because the detail in the full-sized version is amazing!
www.markholmesphoto.com