I use my 70-300mm lens a lot. I love to get in close to things and people and critters without being intrusive or changing behaviour and this lens allows me to do that. This often makes it easy to forget about my wider angle lenses. My 10.5mm lens, in particular, is used almost exclusively to shoot 360° images or, on occasion, when I’m shooting in a really tight location. I typically like the look this fisheye lens gives when I do use it, so often don’t correct for the distortion, but still, it is often a forgotten lens save for the specialty work. This summer, while shooting some VRs on a windy beach, so reluctant to change my lens and incur dreaded sensor dust, I shot some beach shots with it. And rediscovered how much I like it for things other than the convenience of only 8 shots for a VR (360° image).
The above shot was corrected for the fisheye distortion. This correction pushed the centre of the image further away from the viewer, giver a wider sense of the scale of this immense beach.
The sunset shot above was not corrected. I wanted to capture how the one sweep of brilliance painted the scene, had the 10.5mm on my camera (had just shot some VRs), so shot with this lens to see what it would do. When shooting with a fisheye, if you keep the horizon line in the middle of the frame, the horizon remains undistorted. I loved how it turned out.
This shot was taken with a 17-35mm lens, at 17 mm. Not a fisheye, but still plenty wide. Those clouds were incredible and the wide angle makes me feel like I am once again standing under that magnificent display of nature. The fringe in the orange is rain on the other shore, which was moving to the right, along with those stupendous clouds.
This image? Well, there is still a minimum focusing distance, but the 10.5 mm fisheye is a fun way to put kids at ease with a camera. Take a shot, show the youngster, giggles ensue.
While shooting a VR near a bridge, a bald eagle flew right over my head. This is not a lens for that kind of subject matter. By the time I was able to react and point the camera, the eagle, while still large in the sky, was merely a dust speck in the image, so it’s not an everyday lens. But it is a lens to be enjoyed for its unique view of the world and I plan on blowing the dust off it more often!