Should you’re a photographer and also you’d prefer to know extra about lenses, you then’ll love our free course, What Each Photographer Ought to Know About Lenses. On this lesson, you’ll study fisheye lenses and see what they appear to be in motion, in addition to how one can appropriate the curve if you happen to desire a straighter picture.
Easy methods to Use Fisheye Lenses for Pictures
What Is a Fisheye Lens?
A fisheye lens is an ultra-wide-angle lens that produces a robust visible distortion supposed to create a large panoramic or hemispherical picture. These lenses obtain extraordinarily vast angles of view by choosing a particular mapping, giving the picture a attribute convex, non-rectilinear look.
The image angle produced by these lenses is barely 180 levels when measured from nook to nook. They’ve a 180-degree diagonal discipline of view, whereas the horizontal and vertical fields of view are smaller.
The lens used within the instance above and within the following ones on this tutorial is a cheap prime made by an organization known as Samyang and rebranded by a number of different firms; this one occurs to be Vivitar. One of many nice issues about this lens is the exaggerated views that it provides. This specific lens is handbook focus, however as a result of it has such an enormous depth of discipline, it is not too onerous to take care of.
The Vivitar 7mm Fisheye in Motion
The picture above and the one beneath have been shot with the 7mm Vivitar lens on a Canon 7D in New York Metropolis from inside a automotive.
The digital camera was up towards the windshield, and significantly within the instance above, the attitude is de facto bizarre. The constructing within the higher left-hand nook of the body is definitely behind the digital camera, behind the automotive it was taken from, and that’s very unusual, however that is what a fisheye lens will provide you with.
‘Regular’ Photographs With a Fisheye
The identical lens was used right here on the seashore, and what’s fascinating about it’s that the attribute, hyper-distorted fisheye look is lacking. It relies on what you are taking pictures, the space you might be away from any speedy objects within the foreground, and the place the horizon is that if there’s one within the shot. So long as the horizon is close to the centre of the lens, it appears to be like pretty regular, but when it will get above or beneath that space, issues begin trying bizarre. Should you compose your photographs fastidiously although, you can also make them look vast however not super-distorted.
Excessive Distortion
Relying on the place the objects are in your scene, as you get actually shut, a fisheye lens exaggerates the attitude and the spatial placement of objects in an excessive manner. It is very fascinating what you may get once you’re taking pictures with a fisheye lens.
On this shot, the scale of the kid on the left (Lilly) appears to be like as if she has very lengthy legs. However shifting place will change the attitude of Lilly lots, with out affecting the background objects.
Now you may see Lilly’s legs look extra regular—in actual fact she appears to be like smaller, however the whole lot else appears to be like roughly the identical.
One of many issues that to be careful for when taking pictures with such a lens is apparent distortion. As you may see above, the nook of this constructing is an apparent signal of distortion.
Typically, nonetheless, that distortion can work in a picture’s favour. This instance works nicely for a fisheye lens as a result of we now have this large round object which lends itself properly to the distortion.
And the identical with this picture right here, which was taken on a rollercoaster in Walt Disney World at arm’s size. A shot like that is nearly unimaginable to do with some other lens as a result of they don’t seem to be vast sufficient to get this cool impact.
One other nice use for fisheye lenses is to seize a storm or fascinating climate since you wish to get numerous sky. Within the case of lightning, you’re undecided the place it’ll be, so this implies you may level to the place the lightning usually is and hopefully you catch some.
Easy methods to De-Fish Your Pictures
Typically, fisheye photos look cool simply as they’re, however different occasions chances are you’ll wish to ‘de-fish’ them and attempt to deliver again among the extra pure proportions. You are able to do this in nearly any skilled photograph suite like Adobe Lightroom, Photoshop, or Digicam RAW, however there’s additionally a free program if you happen to don’t have entry to a kind of, and we’ll have a look at that too.
Adobe Digicam Uncooked
In your enhancing suite—I am utilizing Adobe Digicam Uncooked—navigate to Profile Corrections and choose that choice. Hopefully your software program will decide which lens you have been utilizing, however if you happen to’re working with an older lens just like the one we’ve been utilizing by way of this tutorial, you then received’t have any choices there. However don’t panic—in case your lens isn’t accessible, you may select one with comparable attributes.
So right here, I’ve chosen a GoPro Fusion lens profile, which is the closest match.
You’ll be able to instantly see that straightening it out has misplaced the timber on the aspect, and the timber on the far prime edge could be a bit elongated, however you need to use the Distortion slider to regulate that to higher match. And you’ll see that the dramatic curve of the fisheye has gone.
Right here’s one other instance.
On this picture, you may clearly see the curve, and this time the software program recognises the lens.
You’ll be able to see after making use of the lens profile after which upping the Distortion correction to 200 (impartial is 100) that it’s a lot straighter. You may even crop in a bit to simply rid your self of these remaining curved edges if you happen to wished to.
Should you’re enhancing a JPEG, you then’ll have far fewer choices in relation to lens profile corrections than you do with RAW, however you may alter that.
What to Do If Working From a JPEG
In Home windows, you’ll want hidden information and folders enabled.
To try this, click on File and Change folder and search choices.
Then, in View, you’ll must ensure that Present hidden information, folders and drives is checked.
It’s best to now be capable to see a faint ProgramData folder. In there, scroll all the way down to the Adobe file, CameraRaw, LensProfiles, and at last 1.0.
As soon as right here, discover the folder with the profile you’d prefer to have accessible and duplicate the related folder. Then navigate to:
Native Disk > Customers > YOU > AppData > Roaming > Adobe > CameraRaw > LensProfiles
And paste your folder into the LensProfile folder. You may then want to enter the properties of the folder you simply pasted in to uncheck ‘read-only’ and ensure that’s utilized to folders and sub-folders. Now go into that folder and discover the right profile (the one you’d like to make use of in your JPEG) and open it. You’ll be able to simply choose WordPad to open it in if it asks.
Seek for stCamera:CameraRawProfile=”false”. There are fairly a couple of, and also you’ll want to alter them to say ‘true’ fairly than false, which you are able to do with a Discover and Exchange search. Then resave the file, and once you return into ACR (or whichever Adobe suite you are utilizing) and open your JPEG, you’ll discover the profile is now listed.
That is going to be helpful if you happen to used to shoot JPEG and have a bunch of photos that wouldn’t essentially have these profile corrections accessible to them.
Hugin
Should you don’t have an enhancing suite that may allow you to appropriate a fisheye, then you may attempt Hugin, which is a free, open-source panorama stitching programme.
In Load Pictures, you may open your fisheye photograph to work on. This was one taken with the 7mm lens from the sooner examples within the tutorial. Initially, it’ll learn the metadata and have a look at the focal size, however bear in mind it was taken with an older lens, so it does not have the right info. So as a substitute, we are able to change the focal size from 50mm to match extra precisely, 7mm (7.5mm seems to truly be nearer) and the Lens kind from Rectilinear to one of many different choices. You’ll want to check them to see what works greatest along with your lens.
You’ll be able to see that also appears to be like unsuitable, so the following step is to go to the Projection tab and alter this from Equirectangular to Rectilinear.
Now the picture is bending the correct manner as a result of we’re taking the lens kind which is stereographic and we projecting that in order that it is rectilinear, which primarily means you’re straightening it out. You may must mess around with the settings to seek out what appears to be like proper in your lens.
You need to use the sliders above to crop in on the picture to eliminate the odd edges. Or, again in Projection, you may crop in with higher management by typing within the actual measurement you need.
Now save your picture. To do that, click on View and Panorama Editor within the prime menu.
Head to the Stitcher tab, and hit Sew, as a result of it is a panorama stitcher and that is the way you put it aside out.
The unique picture is on the left, and the post-Hugin one is on the appropriate. It’s being stretched, but it surely’s being stretched in a considerably pleasing manner. It could possibly be cropped in on the highest and backside a bit extra to lose among the clearly stretched elements and in addition some uninteresting elements of the picture.
This sort of lens correction is completely different to the Adobe suites. It is not essentially higher or worse—they work in numerous methods—however that is free and undoubtedly does a pleasant job. With Hugin, you even have a bit bit extra to work with on the highest and backside of the picture, whereas the Adobe suites would simply crop it out. It’s closely stretched right here, however the precise correction is fairly good; it includes a couple of extra steps, however the consequence will be price it.
Extra Lens Tutorials
Concerning the Video Creator
David Bode created the video course that features this lesson. Dave is an skilled on video and audio manufacturing, and he lives within the upstate NY space. He works as a digital camera operator, editor, inventor, movement graphics designer, recording engineer, and studio musician.
Marie Gardiner wrote the textual content model of this lesson and it was edited and printed by Jackson Couse. Jackson is a photographer and the editor of the Picture & Video part of Envato Tuts+.
