Hey all,
Im looking to buy a fisheye lens for my Nikon D40 and I was thinking this looked a good deal (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/BLACK-0-42X-HD-FISHEYE-LENS-FOR-NIKON-D50-D40-D40X-D80_W0QQitemZ130305773448QQcmdZViewItemQQptZCamera_Lenses?hash=item130305773448&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=72%3A1683%7C66%3A2%7C65%3A12%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318%7C301%3A0%7C293%3A1%7C294%3A50). Can anyone advise me before I commit to buying it? Im looking to use it with the stock lens and take exposures of a cliff-face. The idea being to fit the area (landscape) onto the page - as opposed to the artistic reasons.
Cheers
ERU
I might be being a photography noob again, but could the same effect be had using a photo stitching program? Or will the fact youd be focusing long distance, then close, and then long again as you pan, negatively effect the outcome? Id have thought itd distort the image sort of in the same way a fisheye lens would?
I have no idea but this (http://www.southwalesmountaineering.org.uk/g_book/index.php/File:Mount_pleasant.jpg) is the effect I am after:
(http://www.southwalesmountaineering.org.uk/g_book/index.php/File:Mount_pleasant.jpg)
Id say in that case you should be able to save yourself some money (even though the lenses are cheapish) and just follow the advice the photo gurus here gave me in the thread about photo stitching a few weeks ago :D
It really is pretty straight forward, and easy to see if itll do what you want. Download hugin and install it. Then go find a sizeable wall and set yourself the distance you want to be away from it. Then just take a series of pictures covering the whole area. Follow the wizard in hugin, and with any luck itll do the rest for you. If not its a simple enough (but a little time consuming) job of matching up the points that are in 2 or more photos. Hopefully youll then be able to see if it does what you want :)
fisheyes are pretty specialist, that shot looks more like regular wide angle to me in which case Zpyder may well be right.
Right Hugin (http://hugin.sourceforge.net/)it is then :)
I also have Photoshop CS3 but dont have the time to learn it at the moment. Hugin (http://hugin.sourceforge.net/)may well be what I need. Off out to practice now :)
Quote from: ERURight Hugin it is then :)
I also have Photoshop CS3 but dont have the time to learn it at the moment. Hugin may well be what I need. Off out to practice now :)
forget hugin, photoshop stiches pics for you as of cs2 and it does a pretty good job of it. you dont have to do any of that manual stuff described above.
Matt
Considering I went from doing it in PS to hugin, Id say there are very good reasons for using Hugin, not least the fact that the end results are much much better, even in fully auto mode.
You can do everything you can do in PS, and more, and better, in Hugin. PS may be an iota easier to use, but that extra effort is worth it tbh.
with the automatic cleverness in the latest version of hugin I see no reason to consider using anything else.