Friday, 1 May 2009

Balls of Steel

Fisheye!

Yes, that's what they call lenses which have an extremely wide focal length, below 10mm usually. They're as close as you can get to a 360 degree view from a single lens. Basically the front end of the lens is really bulbous (convex) and it shows in the photos you take. They're usually around 4mm and aren't cheap either.

The photos have plenty of distortion because of this extremely wide angle. Most photos taken with these lenses have large black border with a circular image in the middle, simply because the focal length is smaller than the size of the image sensor on the camera.

Anyway, I've found the next best thing. I found these balls I must have bought some years ago, the ones you massage into your palms for stress relief and noticed the extremely wide angle of view they produce and decided to have a play.

2 comments:

  1. These are great - you should do more with the balls of steel, a whole series of them...

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  2. Yeah I plan to. This was just a tester; I need to figure out angles and where to stand to not get into the picture, what lens works best etc.

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