When I got my first SLR camera and started learning about different lenses, I loved the uniqueness of a fisheye lens. My first fisheye lens was the Nikon 16mm F2.8 Fisheye. It captures 180 degrees horizontal fields of view and when you tilt it down it makes the horizon curve. Fisheye lens are able to capture unique images that other lenses can’t.
Tilting a Nikon 16mm fisheye downwards makes the Earth curve.
Early Nikon Fisheye Lenses
At the time I had my first camera, Nikon made 2 circular fisheyes: the 8mm F2.8 and the 6mm F2.8. The 8mm fisheye captures an 180 degree field of view both horizontally and vertically and captures a circular image. Nikon stopped making the 8mm fisheye in 1997 so one can only find them on the used market. They can be found for around $2000 USD on ebay.
A circular fisheye lens captures as circular image on your frame.
The 6mm fisheye was in a completely different league. It is a much rarer lens which also captures a circular image but its field of view is 220 degrees. You read that right – this lens sees behind itself. It is meant for specialist photography like photographing the entire night sky. It also comes with an astronomical price tag. IF you can find one of these lenses, you can expect to pay between $30,000 to $160,000.
The Nikon 8-15mm Fisheye
More recently, Nikon came out with a newer circular fisheye which was also a zoom lens: The 8-15mm F3.5-4.5E lens. It is an autofocus zoom lens which allows you to capture circular images or zoom for a full frame fisheye image. It is also quite compact especially when compared to Nikon’s earlier fisheye lenses.
One of the things to be aware of with this lens is that the lens hood can block part of the image at certain focal lengths. If the lens is zoomed to 15mm, you can use the lens hood but if it is zoomed to 8mm you can’t use the lens hood because as you can see in the comparison image below.
The image on the left was captured with the lens hood on and the lens hood appears in the image. The image on the right is captured without a lens hood and captures a perfect circle.
The Circular Fisheye Challenge
So, how did the circular fisheye challenge go? I found myself using the two extremes of the lens, the 8mm and the 15mm the most. The 8mm captures a circular image surrounded by black and the 15mm range captures a full frame image. In between 8mm and 15mm there is some black on the edge of the image so I didn’t use those focal lengths.
The vast majority of the time I captured a circular image. It is a look that I always thought was unique when I first saw the early Nikon 6mm and 8mm lenses. This 8-15mm lens is much more compact that those early lenses and it was really easy to use.
One of the things that I really liked about the 8-15mm lens was its ability to focus really close to my subject. The minimum focus distance of the lens is 16 cm (0.5 feet). The closer you get to a subject the more distortion you will see. So I tried to take advantage of these optics and get close to straight lines to make them bend.
The effect of the bars bending towards the outside of the circle gets more pronounced as you get closer to your subject.
One aspect of this lens that needs to be addressed is the very noticeable colour fringing on the edge of the circular image when the lens is set to 8mm. This is especially evident when the edge of the frame has part of the sky. Stopping down to a smaller aperture doesn’t decrease this colour fringing. I just accept that this will be part of the images and then it doesn’t bother me.
On the edge of the circular image, there is very evident blue colour fringing.
Another technique that I enjoyed using with the 8-15mm lens was to select a slow shutter speed and rotate the camera during the exposure. A shutter speed between 1/10th to 1/15th of a second worked well. It did take some practice to get the spin centred. Using continuous high frame advance mode let me fire off a number of shots and then pick the best one later.
Like stars rotating around the north star, you will see the most motion on the edges of the frame when rotating the camera during a longer exposure.
Overall, this lens is not for for everyone and it never will be. It is a specialized lens that gives you a very different view to the work. It isn’t something that you are going to shoot a majority of your images with but it is something that will capture something that others can’t and give you some unique photographs.
Check out my video of the circular fisheye challenge.
