I had always wanted to play with a ‘fish eye’ lens, but could never justify spending the crazy amounts of money for them.  There’s just something so interesting about an 180 degree field of view though that’s appealing.  A couple of years ago, I discovered that a company called Bower who makes aftermarket photography supplies made an 8mm fish eye lens.  So, for a Christmas present this year (my Christmas being on January 7th), I decided to pick up a new camera lens.

Today, I finally got out and used it!  One of the reasons for the cheap price, besides the obvious problems with aftermarket lenses, is that this lens completely manual.  You can’t use auto settings at all and have to adjust focus and aperture using rings on the lens old school.  Not a big deal if you know what you’re doing.  The bigger problem is that you’re light meter on your DSLR obviously won’t work.  Again, not necessarily a big deal either since it is digital after all and as long as you haven’t filled up your memory card, you can experiment to your heart’s content.

I decided to head to the river to experiment.  There’s a lovely and intriguing combination of straight and curved lines from bridges, trails, roads, and of course, all the natural landmarks down there.  I figured that the ‘fish eye’ would let me play around with those lines and sure enough, it was a funny experiment!  From the CPR Bridge to the University Bridge, I used my 8mm fish eye then turned around and headed back with my 70-300mm lens on my camera.  Of course, all the wildlife that I had seen on my way south along the west side of the river disappeared as I headed back to my car, but just the difference in shooting between the lenses was crazy!  All part of the fun though!

I’m not sure where I’ll head next with this lens.  It’s definitely a landscape lens and I have a lot of ideas for astrophotography shots that will, for obvious reasons, have to wait until the summer to try out, but in the meantime, I’ll sure to remember to bring it with me to all my favorite shooting locations.  I certainly have a lot of practicing to do with it and besides, it’s always good to look at things from a new perspective.  Even if that perspective is a little…fishy!