Fisheye Shift Lenses

[Mathew Joki]

I just wondered if anything in the way of Fisheye Shift Lenses even exists.

I realise that the purpose of a shift lens is to "correct" perspect (for architecture photography, etc.) and that the purpose of a wide fisheye lens is to distort perspect, which would make sense that they aren't usually combined into a single lens... But what I'm interested in is the embellishment that shifting would have on the curved distortion caused by a fisheye.

Any thoughts on this? Does anyone know of examples where this has been used or experimented with? Or if any such lenses do exist?

Cheers!

 

[Richard Foster]

Coverage is going to be your issue. Most fisheye lenses, being very wide, have a small image circle, for example the Nikon 8mm fisheye, one of the best has an image circle of just under 24mm. The 16mm Nikon has a larger image circle, larger than 36mm. I would talk to Matt Duclos about doing something. He is a great lens guy.

 

[Mathew Joki]

Yeah that was another thing that I thought about as well... Would likely have to be a pretty massive/complex piece of glass for all the properties to work properly together.

 

[Nathaniel Haban]

Richard: You're saying that since a normal tilt/shift has a much larger image circle than the sensor area, by making the lens wider - thereby shrinking the image circle - you'd be concerned with cropping at the extremes of the tilt or shift functions?

In any regard, it's an interesting question you ask. If you ever do find a fish-eye tilt/shift, please post some samples, I'd be very curious to see them.

 

[Nathaniel Haban]

Found it!
http://kaleidoscopy.com/?p=349
They're samples from a fisheye w/ tilt/shift adapter. Myself, love the effect.

 

[Conrad Hunziker]

I wonder what the originals look like. The author of that blog said he had to stitch the images together.....

 

[Nathaniel Haban]

I wonder what the originals look like. The author of that blog said he had to stitch the images together.....

He's a better link:
http://kaleidoscopy.com/?p=264
These pics might not be stitched together. The author mentions that for a cheaper alternative, you can buy a lens that will cover just a FF sensor, BUT that's where you have to do some stitching. It says that he used a Mamiya 24mm fish-eye 645 format lens with a tilt/shift adapter. Even with the larger image circle from the lens, he still couldn't do a full tilt or shift.