Canon 15mm Fisheye - First Hours

I added two relatively small items to my gear bag recently. One of which is a Canon 15mm. I'm not a super gear head reviewer, I don't take 100% crops and compare chromatic aberration, edge sharpness or vignetting, but I do love this lens. Many photographers dislike wide angles and especially dislike specialty lenses like this because they don't have a lot of versatility....I disagree.

This lens does not have ultrasonic focusing like my other lenses, so it's a little hard to get used and at first you think that the lens is broken, but this is normal. Because of the 15mm focal length this lens has extreme depth of field, and the hyperfocal distance is incredibly short, so even if your focus is a bit slow, you'll probably capture what you need to.



These are the first few sample shots I took after having the lens for about 3 hours while my Wife and Father-in-law went out for a quick dinner in the beautiful whether Thursday evening.

This first image above shows us the extremely close focal distance. Note: I usually don't whip out the camera at the dinner table, but as our trainee waitress' trainer failed to show up we were stuck with the trainee which drew out every aspect of our meal by three fold. We didn't mind so much because of the perfect evening.

This next image is an image you traditionally notice with fisheyes, any verticles are extremely distorted, but still interesting. (BTW the new self-checkouts at the Eastern Market CVS have greatly improved the lines)

The lens is also great for scenics....of course be careful when snapping pictures from the crosswalk.
I've decided this will be my wide angle lens on an upcoming trip out of the country (along with my 24-70mm) and I'll leave my 16-35mm at home. Using inexpensive software you can easily "de-fish images."



I used PT-Lens, an easy to use software with sliders for various lens corrections and automatic correction for most major lenses (just not fisheyes). This was my first try with PT-Lens and I need to figure out the best way to use it as my setting aren't quite right yet, but you can see the ability to take a fisheye and transform it into a great wide angle shot.



I've rented this lens for weddings before so already knew what I could get with it, but can't wait to spend some quality time with it.