- In many shooting situations,
you wanna take as few shots as possible
and still get the job done.
And that's where wide-angle lenses come in.
[Man with Glasses] - Very much.
Fisheye lenses can be something
that I use all the time in a,
especially in a professional situation
`where I don't have time to take so many photos.
And these days, with the current lenses out there,
I get really good quality anyway,
so it really works well.
- Yeah, it used to be
a problem with fisheye lenses that you would
be spreading too many shots over the finished panorama,
but now that we're seeing things like 42 megapixels
on the Sony a7R II, it's not that big of a deal
to spread those megapixels around.
But you do have to realize that there's
a lot of distortion.
But fortunately when we get to the stitching software,
it sort of compensates for that,
and there's even lens profiles, too, right?
[Man with Glasses] By now it's come to-
the software's gotten so good,
that the fisheye images can really be used
through good, preprocessing and raw
and also the stitching software
handles them very well now.
- So, what are some of the things you look for, Ron,
when picking a fisheye lens?
We've got a wide range here.
I've got a Sony, which I'll talk about a little bit later.
We've got an Olympus, which is micro four thirds.
But we really have two different styles here.
If we simplify it down,
we have crop sensor with
the micro four thirds and an APS-C,
and we have some full frame sensors.
What do you look for in this type of lens?
Does sensor size come into it?
- Sensor size is important because, again,
we're spreading so, such a wide field of view
into a single shot.
So having a really good full frame sensor
is very helpful.
It's also very helpful for issues like noise, for instance.
But, having said that,
the convenience of some of these new cameras
with the micro four thirds,
and I'm very happy with the results
I get from my micro four thirds Olympus,
and they have fisheye lenses for them now.
One of the down sides is that,
with the smaller sensor comes the crop factor.
So that field of view that you get
is much smaller compared to using
a fisheye lens on these full frame cameras
where you use the entire lens.
- In practical terms, the crop factor
on a micro four thirds lens sort of magnifies
the original focal length of the lens.
So what would have been maybe an 8mm
would behave like a 16mm.
And on a APS-C it might be
a 1.5 to a 1.7 crop factor
so, it just punches in,
but obviously there's cost there.
So you mentioned crop factor,
I haven't found yet,
although I'm sure that there's some out there
that just don't fit my budget, to be perfectly honest,
a wide-angle, full frame lens for the Sony.
But I've found two very affordable
APS-C E-Mount lenses which makes it simple to connect.
It just means that I'm not using the full
resolution of the sensor.
So when I switch the full frame sensor into
APS-C mode, well, I get the results that I expect.
It does behave like an 8mm or a 12mm fisheye.
But at the same time,
I'm not getting the full quality of the camera.
- And another route you can go as well is,
I'm using...
This is my favorite, close-to-my-heart
camera/lens combination for 360 photography,
is the Nikon 10.5mm lens
which is actually a crop sensor lens.
But I'm using it on a full frame camera.
That means that there is part of my frame
that's just black, it's unused.
But counter-intuitively, I can take less shots
and get the full 360.
And with the good resolution of the camera,
and the very good quality of this 10.5mm lens,
I consider this fisheye to be one of the best
quality fisheyes out there.
That combination really works for me.
Now this is also the very, the person who is either
professional or very enthusiastic
about panoramic photography.
Because I've actually cut off part of the lens
to make this work for me.
[Man in Green Shirt] - So you've permanently
modified the lens.
Ron - Yes. Permanently ruined it, for some.
It comes with a small lens hood
that actually blocks part of the field of view
so you'll see a lot of people out there,
anywhere from YouTube on, people showing
how to do this.
And we've shaved off that lens hood
that gives me more field of view.
- We do have to be responsible.
Doing that is probably a great way
to void the manufacture warranty,
so maybe buy a used lens if you're not sure
or think twice before you do this the first time.
Make sure you really love the lens
if you're going to permanently modify it.
But it's not unheard of, and
- I wanted, I wanted to show it as an option, though.
But please hire a professional to do that.
I didn't cut it off myself.
I'm not that handy.
But I wanted to point out another.
This used to be my workhorse system here,
which is a, this is a Nikon D300S.
But it could be any crop sensor camera.
And this is a Sigma 8mm lens.
The quality of the Sigma 8mm lens is
probably not as good as the Nikon 10.5,
but with good post-processing
no one can tell the difference
in my results when they're viewing them.
Both of these systems are very few shots.
This one requires four and it captures the entire 360
and, including the ceiling, if it's
just tilted up a very small amount.
And it even captures part of the tripod.
This one, I could take three images around
and still cover.
I like to take four to have a little bit more overlap,
but that's an option.
And with no tilting at all,
this captures the entire ceiling
and the entire tripod and floor.
So these are really good options
for going in and taking four shots around,
or even three shots around.
That's important because if you're bracketing,
which is really required in real estate these days,
you're taking many bracketed photos
for each one of those four rotational shots.
- And that really adds up quickly.
If you're needing to turn, maybe only 30 degree rotation,
meaning 12 separate shooting positions,
which you might do on a more traditional lens,
and you're shooting say five or seven stops,
well those brackets are gonna really
start to add up pretty quickly
and you could be getting hundreds of shots for each room.
More data to backup, cards fill up quicker,
gotta wait for things to buffer,
and it just takes longer to shoot.
So, I think the bottom line here is
if you are, I don't want to say budget-conscious,
but time-conscious, this is a good approach, right?
- Yeah, these are, especially
a system like this with the 8mm lens,
it's not going to be a cheap investment,
but it's also in relation to other photography gear,
it's not a huge investment either
and it's a really great way to start
with really good quality.