Defishing a Fisheye Lens. Starring the Samyang 8mm f2.8.

UPDATE: also check out my tip on how to defish using Lightroom here.

I'm a fan of fisheye lenses. Most people think that fisheye is just a fun lens, hence it can't be used for more serious applications. For me, it's true that it's fun, but when used in the proper subjects I find my photos pleasing and very interesting. I'll give you more tips on what looks best when using fisheye, but first let's get to the defishing.

I use the Samyang 8mm f2.8 as my fisheye lens and it's fantastic. You can check out my review HERE. To defish my photos, I use PTLens with the following settings which I found is the best:

• Fisheye Distortion: 147
• Crop: 27

Here's a quick and dirty sample of a defishing I did, with a comparison with a photo taken at 16mm.

The original photo

Defished photo

Compared to a 16mm lens

The result was quite good, and no significant loss of details at the edges I could see when zoomed in. 

I am not too sure what is the equivalent rectilinear focal length having done this, but given my experience with ultra wides and compared to the 16mm I have at the moment, I would give a guestimate of 10mm to 12mm. I'll have a definite answer once I get the 10-24mm f4 lens I'm still waiting for! As with all ultra wide angle shots, because of the exaggerated effect on the sides and corners, it's best not to defish a photo with people around the sides (especially ladies) or they'll be making sure they run away whenever you point your camera at them. Best photos would be architectural or interior with leading lines from my experience.

Defished photos have one issue, Chromatic Aberrations which were negligible are now visible on the corners of the photo.

Tired of boring old images? Can't get creative? Try this!

Balancing The Fishy and Defished

It's the most, wonderful time of the year here... in Kuala Lumpur to take fishy photos! Coz it's near Christmas and what do you when Christmas approaches in a bustling city like KL? Shopping malls with lovely Christmas decorations. I decided to take a walkabout the other day to test my new lens, and balancing between fisheye photos and defished rectilinear ultra wide. I hope these pictures give you some inspiration on how you can best use your fisheye lens. All my photos are taken with aperture of f4 and focused at the hyper focal length of 80cm so that everything from 40cm onwards are tact sharp.

My journey started when I parked my car in front of this spooky abandoned building.

Mustn't miss a photo op like this!

The fences on the left and right makes a good natural border for the photo

Fisheye lenses work well with symmetry and leading lines.

No, I'm looking at you.

Didn't have a tripod with me to do the people motion effect. Would have been interesting.

I love using fisheye lenses shooting down in shopping malls. Welcome to Berjaya Times Square.

Up, up and away.

This shopping center is so big, it has it's own theme park inside. Well actually, it's the 14th biggest mall in the world (source: wikipedia)

Now the from the top of the indoor theme park (taken from the 10th floor)

Look what I found, a site that is worthy of Hollywood action movies.

The sense of how things look so small when you use a Fisheye lens.

Ahhh I love Christmas.

In summary, a fisheye lens like the Samyang 8mm f2.8 can be an effective rectilinear ultra wide angle lens as demonstrated above. Just be careful of how you use it and perhaps you may even save some money and not need a ultra wide angle lens!

Finally, I'll leave you with the picture of the original photograph of the first picture in this post to show again the magic of defishing a fisheye lens!

This picture looks better defished, don't you think?