There was not enough space to get that far back and that low for the same composition. Without a fisheye lens I would have had to be further back from the octopus just to get the two dive models in the photo, and would not have also been able to include the sun. I did this by getting low and shooting up. The fisheye lens allowed me to get very close to this octopus, bringing out the detail in it, but also to include two dive models in the photo, and bring the sun into the composition. With a wide angle lens, I would have had to be much further away to get the whole manta in the frame, meaning less clarity, more backscatter, and poorer lighting. The only way I was able to get the belly so sharp and detailed, and have the nice lighting, was by shooting with my fisheye lens in my underwtaer housing and being only about 3 feet below this manta as it passed over me. The water was pretty murky there, as it is at most manta dive sites. Manta ray belly taken at Manta Point, Nusa Penida, Bali. Additionally, the barrel distortion of the lens, which can be very difficult to use above land, works great underwater, where there are very few straight lines.īelow is a collection of my favourite shots taken with my fisheye lens, as well as some explanation about why the fisheye made them so great. Of course, the fisheye lens is the best at getting you as close as possible to your subject. If your strobe light has to travel 4 ft to the subject and 4 ft back, you will have a lot less color (especially reds) than if your strobe light only has to travel 2 ft in each direction. Additionally, the less distance your strobe lights have to travel between your camera and the subject, and then back to your camera, the brighter and truer the colours will be. The closer you are, the less water between you and your subject, meaning the subject is sharper. When shooting wide angle underwater, you always want to be as close to your subject as possible (while still having a nice composition). For more of a comparison between the two types of lenses, check out this very detailed article on fisheye lenses vs wide-angle. To be able to create this massive field of view, the fisheye lens warps the image, with the warping most pronounced at the edges of the image. The big difference is that they have an enormous field of view – typically, 180 degrees! Compared to the 75 – 114 degree field of view of the 7-14mm f/2.8 Olympus wide angle lens, the 8mm fisheye’s 180 degree field of view is much more (plus it is significantly smaller and cheaper). The first thing to understand about fisheye lenses is what sets them apart from normal wide angle lenses. Rather than the fisheye being the specialty lens, underwater I think of the fisheye lens as the default wide angle lens, while non-fisheye wide-angle lenses are the specialty lenses. Although fisheye lenses are used more as art lenses or for niche applications on land, underwater, it’s a different story. Yes, fisheye lenses are definitely the best for giant subjects like that, but they are incredibly useful for a lot of other situations as well. I run into a lot of people who either don’t use a fisheye lens at all, or who think it is a specialty lens that you only use for big things like mantas, whale sharks or humpbacks. I shoot with an Olympus OM-D E-M1 in a Nauticam E-M1 Mark II housing, and whenever I am shooting wide angle I use the Olympus 8mm f/1.8 fisheye lens.
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