Photo of the Week 2017-09-25

Last week on the blog, I posted an image showing early fall colour here in Ontario ... this past week, while on vacation at the cottage in Tobermory, fall colour is not so prominent. Oh there are branches here and there, and some isolated trees showing fall chroma but for the most part, fall splendour is yet to fully arrive.

It is still early, only 3 days into official fall actually, and with a lack of colourful fall foliage for inspiration, I turned to a particular piece of kit to stir the creative juices ... the Rokinon 8mm f/3.5 UMC Fish-Eye CS II, a manual focus, manual aperture lens for crop sensors (that can be used on full frame to obtain an almost complete circular image). The 8mm focal length on my Canon 7D mkII provides an effective focal length (efl) of ~13mm ... pretty damn wide, ultra wide in fact. So wide that you have to watch for your own shadow when the sun is over your shoulder, your wife and dog who may be accompanying you and at times, your own feet! Yes it's that wide! 167º field of view in fact :-/

Using a fish-eye lens requires some getting used to, well maybe more than some. I definitely still need to practice more and go to this lens more often to become more proficient. For those unfamiliar with photographing using a fish-eye, vertical and horizontal lines distort drastically the closer they are to the edges of the frame until they warp almost beyond recognition. This can be used to great effect, and also easily to the point of over use as the novelty soon wears off.

For me, the best use of the fish-eye recently was to enable capture of sweeping scenic images where the horizon can be placed in the middle of the frame with a significant emphasis on the foreground. I find this works both with 'landscape' and 'portrait' orientation where the landscape orientation shows the traditional panoramic scene and the portrait orientation emphasizes the foreground and expansive sky overhead. Cropping for final composition is always an option, but where's the fun in that, I like pushing myself to deliver a composition in camera with this uniquely challenging focal length.

Here is a sampling of images from the week that illustrate what I've described ...

rock it ultra-wide II - landscape

rock it ultra-wide I - portrait

lighthouse off-centre starts to distort (lean)

crop just the centre for a horizontal pano

distortion from pointing down ... watch those shadows!

I loved working with the 8mm on my 7D II this past week ... now what should I do next week? Hmmmm ......

DJE