Hello all! Despite the long period of inactivity, this blog is still active. I've just been a bit busy.
But back to this post. Today I'll be talking about a trip I made up to London for an evening shoot at St. Paul's cathedral.
I knew before traveling that I'd need an ultra wide angle lens to do the architecture any sort of justice. I've owned the Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm lens for many years (checks LR metadata - April 2012!), and it is a compact and light UWA whose performance isn't too shabby.
Saying that, I've definitely noticed a diminishing in its capabilities over the years - whether this is down to use or something else, I cannot say. I'm simply not happy with the sharpness of the corners from it anymore.
I've looked into replacing the M.Zuiko previously. I can't really justify the ~£1000 GBP price-tag of the Olympus f/2.8 7-14mm, nor the similar price for the Panasonic Leica 8-18mm, as I rarely shoot UWA these days. I shoot manual lenses quite a bit, so the Laowa f/2 7.5mm is definitely an option for me, yet I didn't have the time to acquire one before I was due to head up to London. And so I got hold of a Samyang 7.5mm fisheye.
Why a fisheye? That is a good question. I've never been over-enthralled by the high level of distortion that a fisheye lens gives - I'd much rather have a low-distortion rectilinear ultrawide angle. Having read up on "de-fishing" a fisheye in post, I thought I'd give it a go. And if I wasn't happy with the lens, I could always return it.
Upon entering the cathedral, I was blown away by the scale and the beauty of the architecture. If you've never visited St. Paul's before, add it to your list - it is simply beautiful in there.
I used three lenses while I was inside the building that gave me a good range of focal lengths for a variety of applications:
Here's a side-by-side look of the field of view offered by first the Samyang, and then the Olympus UWA:
As you can see, you get substantially more within the frame with the fisheye. And I was surprised how natural the resultant image actually looked. In comparison, it makes the M.Zuiko ultra-wide image look like it was shot with a 35mm lens!
I was very happy with how the Samyang performed, and ultimately didn't "defish" any of the images I processed from the lens. Here's how another shot looked with and without distortions corrected:
This was achieved by selecting the relevant Samyang lens Profile Correction in Lightroom. While I think it works for sharing on the web, the act of stretching and squeezing the image does result in a major loss in sharpness in the corners. This could be alleviated a bit by cropping the image, but then you start to lose that extra wideness you bought the lens for in the first place.
I also got some great images using the Voigtlander (first image in post is one of my favourites from the evening), though did suffer a bit from some of the lens' peculiarities - I don't believe my second-hand copy of the lens is the best example of the glass, as I feel it suffers from some odd distortion at certain apertures. I'll need to do some tests to ascertain exactly what is happening and at what apertures, as I had quite a few shots which were almost-great were it not for some field-curvature.
The starbursts allowed by the lens, not just the fast aperture really bought some great atmosphere to the building, and I was glad I had something a little longer than all those silly-wide lenses. I think this vertical panorama works quite nicely without too much distortion:
Anyway, I'll be keeping the fisheye. It served its purpose and more - I was very surprised by just how sharp it was at the centre. Though it isn't a lens I would use in many circumstances, thanks to the size, weight and performance of the lens, it can easily be thrown in the camera bag for those rare occurrences when a change in perspective is welcome.
My Flickr album of the St. Paul's shoot is here.
But back to this post. Today I'll be talking about a trip I made up to London for an evening shoot at St. Paul's cathedral.
Saying that, I've definitely noticed a diminishing in its capabilities over the years - whether this is down to use or something else, I cannot say. I'm simply not happy with the sharpness of the corners from it anymore.
I've looked into replacing the M.Zuiko previously. I can't really justify the ~£1000 GBP price-tag of the Olympus f/2.8 7-14mm, nor the similar price for the Panasonic Leica 8-18mm, as I rarely shoot UWA these days. I shoot manual lenses quite a bit, so the Laowa f/2 7.5mm is definitely an option for me, yet I didn't have the time to acquire one before I was due to head up to London. And so I got hold of a Samyang 7.5mm fisheye.
Why a fisheye? That is a good question. I've never been over-enthralled by the high level of distortion that a fisheye lens gives - I'd much rather have a low-distortion rectilinear ultrawide angle. Having read up on "de-fishing" a fisheye in post, I thought I'd give it a go. And if I wasn't happy with the lens, I could always return it.
Upon entering the cathedral, I was blown away by the scale and the beauty of the architecture. If you've never visited St. Paul's before, add it to your list - it is simply beautiful in there.
I used three lenses while I was inside the building that gave me a good range of focal lengths for a variety of applications:
- Samyang f/3.5 7.5mm fisheye
- Olympus M.Zuiko 9-18mm
- Voigtlander f/0.95 17.5mm
Here's a side-by-side look of the field of view offered by first the Samyang, and then the Olympus UWA:
As you can see, you get substantially more within the frame with the fisheye. And I was surprised how natural the resultant image actually looked. In comparison, it makes the M.Zuiko ultra-wide image look like it was shot with a 35mm lens!
I was very happy with how the Samyang performed, and ultimately didn't "defish" any of the images I processed from the lens. Here's how another shot looked with and without distortions corrected:
This was achieved by selecting the relevant Samyang lens Profile Correction in Lightroom. While I think it works for sharing on the web, the act of stretching and squeezing the image does result in a major loss in sharpness in the corners. This could be alleviated a bit by cropping the image, but then you start to lose that extra wideness you bought the lens for in the first place.
I also got some great images using the Voigtlander (first image in post is one of my favourites from the evening), though did suffer a bit from some of the lens' peculiarities - I don't believe my second-hand copy of the lens is the best example of the glass, as I feel it suffers from some odd distortion at certain apertures. I'll need to do some tests to ascertain exactly what is happening and at what apertures, as I had quite a few shots which were almost-great were it not for some field-curvature.
The starbursts allowed by the lens, not just the fast aperture really bought some great atmosphere to the building, and I was glad I had something a little longer than all those silly-wide lenses. I think this vertical panorama works quite nicely without too much distortion:
Anyway, I'll be keeping the fisheye. It served its purpose and more - I was very surprised by just how sharp it was at the centre. Though it isn't a lens I would use in many circumstances, thanks to the size, weight and performance of the lens, it can easily be thrown in the camera bag for those rare occurrences when a change in perspective is welcome.
My Flickr album of the St. Paul's shoot is here.
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