The (dying?) art of the full frame fisheye; creative, distorted, unnatural, unusual, unconventional, unrealistic and seemingly bizarre images. Used well the FF fisheye can provide an original and fresh take on a much over photographed or clichéd subject, create impressionistic blur, distort tight architectural spaces or make eye catching portraits. Used less well and the fisheye look can seem gimmicky and contrived.

I say dying as with the advent of so many modern quality rectilinear design superwide angle lenses out there these days, full frame fisheye lenses and the lovely distortion effects you can get from them seem to have gone out of fashion, which is a shame really. I like mine which is a Lumix G Fisheye 8mm f3.5 to give it its full designation.

One of the interesting things about a FF fisheye is that if you keep the lens horizontal and keep objects with hard vertical edges out of the of the sides of the frame of the picture then you get a 180 degree view that looks close to being undistorted with many subjects.

However, include an object with hard vertical edges and dip the lens even a bit from the horizontal and the effects can be dramatic and even a little startling!

There again even a super wide fully corrected wide angle lens like my Leica DG Summilux 9mm f1.7 ASPH with its 100 degree angle of view cannot match my 8mm fisheye for its dramatic effect as the picture above shows, though compositionally it is more conventional and thus easier to use. So is the FF fisheye dead? Well not for me it isn't, it is just a question of knowing how and when to use it. This is kind of true of any photographic tool anyway.