Dedicated Wide Angle Or Fisheye Capable?

Many of our customers are torn between two lenses that appear to be very similar but in actually are not. I’m referring to a dedicated wide angle lens and a wide angle lens with the fisheye effect. It would seem that if a lens is capable of the wide angle effect, then it would be the same as any other lens that is capable of the wide angle effect. However the means to attain this effect makes a big difference in the final image. In order to understand the differences between the two, we must first understand each one separately.

Traditionally, the wide angle view is anything that is wider than the 1:1 ratio of your camera to reality. For instance, if you took a picture of your hand and were able to place your hand on top of that developed picture and you found that your hand was the exact size in the picture as it is in reality; that would be a 1:1 ratio. This is said to be at 50mm. So any SLR lens capable of more is a telephoto lens, any SLR lens capable of less is a wide angle lens.

That definition applies to SLR lenses. However with Teleconvertor lenses (any lens that mounts onto an existing lens and not the camera body) the definition is slightly different. The definition for SLR lenses is; a lens that can widen your current view. It can widen the view by an additional 10% or 100% - both would be considered a wide angle lens. Unlike the first definition that used absolute terms as measured in millimeters. This definition uses relative terms as measured in percentages of your current focal range (zoom capacity).

Illustrated on the left, you can see two images. One is taken at a focal range of 50mm without a wide angle lens. The second is also taken at 50mm but this time a wide angle lens has been placed. You can see that the second image is significantly wider than the first.

When an image is too wide, a photographer will notice that lines that should be straight or parallel to one another begin to become rounded. This is known as barrel distortion. The definition of a fisheye effect is extreme barrel distortion. This is when the image is as round as it can be made and the width of the view is to such extreme that the borders of the very lens can be seen. Again, this is also relative to your camera’s capacity. In order to achieve the fisheye effect, your camera must be capable of a focal length (zoom capacity) of 35mm or less. A fisheye effect at 35mm is not as rounded as one at 18mm. An example of two Fisheye effects are on the right.

Please note that these measurements (18mm & 35mm) are measured in the 35mm film standard. If you have a digital SLR it benefits you to read this article as well. It will explain how a digital SLR differs from a film SLR as far as the focal range only and it will help you determine your camera/lens combination’s 35mm film standard.

Now that we have clear definitions of a fisheye effect and a wide angle effect, it is not difficult to see why a dedicated wide angle lens is better for the wide angle effect than a lens that is also capable of the fisheye effect. The lens that is dedicated to the wide angle effect will produce a greater percentage of increase in width. Furthermore a fisheye image manages to get that effect by pushing the width to the extreme. You then get a wide angle effect by zooming in away from the extreme width. This means that you never fully avoid the distortion and that the final product is slightly less clear as well as less wide.