Specialty Lenses (Archive)

Wendy asked for details on using fisheye and macro lenses.

First the fisheye. The fisheye lens is an extra, wide-angle lens; it gets its name from the globe-like shape of the lens that gives the appearance of a fish's eye when you look at it. It's purpose is to capture a larger area of your scene than a normal wide-angle lens. It comes in handy when taking pictures of vast scenics or skies by allowing you to capture more beauty in one picture. It captures rainbows real good too. On the flip side of the coin, because of the shape of the lens, there is distortion on the edges and corners of the frame. The distortion is intensified if you have any straight lines in your scene and the further from the center you get. It is also not suitable for use in portraits.

The other specialty lens we'll talk about this time is the macro lens. The macro is designed for close-ups and close-ups only. It is designed to focus at short distances. With a macro, you can take pictures of flowers, insects, berries, etc and make them larger than life. This will also allow you to capture those very fine details and texture barely visible to the naked eye. When using this type of lens, you will need to make sure the camera is focused on the specific point of the picture that you want to draw attention to. The reason for that is the closer you are to your your subject, the more "depth-of-field" you get. Depth-of-field is the term used to describe the amount of blur with items not the main subject. Greater depth-of-field equals more blur and vice verca.

There will be a future article on how to modify depth-of-field and to use it creatively.

As always, I am open to comments and suggestions regarding this article and this page as whole. Happy shooting!