Re: Fish Eye

[boblong@xxxxxxxxxxx (Robert Long)]

On Mon, 25 Nov 1996 15:15:48 +0000 (GMT), Andy Finney wrote:

|Bob,  you don't have to.  I have used a 0.4 wide angle attachment on a =
28mm
|lens for IR in the past and it produced good results and cost me around =
30
|pounds.  If you look on my site you'll find a fish-eye photo of a tree =
on
|Primrose Hill that was produced with this combination.

I've used a couple of adapters in the past, but they really aren't a
very good approximation for the real thing--which I will need in any
case for a book I'm working on if only I can find a publisher.

Yes, I liked the shot on your site--in fact I saved it to your folder
in the "images to think about" section of my D: drive.  (If others in
this group are also into assembling galleries for their own
delectation, I'd particularly recommend the three Autochromes on the
Ilford web site, BTW.  Fascinating!)  And you demonstrate that an
adapter can be useful with IR.  Trouble is, the ones I have require a
pretty small aperture in the prime lens to be at all sharp and both
introduce a certain amount of vignetting--and asymmetrical vignetting
at that.  The better of the two came from Spiratone, which is out of
business and nobody else seems to have taken up the design from
whatever overseas supplier Spiratone had.  It has a badly scratched
front element, rendering it useless.  I was, in fact, toting it on an
HIE shooting spree when it slipped out of the bubble pack that was
protecting it and got scratched.  The other adapter is unbranded and
was hopeless from the beginning.  It too cost the equivalent of about
30 pounds sterling and was a total waste of money.

So I would endorse Andy's advice in principal but warn any listmembers
who are interested enough to have read this far to try before buying
or be ready for a considerable disappointment.
Bob Long
(boblong@xxxxxxxxxxx)

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Topic No. 3