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Canon 15mm Fisheye lens – Part I

Lenses, Software

Not just a throwback to the sixties

Update November 2009: ImageAlign is out of business and the plugin described here is no longer available. However, something every bit as good is available. It’s called PTLens and you can read about it here. Lightroom3 also now includes ‘defishing’ controls.

The lengthy list of things best forgotten from the 1960s includes long hair, bad music, revolting students …. and done-to-death fisheye lens images. So you can imagine there was no way on earth I would ever contemplate buying one of these gimmicks.

Yet here was the latest addition to my little outfit yesterday:

Canon EOS 5D, 15mm Canon f/2.8 Fisheye lens

A while back I wrote of the stroke of luck I had when I bumped into a fellow Canon DSLR user at Hearst Castle; he was nice enough to let me take a couple of snaps with his super exotic 14mm f/2.8 ‘L’ lens on my 5D body. This was mightily impressive, the creative opportunities legion, but at some $1,800 for the occasional superwide snap I decided I preferred to keep bread on the table. But that super-duper wide angle view stuck in my mind.

With my standard lens on the 5D being the wonderful 24-105mm zoom, a 20mm, the next widest lens, made little sense. The difference between 20mm and 24mm is not all that great, and I felt pretty happy with the 24mm setting on the zoom. Plus I did not want the bulk of a wide zoom lens. Then I found myself thinking about image correction and how much more of this sort of thing is increasingly being done in processing rather than with the camera’s software. Sharpening, exposure, contrast even lens aberrations can be repaired in Photoshop CS2 and Aperture.

Wait a minute! Lens aberrations? Well, couldn’t you take a cheap fisheye and remove the native barrel distortion, giving you something seriously wide at modest cost? So I typed ‘lens distortion correction’ into Google and one of the first results was for a New Zealand (New Zealand?) company named Grasshopper. Turns out they sell a Photoshop Plug-in named ImageAlign so I did a spot of reading which disclosed that this was a natural match for any number of fisheye lenses out there, making straight that which would otherwise be curved. So I plonked down $650 for the Canon fisheye and took a couple of snaps. No way was Photoshop CS2 able to straighten the curves with its modest range of corrections, so I downloaded the trial version of ImageAlign and, hey presto!, straight lines. So another $79 saw me equipped with what is, in effect, a 12mm wide angle after corrections are applied.

Read that again. A 12mm wide angle full frame lens.

August 2008 update: Grasshopper seems to be out of business but the features of ImageAlign described here are now available in Photoshop CS3.

How does it all work? Well, first you have to overcome the bout of vertigo you get from using a fisheye – a new experience for me. (The fisheye, not the vertigo – I get that every tax day already). Then you have to watch out that you don’t photograph your toes or shadow. Easier said than done. The fisheye fills the frame with its image on the 5D and is very, very wide indeed. Don’t even think of using this lens on a non-full frame sensor camera as your fisheye becomes a 24mm wide, so you might as well buy the equivalent lens (a 15mm non-fish on a 1.6x body) to get straight lines in the first place. But you cannot get this wide with anything except a full frame camera. A 1.6x sensor needs a 7.5mm lens to get this wide and they do not exist.

You then load the picture into Photoshop CS2 where the Grasshopper plug-in appears under the ‘Filter’ menu. The interface is everything that Photoshop is not – simple, intuitive and fast. Here is what you see:

Now to get the curves dead straight, you crank in 180 (max) barrel correction:

Almost straight, but not quite. Save this and crank in another 86 degrees of barrel correction:

Now things are straight. It only remains to remove the half moons top and bottom by dialing the Rescale slider to 16 and you are done:

Note that in the conversion nothing is lost from the center top and base, but some corner details disappear. That’s distortion correction for you.

How wide exactly is this combination? Well, suffice it to say that every self-respecting realtor should own one of these. Here’s the main corridor in our home with the 24-105mm at 24mm and with the fisheye:

And here is the fisheye version after correction with ImageAlign:

See what I mean? The price of the old estate just doubled.

It should be added that this lens is not easy to use. You don’t have to get close. You have to get intimate with your subject. Not for nothing does this lens focus down to a few inches. Rumor has it that Canon has not changed this lens in twenty years, and I can’t blame them. Edge definition is far superior to the 14mm that I used and while the little focus motor makes a whirring sound, the focus throw is so short that this is simply not an issue. The 14mm ‘L’ lens is silent, by comparison, and weighs twice as much. It also costs three times as much. No one ever said that silence was cheap.

Canon provides a metal lens cap, which is a shame. Plastic, as supplied with the 14mm, resists scratches and knocks far better. And, for once, you have to keep the stupid lens cap with you as there’s no way to protect the front element with a filter.

In practice, I kept feeling that I was looking at Van Gogh’s Yellow Chair or any one of a number of Bonnard paintings, so tilted is the perspective. You can get some sense of this from a few snaps I took down the road at the Cambria Pines Lodge, whose grounds include a beautiful garden, by clicking here. Some of these snaps are corrected with ImageAlign, some are left native where the distortion does not detract.

One other thing to note is that it makes sense to bracket exposure if in doubt. Digital sensors really seem to hate overexposure, reminiscent of slide film, so you want to preserve detail in the highlights and adjust the shadows later when processing. And chances are that you will have a huge contrast range outdoors owing to the enormous field of view of the fisheye. The last picture in the attached slide show, which is the interior of the Lodge’s Lounge, was taken at the fisheye’s full aperture at 1/20th second, with ISO dialled up to 1600, hand held. The glass of wine I had just enjoyed, visible in the foreground, served in lieu of a tripod. Is it sharp? The 13″ x 19″ print lying on my desk would make your eyes pop.

So there you have it – the widest rectilinear DSLR wide angle lens in the world, with absoutely no discernible vignetting, for some $650. Try it. You might like it. Yes, I know there’s a 12mm Voigtlander lens for film cameras, but before you spring for it and its extreme vignetting and poor resolution, let me remind you that Film is Dead.

Cambria Pines Lodge garden. Canon EOS 5D, 15mm Canon Fisheye, sepia toned in Aperture

Part II of this review appears here.

Canon 200mm f/2.8 ‘L’ lens

Lenses

Finally, a replacement for the magnificent Leica Apo-Telyt-R

Mention of the fabulous Leica Apo-Telyt-R lens in my column on the Leicaflex SL the other day prompts mention of its replacement which I have been using for a few weeks now on the Canon EOS 5D.

Available during the period 1975-98, the 180mm f/3.4 Apo-Telyt was one of the first Apochromatic lenses available for 35mm cameras, meaning there was no color fringing to be seen no matter how big the enlarged print. It was a surprisingly compact lens, weighing in at 1.65 lbs with its built in lens hood. Full aperture definition was as good as that at any other aperture, meaning superb, or as good as your ability to hold it steady.


The fabulous Leitz 180mm Apo-Telyt R

While cursed with yet another clunky lens hood (why on earth did Canon abandon the earlier sliding lens hood? Another Canon lens hood in the garbage can), the Apo’s replacement on the EOS 5D is Canon’s superb 200mm f/2.8 ‘L’ lens. The ‘L’ lens adds the benefit of automatic focus, to boot. As I sold the Apo-Telyt in a moment of foolishness a few years back, I have been using the fully manual Leitz 200mm f/4 Telyt on the 5D where it works well, but you have to stop down and focus manually. A legacy of my Leica M/Visoflex housing days. Closest focus with the Canon is down to 4.9 feet (compared to a rather poor 8.2 feet for the Apo-Telyt) and can be limited to 8.2 feet in the interest of faster performance when the close-up range is not needed. Weights of the two lenses are 1.65 lbs for the Apo and 1.68 lbs for the Canon, meaning the latter uses plastics where possible as it has automatic diaphragm and focus motors to conceal in its somewhat bulkier body.

Automatic focus speed on the 5D is simply startling. So fast you don’t even think of it, though I have taken the precaution of limiting auto focus area selection to the center focus rectangle in the interests of accuracy. There’s not much depth of field at 200mm and f/2.8! The only thing missing is vibration reduction. Now that would be nice to have!

Consistent with my commitment not to get loaded down with gear, I purchased a small cylindrical soft case for the lens which attaches to my belt and, because its overall dimensions are similar to the 24-105mm f/4 ‘L’ , when one lens is on the camera the other makes its home in the belt case. Each is fitted with a clear UV filter, so only a rear cap need be used – I would dispense with that also, but the rear lens element on the zoom is too exposed to take that risk, given my proclivity to thumbprint everything.


The Canon 200mm f/2.8 and 24-105mm f/4 lenses. The zoom (right) is at its longest setting.

Why a prime lens rather than another zoom? Two reasons – weight and maximum aperture. Performance is less of a concern given the high optical standards of Canon’s ‘L’ lenses. I really do not need focal lengths between 105mm and 200mm and the 5D’s sensor allows image enlargement in this intermediate range without compromising definition. Further, any lens with a half-decent maximum aperture that zooms beyond 200mm is impossibly bulky. On the very rare occasions I need something longer I have my 400mm f/6.8 Leitz Telyt to fall back on.

The 200mm is a fine landscape lens, compressing perspective and focusing on essentials.


Canon EOS 5D, 200mm f/2.8 ‘L’, probably at f/5.6.

Best of all, as ‘L’ glass goes it’s positively a bargain, and chump change compared to the Leitz lens which it so ably replaces.


Canon EOS 5D, 200mm f/2.8 ‘L’, at f/3.5. No problem with background clutter!

The Leicaflex SL

Cameras, Leica

Simple, sturdy and with great lenses, you can pick up this behemoth for very little

While classic rangefinder Leicas continue to appreciate as doctors, dentists and investment bankers fill their display cases, fine cameras like the Leicaflex SL, which never really caught on, can be had very inexpensively.

I used one for many years, during the period 1977 though 1990, starting with a 50mm Summicron lens, adding a 21mm, a 90mm Summicron for portraits and the superb 180mm Apo-Telyt R for landscape pictures. As good an optic as I have ever used.

Provided you were in no great hurry and didn’t mind the noise, it was hard to take a bad picture with this camera. The camera was big and rather clunky, the wind lever had way too long an arc but the controls were nice and large meaning use with gloves on was no problem.

What I liked most was the semi-spot meter. The excellent microprism focusing circle also defined the exact area of measurement for the meter and was large enough that you didn’t get all nervy the way you do with a spot meter. It was a match needle design, meaning you had to align two needles, visible only in the viewfinder. Adding or deducting a stop for light correction was very easy with the camera at eye level, as the viewfinder displayed the selected shutter speed and was very easy to see with or without eyeglasses.

This was one of the last of the all mechanical cameras which have now largely disappeared, but proved very reliable in all weather conditions. True, the camera had looks only a mother could love but the lenses were superb regardless of focal length.

As Leica has since added all sorts of electronic gizmo connections in its SLR lenses in a futile attempt to keep up with the times, the earlier two cam mechanical lenses can be had very inexpensively. While the build quality never felt up to early Leica M standards (meaning M2, M3 and M4), I had no reliability problems, and the uncluttered viewfinder was a joy to use. A great starter camera for someone getting serious and willing to put up with the shortcomings of film.

Anchorage, Alaska. 1978. Leicaflex SL, 50mm Summicron R, Kodachrome 64

New York City. 1985. Leicaflex SL, 21mm Super-Angulon R, Kodachrome 64

Lake Elizabeth, California. 1990. Leicaflex SL, 180mm Apo-Telyt R, Kodachrome 64

The Leica DP – Part VI

Panasonic

Vibration reduction at work

The Lumix LX1 uses two motion sensors, one for vertical and the other for hoizontal motion. These feed the opposite of any motion they detect to the lens assembly to reduce the effects of definition-robbing camera shake on the image. Panasonic calls it ‘Mega OIS’ which sounds rather grand, no? A related benefit is that with the two shutter speeds thus gained – meaning you can use 1/15th where 1/60th was safe before – is that ISO 100 becomes in effect ISO 400, with attendant benefits on reduced sensor noise; as I illustrated earlier, the camera’s sensor is somewhat noisy at ISO 400.

Sceptical?

Here are two pictures, taken seconds apart, of one of my bookshelves, hand held, taken at the longest lens setting (to emphasize shake) and 1/4 second at ISO 100. Care to guess which one had vibration reduction switched on?

I use Mode 2 OIS, meaning the OIS is switched on the moment the shutter is pressed; I have no need of Mode 1 – on all the time – as I use my glued on 28mm Voigtlander optical viewfinder to compose, not the LCD screen. And as the camera always starts with the lens at 28mm no matter where it was when switched off or powered down, there is no risk of using an optical viewfinder not matched to the lens.

This wonderful vibration reduction system will add more quality to a picture than any amount spent on expensive glass without this feature. I like to think that my 28mm f/2.8 Lumix Leica lens has just become an f/1.4, which, in effect, it has. Anyone with a 28mm f/2 Leica Aspherical Summicron on their Leica care to challenge me at 1/4 second? 13″ x 19″ prints at two paces. And by the way, your competing camera and lens will have cost some ten times the price of the Lumix LX1. Too bad. Someone steals your rig and you have a problem. They can’t steal mine unless they requisition my jeans, because that’s where this little jewel resides.

Oh! and did I mention the widescreen capabilty you see above?

Shutter lag

Cameras

It takes the Wall Street Journal to surface the issue

Not only is America afflicted with some of the world’s worst television – from situation comedy to news reporting, though it’s often difficult to distinguish the two – it can also lay claim to having the worst newspapers. As often as not, these mistake editorial opinion for news, so you end up reading some leftie’s opinion about put-upon losers as news reporting. Write enough of this sort of thing and you get a Pulitzer Prize.

In the digital photography world, the worst reporting involves avoidance of mention of a near universal problem in modern cameras. Shutter lag. The time it takes between pressing the button to recording the image. Read any number of reviews of digital cameras and chances are you will see no mention of this defect. I can only guess that this is either because of conflicts of interest (journalists accepting bribes in the form of free equipment or pushing advertising in their magazine) or because the reviewer hasn’t the faintest idea how to take a photograph.

So it was welcome news indeed to open the Wall Street Journal this morning – a fine newspaper which keeps its opinions on the editorial page – to see an article on shutter lag, of all things. They quoted some poor schnuck who blew big coin on a digital camera to record the whales on his Mexican vacation, but managed to record only sterile images of the sea, the leaping whale having just departed owing to shutter lag. What’s interesting about the piece is that it takes a business newspaper to disclose a design defect which makes most digital cameras worthless for all except maybe landscape photographers and realtors. Let’s face it, neither is exactly dealing with moving subjects. Earlier reporting by the Journal confirms that the primary use of digital cameras hasn’t changed from that for film cameras, meaning pictures of one’s family. Especially of the kids. Ever tried to catch that fleeting moment on your baby’s face with a modern digital point-and-shoot camera?

The Journal gets it wrong in saying this is a digital camera problem, citing the good old days of fast film cameras. As the latter developed more automation – focus, exposure and so on – shutter lag was already beginning to raise its ugly head. Simple cameras like rangefinder Leicas and better SLRs never had the problem, and it was one of the major causes for concern I had when waiting to go digital. With the Canon EOS 5D there is no shutter lag, but then you should expect no less from a camera that runs close to $5,000 with a decent lens attached. I was more than aware of the issue having used an Olympus C5050Z for three years or so, and learned early on not to use it to photograph anything that moved.

The Olympus C5050Z – a very competent camera for static recording, but useless for moving subjects because of horrid shutter lag

So it’s satisfying to report that Panasonic cured the issue in a point-and-shoot digital in the LX1. Unfortunately, they made two boo-boos. First, they never advertised this ‘feature’ which I discovered after much research. Second, they have just discontinued the camera. So if you want a fast, small digital point-and-shoot, now is the time to get an LX1. Read more by clicking on the ‘Leica DP’ entry on the left.

Meanwhile, kudos to the Wall Street Journal for good reporting.