Close-quarters shooting using a fisheye lens

As a part of collaborative research of hybrid-powered ships, my colleagues and I recently visited the first diesel-electric vessel in the BC Ferries fleet, M.V. Tachek, which operates between Quadra Island and Cortes Island. I new that we would have an opportunity to visit the machine compartment, among other areas that are normally restricted to passengers, so I wanted to photograph them to document the site visit and to promote this research project on the web.

I expected to shoot in a highly-confined environment with poor lighting, so I packed my Canon EOS-1D X DSLR, which has remarkable low-light performance, and fast lenses (35mm f/1.4L USM for extremely low light and 16-35mm f/2.8L USM for extremely tight quarters).

Also, Armando lended me his Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens, pointing out that it would be better for photographing people than the 16-35mm f/2.8L. He was absolutely right. Of course, the fisheye creates a lot of distortion, but this distortion is of a different kind, compared to that of a rectilinear lens, such as the 16-35mm f/2.8L. Since a rectilinear lens is designed to preserve straightness of straight lines, objects near the edge of the frame appear to be stretched and enlarged, which is not flattering to human faces. On the other hand, a fisheye lens covers the 180° field of view by reducing the scale of objects towards the edge of the frame. It also does not preserve straight lines, but since a human face does not contain many straight lines, this is typically not a problem.

As it turned out, the machine compartment of the Tachek was more spacious than I thought, but the fisheye lens produced fun images with a unique perspective.

Here are some tips for using a fisheye lens:

• Compose a portrait so that the face of the subject is located close to the middle of the frame to minimize distortion.
• If there is a horizon line, place it so that it crosses the centre of the frame – this way, it will not be distorted.
• In many situations, such as sports or other action, for example, it is a good idea to switch the lens to manual focus and manually focus just short of infinity. Because ultra-wide angle lenses have huge depth of field, compared to normal or telephoto lenses at the same f-numbers, almost everything in the frame is going to be in focus all the time, regardless of there the focussing point of the camera points to. Turning off autofocus can maximize the framing rate, particularly in low light situations.