Large format fisheye - does such a beast exist?

[walter23]

Anyone know? These things are kind of common in the 35mm world. I've never heard of them in 4x5 or other. What kind of design do they use? Can this be accomplished without 300 lbs of glass on a 4x5?

[walter23]

Hah. I guess there is some stuff in the archives; ignore.

[rob]

I've been wondering, can you put the fisheye converter lens for digicam in front of, say, 150mm nikkor W lens and get the fisheye effects? I have not tried it yet because good fisheye converters are not cheap.

[Daniel_Buck]

I've been wondering, can you put the fisheye converter lens for digicam in front of, say, 150mm nikkor W lens and get the fisheye effects? I have not tried it yet because good fisheye converters are not cheap.

yes, this should work. We put small 180 degree fisheye lenses infront of digital cameras with fixed lenses (rectilinear) at work for some hardware experiments a while back. The same should work for a large format, though you would still need a fairly large diameter fisheye lens, at least an inch or more on the rear element, depending on what lens you are using behind it. The 150mm (or whatever lens you use) will sort of act like a 'collimating' lens for the fisheye and project it straight back towards the film. (well, not straight back, but I think you get the idea)

[Andy Eads]

I once modified a Mamiya 37mm fisheye from a RB67 to work as a 4x5 fisheye. I had to mill off the lens hood and build a mount (I was using a Linhof with a nice big lens board). The image circle just fits the live area of a 4x5 neg. The sharpness is good enough to make a 40" diameter display print. The best part is that it indeed covers a 180 degree field of view.

[lenser]

Spiratone used to make a circular fish eye adapter that was designed to add to a 50mm lens on a 35mm camera for a true fish eye image. On longer lenses it would produce decent images that were partial areas rather than the circle and had some curvature...more on shorter focal lengths, less on the longer since you are getting close to the center of the image. There is a built in f stop system that is scaled according to the largest f stop on the lens it is mounted to.

As I remember from the instruction sheet, you could also use this on medium and large format cameras with an appropriate mount in front of normal or longer lenses. No point in going to wide angle lenses since it just makes a smaller circle on the film. I have used it on my Hasselblad with good results.

The image quality is pretty decent (I've done satisfactory 16x20's form 35mm negs) but not as good as a prime fish eye would be.

These still come up quite often on ebay and are usually pretty reasonably priced. You should be able to either find or make an adapter for your "normal" 4x5 lens and shoot a pretty good quality image.

Good luck.

Tim

[walter23]

Thanks. I don't have any real plans for this, it was more a matter of curiosity that came up while I was reading something.

[Peter K]

During WW II Zeiss developed a lens for aerial photography with 135° angle of view for plates 18 x 18 cm, the 1:8/75mm "Pleon". The distortion could be removed with special enlargement equipment. It was a Topogon equipped with a large divergent front lens like the other fish-eye lenses.

Peter K

[Steve Goldstein]

A fellow I know locally mounted a 30mm Arsat (Russian lens for Kiev 6x6 cameras) onto a Speed Graphic body box. He had to file off the "ears" on the front of the lens as they intruded into the image. It produces beautiful round images on 4x5 with an astonishing angle of view. Here's a link:

http://www.half-fast.com/

[Armin Seeholzer]

If you take a 75mm Super Angulon or Nikkor in front of a 8x10 then you should get the round effect of a fisheye but not the optical distortion!
I will test it next spring!
Have a good day, Armin