Review:
Fisheye-Hemi Plug-In
By
Ken Rockwell, KenRockwell.com, November 2006
Introduction - Wedding and group
photographers rejoice! This is a new Photoshop plug-in
which converts fisheye-lens shots into something useful,
especially for shots of people! Better still, it's
only $29.99, bargain of the decade! It works on Photoshop
(version 7+), Elements (version 2+) and PaintShop
Pro (version 7+).
This plug-in is from the geniuses who founded Applied
Science Fiction (ASF). So is this photo - that's them
in their lobby. ASF invented ICE, which saves me hours
not having to get the dust out of film scans. They
sold ASF to Kodak, who's done nothing with it, so
these same guys started a new company called Image
Trends, a very dull name for some very, very bright
guys.
The company's founder shoots a lot of weddings with
fisheye lenses. He invented this to make his fisheye
shots a lot more useful. Looks great, eh? These photos
tell it all, no reason to read any more below.
This new plug-in does a very clever new kind of conversion
to unsqueeze fisheye images into something much more
useful than the original fisheye image, or the superwide
rectilinear conversions done by other software.
I'll add my own examples when it comes out for Mac.
Today it's only for PC. I think it's so great it's
going to make me break down and buy the 10.5mm fisheye
for my Nikon.
Regular fisheye lenses squish everything together
at the sides and corners, which looks stupid for people
photos since it bends their bodies around. Regular
superwide lenses, which I love for photos of things,
stretch things out at the corners, which is also catastrophic
for photos of people you're trying to flatter.
This plug-in straightens the vertical lines in fisheye
shots. It also keeps the image sharp, since its not
stretching out the sides as rectilinear conversions
do. The Hemi plug-in doesn't do the rectilinear conversion
you see in the last example above. I wish it did;
today you need other converters to do that.
This Fisheye-Hemi converter appears to be rendering
images similar to what I get from a rotating-lens
panorama camera like my Noblex. These cameras render
images undistorted from right to left. Vertical lines
remain straight and vertical, even though the camera
sees almost 180 degrees from left to right. Horizontal
lines still curve up or down as they do in a fisheye.
It's got to be good. I wrote this
dry-lab report because I sent the link to one guy
with a 10.5mm, and he almost immediately responded
with WOW!!!!!!!!
What you Need
Optimum
You need a full-frame fisheye lens. This means a 10.5mm
on Nikon DSLR.
On a 35mm film camera, you need a 15mm Fisheye (Canon)
or Nikon 16mm fisheye.
On a full frame digital camera like the Canon 5D or
1Ds / 1Ds Mk II you need Canon's 15mm fisheye.
All these lenses fill the full rectangular frame.
Minolta made the best 16mm fisheye I'd ever used,
complete with built-in filters, for my manual focus
Minolta 35mm film cameras.
You also could get a Russian Zenitar 16mm, for most
35mm film cameras or Canon full-frame digital. It
only costs about $170 - 200, brand-spanking new. I
have one on loan from a freind to review as soon as
my Canon 5D arrives.
Less Optimum
You can play with shorter 8mm lenses, external slip-on
adaptors, door-viewer conversions and other fisheyes
which don't fill the frame, but this converter plug-in
isn't optimized for them. See details here on how
to tweak these.
Canon makes no proper fisheyes for anything other
than full-frame cameras. For the 1D, Rebel, XTi, 20D
and 30D you're sunk. Off-brand 8mm lenses only work
in the middle 3/4 of the frame. The 15mm fisheye isn't
very fishy on the small sensor cameras. Just buy a
Nikon D50 and a 10.5mm.
Likewise, avoid using the Nikon 16mm fisheye on Nikon
digital cameras or the 15mm Canon Fisheye on anything
other than a fiull-frame camera. It's too long, and
not very fishy on them. Use the 10.5mm on the Nikons.
Tip
Keep your camera level, otherwise vertical lines will
converge.
If they do, I'd use the vertical perspective slider
at the bottom of Photoshop CS2's lens correction filter.
You get there via FILTER > Distort > Lens Correction.
PLUG
If you find this as helpful as a book you might have
had to buy or a workshop you may have had to take,
feel free to help me write more.
Thanks for reading!
Ken
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