Howard Millard

It was the swinging `60s,
I was in college, and many wore a rainbow of tie-dyed colors. What had
been "normal" was being challenged on every front, and that
included photography. The bulging, startling perspective of the fisheye
lens added an otherworldly look to album covers for rock musicians like
Jimi Hendrix and Cream. Now, decades later, just as bell bottom pants
recently returned for yet another cycle, fisheye images have again reared
their heads in both print and television ads. A fisheye lens, of course,
is one that takes in an extremely wide angle of view, often 180º,
and appears as a circle within the black image frame. Yes, there are rectilinear
full frame fisheyes (which give a rectangular, not round image), but to
my mind, they're merely ultra-wide angle lenses. A true fisheye,
on the other hand, is a unique special effects tool which renders a unique
circular perspective of the world.



When I was a student, fisheye lenses cost a small fortune (some still
do). What to do? I drilled a hole in the center of a lens cap and glued
a brass door peephole from a hardware store to it. Snapping the lens cap/fisheye
lens over a 50mm or wider angle standard lens, I got a small 180º
circular fisheye image in the center of the black frame. Quality was not
great, but the effect was spectacular.
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