The 1990s brought us many great innovations and inventions – the Macarena, Dunkaroos, the World Wide Web. The era also introduced a new style of video and photography to the mainstream with heavy use of the fisheye lens. A fisheye lens is a term reserved for ultra-wide angle lenses that have a characteristic convex appearance.
You can recognize fisheye shots for their wide panoramic or hemispherical images, which are produced by the convex lens shape. The look was quite popular in 90s photography and music videos.
Nowadays, with digital cameras available at such an affordable prices, the wide angle and fish eye lens are easily accessible, and they’re often included as a standard addition to many photography and videography sets. Fisheye lens filters are also popular for iPhone and camera phone owners who are looking for the effect in their pocket projects.
When shooting fisheye, here are some points you’ll want to keep in mind:
Keep Your Subject in the Middle
Because of the nature of the fisheye lens’ expansive coverage, there is only a small sweet spot in the middle of the image where the subject is most accurately perceived and portrayed. It’s true that the wider the angle, the more straight lines will appear to bend, but in the middle of the image the curves are as minimal as possible.
Shoot as Close as Possible
There is a lot of information for a viewer to take in from the fisheye POV, so putting the subject squarely in the middle forefront is important if you want to get your audience’s attention. It’s extra 90s if you have your subject or performer get right up over the camera, causing their face to contour and take up the whole screen.
Shoot From a High or Low Angle
Another trick with the fisheye lens is to keep your camera below or above your subject. This creates more space for the background to fill and also gives the subject the illusion of exaggerated size inside their environment. The lines of distortion will also be more skewed at the top or bottom of the image, so keep an eye on their placement within the new angle.
Add Motion In and Out
One of the mainstays to the fisheye video shot is having a camera that is continuously moving in and out. The motion causes the background lines to contour as they go across the lines of distortion as well as the subject to grow or shrink drastically as they get closer or farther away.
Get Creative
Shooting with fisheye lenses gives everything you’ve seen before new meaning (or, at least it did in the 90s). Things heading at the camera seem to act differently depending on if its a standard lens or a super wide fisheye. Keep an open mind, get jiggy with it and don’t have a cow, man.
