365 / 33: Steel Wheels

Today turned out to be dreary and overcast for the most part, a little drizzle here, a little fog there. Nothing dramatic, weather-wise. I hadn't used Lisa's manual fisheye lens to any real extent--she's kept a pretty short leash on it--so I borrowed it and stuck it in my camera bag, planning to experiment with it a bit if the opportunity arose. Opportunity presented itself in the form of a train parked on a railroad bridge spanning the Blanco River. The colors, lines and textures appealed to me, so I squeezed off a few shots before getting out of there before the train decided to start moving.

Thoughts on the lens: It's a decent buy for the price, and this newer version, with the removable lens hood, is preferable to the original with the fixed lens hood. Corners were definitely cut, though, to keep the price down--in addition to having manual focus and aperture, the aperture ring doesn't even have a setting for f/4. Believe it or not, it skips from f/3.5 right to f/5.6. Bizarre. The stated focal length of 6.5mm is bogus as well: I'd say it's closer to 8mm, as the wide field views it gives aren't that much more expansive than my EF-S 10-22 (although the fisheye distortion is obviously more pronounced). Finally, I noticed some significant chromatic aberration in the images, which is not unexpected with an inexpensive lens like this. Fortunately, CA can be corrected to a great extent in Photoshop.

Camera: Canon 7D
Lens: Opteka 6.5mm 3.5 fisheye II

Lisa On Location Photography

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