How to Use a Wide Angle Lens With a Macro Fisheye

Producing the Fisheye Macro

• 1

  Attach the lens assembly. If you are using a macro adapter for your fisheye lens, attach that, following the instructions that come with the lens.

• 2

  Select your subject. For macro work, you'll be aiming at a subject that is pretty close to your camera---a flower, bird, insect or face, for instance. The subject should be near the center of the image unless you plan to process it with photo software later. There are two types of fisheye shots your lens can produce: full frame or circular. Full frame will produce wide day or night landscapes, sky shots or wide interior photos of confined spaces. Circular shots are special effects used more for the novelty than for the utility of the photo produced.

• 3

  Shoot a set of shots. Because both fisheye and macro lenses can distort the light meter reading inside your camera, it's a good idea to bracket your shots by manually setting the lens aperture under and over by a couple of F-stops. When you play with wide-angle and fisheye photography, it's a good idea to shoot a lot of pictures. You never know what lucky shot might pop up when you go to process and print them.

• 4

  Develop your film if you are using a film camera. Download your photos to your computer if you are working with a digital SLR camera.

• 5

  Fire up your photo processing software and open your photos. You'll need a software plug-in to apply to your photo if you wish to remove the distortion in the picture and make it look more normal.

• 6

  Remove the distortions using the photo software feature that is designed for that purpose. Your full frame shots can be tweaked to produce a shot that looks normal, though very wide. Panorama shots can be pulled from a fisheye/macro shot, though, depending on the power of the macro, the subject may be more in focus than the things on the periphery.

• 7

  Print and frame your best work. Extreme wide angles, whether landscapes or inside shots, corrected for the distortion, can be extremely useful in architecture, illustrating proposals, historical illustration or decorative photography. The stark beauty of a subject against a wide background lends itself well to an attractive photo display.