Shutterbug: How-To Create That Fabulous, Funky Fisheye Look; Give Your Photos A Dramatic Twist With Wacky, Bulging Perspective

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.

Digital Fisheye
While a selection of prime and supplementary fisheye lenses can be found today, the easiest route to the fisheye look is digital. And you can apply it to any photo you’ve ever taken. The distorted perspective can add drama and humor to subjects like people, pets, and garage bands, even flowers and cityscapes. What’s more, it’s not very complicated at all.

1. Open your photo, #1, shot with a Canon 10D digital SLR, in Adobe Photoshop, Elements 2, or other image-editing program. Make a copy (Image>Duplicate) and experiment with the copy.

2. Make your rectangular picture square. This easiest method to do this is to crop it using the crop tool. So you lose some image data, so what? Here’s an alternative method: choose Image>Image Size from the menu. At the bottom of the dialog, uncheck the box for “Constrain proportions.” Check the box for “Re-sample image” and choose Bicubic. Finally, in the Document Size section, highlight the smaller dimension (width or height) and type in the same number as the longer dimension, so the image will become square.
Or, you can compress the image by making it square to match the smaller dimension. Either approach will, of course, add some more distortion. But for most of us, that’s what fisheye is all about. Warning: Once you’ve completed this step, go back to the Image size dialog and check “Constrain proportions,” then uncheck “Re-sample image.”