Finding a good and cheap way to shoot wide angle/fisheye shots

[Fabrice Ducouret]

Hello,

 

I have a question that applies both to still photography as it does to cinematography, I hope I will not get banned for that!

As a cinematographer, I find hard to differentiate the two, as I use my photographic work a lot, as an inspiration and experimental playground in my cinematography work.

 

Currently, I am wondering what are the best ways to find a fisheye accessory or get a fisheye lens for a very low price. The goal is to fit in a lot of landscape, and get distortion effects on faces or other subjects.

 

I realize that usually these lenses or add-ons are expensive because they are made with a lot of polished glass that costs money to manufacture.

However, I am wondering if over the years some older lenses or accessories become cheaper in second-hand stores.

 

I am trying to attach the lens:

-either to "old-school" manual lenses (for still cameras such as Pentax MX, Minolta X-300, Olympus Pen F, Pentacon SIX TL, Canon) for photo work/research;

-or to Super-8 cameras (Canon 310 XL, Bauer C105 or C107) for film work;

-or to more recent digital bodies (Canon EOS rebel, Sony NEX 3) for digital film work.

 

The lens has to be as fisheye as possible and full-frame if possible!

 

The closest I've been (and cheapest) was a TV Zoom Lens someone sold me for 5 euros at a rummage sale that used to be from a Canon video camcorder from the 70s, with macro functions, zoom functions, and quite wide angle. I can easily adapt it on the Sony NEX because it has a C-mount, but it requires cropping and is very bulky.

[Haris Mlivic]

Try lomography.com, they have a bunch of toy lenses you can buy cheaply, some of them are pretty good. Many of them can be adapted to a bunch of different cameras with adapters they also sell. Otherwise, yeah fisheye is not cheap...