Newton's Cannon

Giant Nikon 6mm fisheye lens. Only $160,000.

A few weeks ago I found a good deal on a fisheye lens made for a variety of smaller digital cameras. It was $50 at Amazon, but now I look and see it’s actually unavailable there now. But it’s still available on the manufacturer’s web site for $60:

The package comes with the lens itself, plus the appropriate adapter, which you can select from the web site.

A few sample photos from my first outing with the lens. Click for full-sized, unaltered photos. They probably could have been better than this, had I experimented more with ISO and manual focus. And, uh, brought a tripod.

My Canon Powershot is capable of a maximum of 3264 x 2448 resolution stills, so no it’s not going to cover a 4K dome in perfect crisp resolution, especially after you crop out the blurry extreme edges and the flat top and bottom. But depending on the scene you might just be able to get away with it anyway. Many 2K images look just fine on our 4K dome.

Note that nowhere on the web site, in the packaging, or on the lens itself does it say anything about the actual optical specifications, other than it is “0.20X”. Also, the lens barrel will probably block the flash.

But, a nice advantage is that the camera and lens together are compact and lightweight and not a burden to casually carry around. Take it scouting for cool shots and then come back with the DSLR when you pick the shots you want.