To shoot portraits with an 8mm fisheye, you have to be willing to stick the lens mere centimetres from the subject’s nose – and they have to be willing to accept a cariacture worthy of any gothic abbey gargoyle in exchange!

Using a rare Sigma 8mm fisheye (since superceded with the f3.5 model currently on sale), Richard Kilpatrick found the image-conscious Goth community far more comfortable than your average ‘sitter’ for extreme portraits. While other photographers stalked Whitby’s Gothfest visitors using long lenses, he was able to get close with the 8mm almost covering the 1.7X sensor of his Sigma SD10 digital SLR.

The lenses attracted plenty of attention as many goths are photographers, artists, computer creatives or musicians – and fully aware of what if was all about. The Sigma 8mm ƒ4 EX fisheye is a fairly expensive lens and usually only obtained to special order. At the time this review was originally produced, we compared the Sigma 8mm f4 EX DG with the inexpensive Russian "Peleng" which combined a slightly less dramatic projection with effectively full coverage of the Sigma sensor. Peleng's 8mm ƒ3.5 - from proved unreliable and soft.

Correcting the image

The tools provided in Photoshop CS2 for Lens Correction (Filters) are not capable of turning a fisheye shot into a rectilinear view – the distortion correction is limited to the sort of pincushion or barrel you find in most zooms. The low-cost software plug-in PanoTools (www.kekus.com) yields a very rapid, nearly perfect conversion (bottom left) from fisheye to straight line but crops the image to an extreme in the process. DxOptics Pro, which offers distortion correction for listed lenses, only includes full-frame fisheyes (15 or 16mm) used on digital sensors.

A very rough process (with wavy lines) can be worked out by expanding the image canvas, applying a negative -100 value of the Photoshop Spherize filter, then using the Lens Distortion filter at maximum de-barrelling (value 60). This results in the nearly-OK, almost 180 degree non-fisheye wide angle result below. Lines almost straight, not a lot of angle lost at all.

Product updates

Not long after the original short 8mm f4 review was published, Sigma announced the 8mm f3.5 - a faster, sharper redesign of the original lens. The initial article (published in f2) was intended to show the creative possibilities of the wide angle fisheye (hence looking at the cheap Peleng), rather than consider the technical merits of a particular lens - having become familiar with the 8mm f4, the 8mm f3.5 EX DG would be the subject of more critical attention. The revised model did not disappoint; sharper at faster apertures and with large improvements in CA, the Sigma 8mm f3.5 is amongst the best in this genre.

These images were taken by David Kilpatrick using the new 8mm f3.5 EX DG.