oops fisheye lens

[danstrak]

I am a newbie to photography and have recently purchased a Minolta DImage 7. I wanted a wide angle lense so I could take good picture of room interiors so I opted for a 0.42x fisheye lense. Having just recieved it I find that the pictures are "wide" enough but are round! What type of lense should I have bought in order to get the same wide angle but a nice "square" picture?
Please help,
Dan

[BearSummer]

Hi Danstrak,

Fisheye lenses come in two varieties. There are the circular fisheyes (which you have) which produce a 180 degree view (basically everything in front of the camera) which is displayed as a circle on your negative/digital file. Or you can get the full frame fisheyes which give you 180 degrees diagonally across your chip/negative. This means that it fills your full image but is only 180 dgerees at the corners and crops the top, bottom and sides.

As to what you should have got, sorry dont know anything about Minoltas.

All the best

BearSummer

[danstrak]

Thanks BearSummer,

Would a normal wide angle lense produce anywhere close to a 180 degree image as I am thinking aboutgetting that aswell/instead or do you think a square fisheye would be best for the job. I don't really want the rooms to be distorted in anyway.
Thanks,
Dan

[BearSummer]

Hi Danstrak,

I think you are probably expecting to much from a lens. If it is going to cram in that much of the scene then you are going to experience some distortion of the image. If you were using Canon equipment (not being product-ist, but it's what I know) I would suggest thatyou think about using one of the tilt-shift lenses and take two images and stitch them together. If that wasn't an option then think about stitching multiple images together as a panorama which is more likely to give you the result you are wanting.

Sorry I couldn't be of more assistance.

Best Wishes

BearSummer