Lens choice for wide angle macro

racketman wrote in post #17611072
new wide angle lens from Venus/Laowa with 1:1 magnification:
http://www.venuslens.n​et

With SHIFT no less!

CyberDyneSystems wrote in post #17646312
With SHIFT no less!

It is full manual stop down though, I think the image circle is only large enough for shift to be useful on a crop camera.

Interesting lens though.

The down side to wide angle macro is that you have to be very aware of the background and how it's going to look. Most of us (myself included) are use to using a flash and cutting out the natural light completely in our images, and then placing something in the background to reflect the light from the flash back into the camera (or let flash falloff send the background into darkness). But with a wide angle macro lens you not only have to concern yourself with what's in the background, but also how the natural light is hitting it. All of the wide angle macro shots that have caught my attention were taken in conditions where the photographer nailed the natural light exposure, and the quality of that light was really good (early morning or late evening). Also under exposing the background to get the colors to saturate helps, and then use a flash to expose the subject -would work even in harsh natural light as long as the subject is in the shade (or can be shaded by the photographer with the camera).

Wide angle macro using the Opteka 6.5mm fisheye.

I shoot underwater and one of the best go-to lenses is the Tokina 10-17 fisheye. Very sharp and can be mounted on a FF camera (zoom limited to 14-17) as well as a crop. Affordable and available on the used market. built in hood on many models.

Here's a group I created on Flickr for Laowa 15mm.

https://www.flickr.com​/groups/2784583@N25/po​ol/

Let me preface this by saying that my lens purchasing is governed solely by MTF tables...WA glass is always disqualified.

When I want a wide angle image, I make it by photomerging images taken with a longer lens...180 macro or 300mm.
The WA distortion is eradicated using this technique and by using software such as Photoshop.
Oftentimes, photostacking is integrated with this technique.