Introduction To Fish Eye Lens

We recently covered a camera shot common in some music videos, most notably R&B videos, known as the Fish-Eye lens. This camera angle, as I stated previously in my introductory blogpost, is one which shows the shot in a panoramic broad angle. It has been used previously by last years A2 students, and can be seen used in many of Hype Williams' music videos.
Here is some information on the different variations of the fish-eye lens taken from wikipedia:

In a circular fisheye lens, the image circle is inscribed in the film or sensor area; in a full-frame fisheye lens the image circle is circumscribed around the film or sensor area.

Further, different fisheye lenses distort images differently, and the manner of distortion is referred to as their mapping function. A common type for consumer use is equisolid angle.

[edit]Circular

Image taken using a circular fisheye lens.

The first types of fisheye lenses to be developed were "circular fisheyes" — lenses which took in a 180° hemisphere and projected this as a circle within the film frame. Some circular fisheyes were available inorthographic projection models for scientific applications. These have a 180° vertical angle of view, and the horizontal and diagonal angle of view are also 180°. Most circular fisheye lenses cover a smaller image circle than rectilinear lenses, so the corners of the frame will be completely dark.

[edit]Full-frame

As fisheye lenses gained popularity in general photography, camera companies began manufacturing fisheye lenses that enlarged the image circle to cover the entire 35 mm film frame, and this is the type of fisheye most commonly used by photographers.

The picture angle produced by these lenses only measures 180 degrees when measured from corner to corner: these have a 180° diagonal angle of view, while the horizontal and vertical angles of view will be smaller; for an equisolid angle-type 15 mm full-frame fisheye, the horizontal FOV will be 147°, and the vertical FOV will be 94°.^[2]

The first full-frame fisheye lens to be mass-produced was a 16 mm lens made by Nikon in the early 1970s. Digital cameras with APS-C sized sensors require a 10.5 mm lens to get the same effect as a 16 mm lens on a camera with full-frame sensor.^[3]

With the kind of digital technology widely available, the full-frame fisheye effect can be obtained in-camera. Selected images can be digitally changed so as to become full-frame fisheye images without the need for special lenses.

Miniature fisheye lenses

Miniature fisheye lenses are designed for small-format CCD/CMOS imagers commonly used in consumer and security cameras.^[4] Popular format sizes are 1/4" (active area 3.6mmx2.7mm), 1/3" (active area 4.8mmx3.6mm) and 1/2" (active area 6.6mmx4.8mm). Depending on the imager active area, the same lens can form a circular image on one imager (e.g. 1/2"), and a full frame on the other (e.g. 1/4").

The fish eye lens is a camera angle I personally would strongly consider using, as along with the success it saw in last years A2 project and the rarity of it being used by A2 students on a whole, it could prove to create a niche music video which is easily recognised and noticed, not to mention hopefully popular, across the rest of the A2 students.