For our visit last week to the gardens at East Ruston Old Vicarage, as well as the standard zoom lens, I took along a fish-eye lens in case I had a suitable subject. Sitting in the pergola (or is it an arbour?) in the ‘Red and Purple Borders’ I took this simple image of the view from the seat:
Although it has been cropped slightly across the top, this is pretty much the view with a 24mm (equivalent) lens – a decent wide-angle. So I tried my fish-eye lens:
A lot more is visible with this lens, even though it distorts a lot to the sides. I quite like the framing effect of the posts to the side. However, being one to experiment, I wanted to straighten things up a bit by taking 2 images and stitching them in a panorama.
This worked to a certain extent in giving a wider angle of view, but the top of the hedge was still curved. So with a bit of Photoshop magic (free transform and warp tools), I managed to straighten things out a little:
Even though this is an extremely wide view (the software reports it as being over 200 degrees!), it does look quite natural. I am pleased with the result.
The full set of images are within the EROV gallery.