When Nikon introduced
the first fisheye lens for film photography, decades ago, eyebrows
shot up. What a novel point of view!
Five years
ago, when Nikon introduced their first serious digital camera,
the Coolpix 900, they had a fisheye CONVERTER in mind and the
FC-E8 caused more eyebrows to shoot up.
Get your
eyebrows ready for some aerial stunts, because the second Coolpix
Fisheye is in house. The FC-E9 is bigger, bolder and brighter
than the 'E8 and to give it a test drive we took it to the new
Walt Disney Concert Hall (WDCH) in Los Angeles for an afternoon
of sheer delight.
You remember
the WDCH don't you? It's that Frank Gehry building in LA that
looks like a symphony frozen in mid-crescendo? In fact, the building
is so cool that it looks like it already WENT through a fisheye
lens before they finished the plans.
For four
hours we crawled all over the WDCH and shot its lovely curves
from every angle. The FC-E9 was affixed to our CP5400 (using
the UR-E10 adapter tube) and most of the other photographers
there went Ohh and Ahh when they saw it. The shots were gathered
zoomed into the image for a frame filling fish effect. Many of
these images are now in the new Nikon Optical Converters chapter
in the new version of the Nikon eBook.
We learned
something from this shoot. The E9 is not perfectly sharp in the
corners. Well, heck, it's a fisheye. Some chromatic aberration
was observed, too.
Never mind.
iNovaFX to the rescue. Now I have a new iBCFish Photoshop Action
Filter to clean up the corners and fix the aberrations. All the
images above went through it to their great benefit.
Wait a
minute. If I have it--that means you have it too. It's in the new V6 Nikon eBook along
with more shots from that session, just waiting for you to get
the most out of your FC-E9 Fisheye.
Get
the eBooks.
We have a secure order page that will allow previous eBook owners
to upgrade for low cost, too. Or you can call direct and order
from the publisher by phone or FAX.
Phone:(310) 475 2988 (M-F 9-5 Pacific Time)
FAX (310) 475 9486 (24hrs).