Jordan has been a country we long wanted to visit. Apart from the original pleasure of travelling - and introducing our son to the many and varied delights of desert glamping, camel riding and so on - the photographic opportunities are manifest. From the moonscapes of Wadi Rum to the fascinating rock-hewn tombs of Petra, the Rose City, everywhere seems to invite another twist of the lens, another click.
I had acquired a fisheye lens just prior to the trip, a Neewer 8mm for my Canon 600D, and some of the effects have been spectacular when combined with the vast rock mountains and cliff faces of the terrain. But using it has been a steep learning curve in itself (no pun intended).
This what I have learnt so far:
Exposure is king.
You’re dealing with a completely different beast now. For a start, on this Neewer at least, you set the aperture on the actual lens and not on the camera body. Your automatic reactions are interrupted. More importantly, the lens lets in more light (fairly obviously given its shape), and I found myself completely ignoring the camera’s light metre and raising the shutter speed to its maximum. Bear in mind it has been 40deg+ and extremely sunny, so this may be extreme behaviour for the UK. But here in Jordan, even with a standard lens it’s so easy to blow your highlights to pieces without so much as trying and definitely this is the case with the fisheye.
Dust your lens
A stitch in time saves nine when it comes to cloning out dust spots on the lens. Don’t be lazy, and clean that lens regularly - it’s much more noticeable on the fisheye.
Composition.
If exposure is king then composition has to be queen. Getting the right framing for the shots is tricky at first, and I have found myself panning the landscape - camera at eye - trying to understand the effect that moving up or down will have on the frame. I’ve learnt that buildings and other objects are great; landscapes much more difficult to achieve a nuanced effect. Get up really close to the building, and move your position as much as possible - with that fixed focal length there’s no other option, and the super-wide angle means that you get pretty much everything in.
The shape of the lens also means that the positioning of the light source is key: too near the middle and everything goes to pot.
Sunflares.
The nicest surprise of all when using this lens has been the added bonus of delicious starburst sunflares, au naturel without Photoshop or similar. Blessed with of course plenty of sun in Jordan, and lots of craggy rock faces for it to glare through, this effect was particularly pronounced and especially with a slightly underexposed shot.
