I’m no expert on the matter but I’m afraid I think you have to spend alot more on a video camera than that before you get one where you can swap lenses over. It has a lens built in to the end, something like this has removable lenses so a fish-eye can be fitted. I hope you find something that will work within your budget but you might well have to look more at the semi-professional rather than home user equipment.
If you don’t know anything about fish-eye lenses, how do you know that you need one?
I suspect in any case that you cannot add/change the lens on this camera. Filters probably.
I think a fish eye is a good idea. I think I’ve only seen one uni vid that has used a fish eye. They give the video a nice look and they also make gaps or drops look bigger and therefore more impressive.
Go for it mate, I think it would be worth your money.
There are A LOT of wide angle and telephoto lenses that thread into the filter threads of video cameras. In that case, you will need a 43mm lens. Not many of those around. There are some on ebay. Or you could use a 52mm lens and use a stepping ring.
Sounds like you guys are confusing fisheye with wide angle. Technically, a full-on fisheye is supposed to give you a 180 degree field of vision. That’s very extreme, and something you would only want for very rare instances. Sounds like what you want is a wide angle converter, to take the video camera’s widest angle and make it wider.
I bought one of these with the video camera I bought for my wife’s company in 1999. I brought that camera to Unicon X in China and had lots of fun with that wide angle attachment. I remember putting the camera up really close to some interesting foods in a buffet that was served to us as part of a bus tour. Super-closeup on a pile of crayfish-looking things!
It was a Sony camera, which we bought at Circuit City. The guy added in the lens attachment for about $20 if I remember correctly, so it was pretty cheap. Don’t remember if it was Sony branded (probably not). Expect to get what you pay for.
If you go too extremely wide, you’ll have a hard time getting anything to not look too far away, unless it’s almost touching the lens. If they’re cheap, you might want to try a couple of different ones, depending on the effect you’re looking for.
Now a unicycle connection, to keep this thread belonging in the unicycle section. The first commercially available fisheye lenses for 35mm cameras were introduced by Nikon in the 1960s. The guy who brought these over to the United States was the father of Marc Held, one of the old members of the Long Island Unicyclists. Marc’s father later went on to buy the Omega company (makers of photographic enlargers for print making), and Marc went to work for that company. Don’t know if he ever gets on a unicycle anymore; he now lives in Maryland and has a wife and kids.
For about five bucks:) you can get one of those door peephole thingys to put on the end of your lens. I just read about that in PopSci and they say that the peephole things have a 160 degree or wider angle. they come in lots of different sizes so it should be easy to find a good size.
.jpg){kind=link}
