Shooting Full Image Circles with a 180° Fisheye Lens

Photographer Mathieu Stern did this short experiment with capturing the full image circle from a 180-degree fisheye lens. You’ll need a smaller image circle on a larger camera sensor. For this video, Stern used a Kenko 180° fisheye lens, screwed onto a 55mm to 52mm filter, screwed onto a Canon 50mm f/1.4 FD lens, screwed onto a NEX adapter, mounted to the Sony a7II.

The setup makes the entire image circle of the lens fall inside the bounds of the full frame sensor. It’s a look that you can play around with in photos, video, and other projects (e.g. time-lapses):

P.S. Apparently the 1960s fisheye lens was used for the eye of Hal 9000 in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey (with a red light placed behind it).

Update: Whoops. We shared back in 2013 that HAL 9000 was a rare and (very) expensive Nikkor 8mm f/8 fisheye lens.