UW experiment with Soratama (magic ball lens)

please critique (composition & light)

Interesting! I like the bokeh background and the "bubble" with a ?fan coral works pretty well. It'd be good to see some more to get a more general idea of the effect and, if possible, say capturing a fish n the image.

It reminds me a bit of the 360 degree fisheye images that were around in the 70s. It could be a great effect but needed to be used a bit sparingly otherwise all the images started to look the same no matter what the subject.

Hi Tim, I got a nemo and its home in the frame. In this image, I tried to use nemo's stripe pattern as background.

Sorry, it just doesn't do much for me, way too "gimmicky". Then again, I'm not a fan of fish-eye lenses, either.

You can also recreate this effect in Photoshop - should you wish.

Start with a wide angle photo (which does not need to be fisheye). Best with a central subject. Use Spherise filter to make the circle (selecting just a square for that layer first). For the background just crop and the expand and blur.

Not as much fun. But better image quality!

Alex

 

Hi Tim, I got a nemo and its home in the frame. In this image, I tried to use nemo's stripe pattern as background.

I can see picking your subject and background very carefully is critical! But then that's true of all photography!