On Sat, 12 Sep 1998 16:26:59 -0400, dga2@po.cwru.edu (Don Atzberger) wrote:

>I'm presently using a 20mm Nikkor for two types of photography. The first
>is shooting an entire property along it's frontage from maybe 20 to 30
>feet away -- often my back is up against dense brush when I shoot these.
>The second is interiors at home construction sites; i.e. getting most of a
>room from the doorway, stairwells, etc. The shots are mostly used in
>newsletters and brochures, but in case of a legal proceeding, they may
>also be used as evidence.
>
>The 20mm, as fabulous as it is, isn't quite wide enough for some of this
>stuff, so I'm considering either an ultra-wide rectilinear like the 15mm
>Nikkor or 14mm Sigma, or a fisheye like the 16mm Nikkor or 15mm Sigma.
>(Yes, I hate to consider Sigma, but my budget has limits).
>
>Anyone have experience with this kind of photography and can comment on
>the relative merits of the two, please fire away.

A 15mm can shoot a bit more than 90 degrees on the horizontal - very
wide for a rectangular lens, but maybe not wide enough to show much
if you are too close to a very wide subject (or trying to show an entire
interior...). People holler at the curves, but an 8mm on a
1.4X converter can show about 180 degrees horizontal (a full-frame
fisheye, maybe 120 degrees?). Another option: shoot verticals with
the 20mm carefully leveled, with shots spaced so that they overlap
maybe 1/2 frame wide - then paste prints together to approximate
a cylindrical-perspective image. BTW, my opinion of people who
complain of the "distortion" of fisheyes is that they just aren't very
sophisticated visually (spherical [fisheye] perspective actually
is the perspective we see in, but we have been led to believe
otherwise....;-).