Circular Fisheye

Hi

I am looking of buying a circular fisheye for my Pentax istD. This will be used soley for creating 360 panoramas like the one at

http://www.purpleski.com/panoramas/olympie/pan-olympie-sr.aspx

I have come across

Peleng 3.5/8mm lens
Sigma 8mm F3.5 EX DG Circular Fisheye Lens

but does anybody have any other suggestions? How good does the lens have to be? Please note it must be a circular fisheye

Thanks

The Sigma, and I suspect the Peleng, will only be circular on 35mm film, on the *istD some cropping will occur.

Can't think of an alternative, or know what sort of quality you'd need to produce something like that example, although it doesn't look too high resolution, so I would imagine you should be okay with whatever you get.

Dan

Sigma make a 4.5mm for APS-C but it currently only fits Canikon.
You could try a fisheye attatchment to the front of a lens, but that will reduce quality. (Although its a cheap alternative too)

Thanks. Any suggestions of make for the fisheye attatchment and what lense should one attach it to?

According to https://www.pentaxuser.com/pages/news/nws_sigma8mm.html the fisheye should be available this summer but was not sure which summer they meant!

According to Morris Photo site, the Pentax 10-17 has a 180 degree angle of view. It might be worth checking this one out:

Pentax Fish Eye Lens

That's 180 degrees across the diagonal. For the purpose purpleski has in mind, he needs 180 degrees across the shortest side.

Dan

I don't think the sort of panorama you have linked to is done with a fish eye.

I think they are done with an ordinary lens on a special spherical panorama tripod head where the lens can rotate about its nodal point in 3 dimensions. (The nodal point is the point which has no parallax between sucessive shots in a panorma when the lens is rotated)
Several panoramas are taken with the camers a different up/down tilts, a straight up shot is taken then a straight down shot is taken after the tripod is removed. All of this is then stitched together by software designed for spherical panoramas and presented as a flash (or similar) video.

Heres a link to the Manforotto spherical panorama tridod head http://www.manfrotto.com/Jahia/site/manfrotto/cache/off/pid/2356?livid=80|81&...
Devon Camera Centre have them on their web site http://www.devoncamera.co.uk/index.cfm/photographic/Products.Details/product_id/... at £389 which they say is £40 off of regular price.

Don't forget to buy a good tripod and the software too...

Always wondered how it was done, there is quite a bit using some open source tools:

http://www.panorob.de/~dersch/heliarVR/heliarVR0.html

http://www.panorob.de/~dersch/

I have no links to these people (except as a satisfied customer) but this is a good place to shop for all things panoramic: www.red-door.co.uk