I think that clears that up then. Something was obviously lost in translation when the prototype was made and they confused their birds and fishes.

The next time I come across a proper bird's eye attachment I might just buy it, it could be a fun way to pass a photographic walk through town.

Nor me, but it's hard to work out from that picture exactly how it does work.

Maybe it is just a regular fisheye lens and was mis-named?

You could always have a go at making one Stefan!

Here's a page copied from John Hedgecoe's "The Photographer's Handbook" which shows a typical bird's eye lens attachment - this is the sort of thing I've seen for sale at fairs before and it's not particularly complex:

[IMG]http://i223.photobucket.com/albums/dd37/hefty1969/R0011085s.jpg[/IMG]

Cheap fun for an experiment, but as Matt points out it'd be an expensive lens with limited possibilities so no suprise it never made production...

Then I think you have your answer - away to eBay with you...

The other thing in favour of the F35-70 is that it's very small and light and takes 49mm filters - just like your FA43.

If you want something long then the FA80-320 is tough to beat. If you're after something wide(ish) and cheap then I've had a couple of F35-70's and FA35-80's pass through and I'd say they're as good as the DA18-55 - not world beaters but perfectly acceptable once stopped down a little and you can usually pick them up for around £20.

Hurrah! Says the man with a bundle of M42 optics to sell...

A birds eye lens works on the basis of a convex mirror at the front - you point it at the sky and it'll give you a 180 degree circular picture (within the frame) that always features the camera and the photographer right at the centre - so it's a little like a reversed circular fisheye lens.

I've seen birds eye converters for sale at camera fairs and they usually consist of a glass tube with a mirror on one end, designed to slip over a standard lens. I've never seen a lens (for any system) that was designed as a birds eye from the outset. Unless you were a self-portrait obsessive with a fetish for cameras I'd imagine the appeal is a little limited to be honest...

I'm not aware of a "Remote E" ever having been made so I'm guessing that was probably a typo on behalf of the shop selling it. Remote F is the one that you want.

I've always liked doing origami and paper craft so I happen to have several pattern books I've acquired over the years - this was from one of those. I can copy other people's patterns but I'm not competent enough to come up with my own by a long stretch!

The cutting part's quite easy - the folding is where it will all go wrong if it's going to. This is a fairly simple pattern (compared to some I've done in the past) and even so it took nearly two hours of fiddly fingerwork to get all the bits pointing in the right directions without tearing anything and going back to square one. At least the materials are cheap if you do need to start again.

I had honestly forgotten about that but now you mention it I'm glad I took this route after all!

Last time I entered a photo of one of my paper creations it was for the "Bonfire Night" comp back in November and I won that one - hence I thought I'd see if I could make it a double victory for my scissor skills.