I was always attracted to wide angle photography, but never owned a lens to try out. I decided to buy a fisheye lens and as always first place I checked was Amazon. I looked around a lot and finally found - Opteka .35x HD² Super Wide Angle Panoramic Macro Fisheye Lens. First thing that one notices about this lens is the price, it is a very cheap lens ($29.95) and then their are some reviews which say – the lens did not come up with a manual or how to use it, so we couldn’t use it. I took the bet, thinking, it is a cheap lens and the best way (and investment) to start with. I ordered (for Nikon D40, you can get same setup for same rate for Cannon fitting too) it and received in 7 days and was surprised to see that there were no complexities using it.

The lens has 2 parts, a macro lens which fits over your normal camera lens (in my case AF-S Nikkor 18-55mm). You can use this lens to shoot photos in macro mode. On the right, this is photo taken in macro mode of my Windows Key of laptop at settings 1/125 sec, f/5.6 and focal length as 55mm.

We have to mount the fisheye lens on macro lens, without macro the fish eye does not work for normal setup. There are people who have different settings or a step-up/down to mount fisheye lens directly on the camera lens. I am using the standard settings.

Standard (without fisheye) – f/5.0, 38 mm

Semi Fisheye – f/4.5, 31 mm

Full Fisheye – f/35, 18 mm

Rest of the settings were not changed and I did not move away/close, left/right. I find this lens pretty easy to use and good for beginners. Only problem as I can see from photographs are the colors, my Nikon stock lens picks up very good colors, but use of this lens cause a bit of color loss. This is not evident in routine but a very close observation will tell you the difference. I am sure, at this price I could not have got a better deal. I would recommend this lens to anyone who wants to play with fisheye and is trying for the first time.

There are more details about this lens (how to use it, problems, experiences) and great macro shots here.