{"id":623565,"date":"2026-09-13T16:24:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-13T16:24:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/623565\/"},"modified":"2026-09-13T16:24:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-13T16:24:16","slug":"i-took-sonys-first-mirrorless-fisheye-lens-to-the-most-colorful-and-photogenic-location-i-could-think-of-for-wonderfully-weird-portraits","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/623565\/","title":{"rendered":"I took Sony\u2019s first mirrorless fisheye lens to the most colorful and photogenic location I could think of for wonderfully weird portraits"},"content":{"rendered":"

As a portrait photographer, I tend to avoid ultra-wide lenses like I avoid crowds in flu season. But when Sony<\/a> introduced the first native E-mount fisheye, I felt strangely inspired to combine my favorite photography genre \u2013 portraits \u2013 with the wild world of a lens that can see in 180\u00b0.<\/p>\n

The Sony FE 8-14mm f\/3.5 Fisheye G<\/a> captures an unusually wide 180\u00b0 view, creating the classic circular “fisheye lens<\/a> look” at 8mm but filling the frame and still getting that classic fisheye distortion at 14mm.<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Hillary K Grigonis \/ Future)<\/p>\n

Portraits are perhaps an unusual genre \u2013 though certainly not unheard of \u2013 for a fisheye. But, inspired by the wacky perspective, I wanted to shoot in an equally wild location.<\/p>\n

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Grabbing the new 8-14mm f\/3.5 Fisheye G and the Sony A7 V<\/a>, I drove to the most colorful location I could think of and headed to a brightly-colored mural painted across a set of silos.<\/p>\n

The mural, Shine Bright Saginaw, is actually the second-largest in the US,<\/a> painted by Okuda San Miguel along with a team of local artists.<\/p>\n

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Image 1 of 3<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Hillary K Grigonis \/ Future)<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Hillary K Grigonis \/ Future)<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Hillary K Grigonis \/ Future)<\/p>\n

I was drawn to the location by both its size and wild colors \u2013 after all, why shoot with a 180\u00b0 lens without an oversized scene?<\/p>\n

Fisheye lenses<\/a> embrace the barrel distortion of an ultra-wide view, rather than trying to correct that \u201cimperfection.\u201d Straight lines warp into a curve and, when angled just right, the lens creates almost what looks like the reverse of a 360 camera<\/a>\u2019s \u201ctiny planet\u201d effect.<\/p>\n

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Along with embracing barrel distortion, the 180\u00b0 view succumbs to a lot of perspective distortion \u2013 but when used appropriately, that distortion can create kooky images that feel more fun than warped.<\/p>\n

Image 1 of 3<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Hillary K Grigonis \/ Future)<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Hillary K Grigonis \/ Future)<\/p>\n

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(Image credit: Hillary K Grigonis \/ Future)<\/p>\n

Anything up close to the lens will look far larger than anything even just slightly farther away. The 8-14mm f\/3.5 Fisheye G can shoot as close as 150mm \/ 5.91 inches, so there\u2019s plenty of room for exaggerating that fisheye look by getting in close.<\/p>\n

Fitting a 180\u00b0 view into one frame is a challenge in that there\u2019s very little ability to crop any distractions out of the scene.<\/p>\n

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I had to be careful posing and angling the camera to embrace the distortion where I wanted but not where I didn\u2019t. I also had to be careful not to get my own feet in the frame, as 8mm is so wide that even the lens hood will show in the shot.<\/p>\n

Aside from resisting the itch to clone out background litter, I didn\u2019t even feel like I had to edit the photos \u2013 the images here are all JPEGs. (The header image has a black border added, as a 16:9 will crop into the circle \u2013 something for videographers to take note of.)<\/p>\n

I\u2019m a portrait photographer whose 50mm \u2013 which has a 75mm equivalent look on my APS-C camera \u2013 rarely ever leaves my mirrorless body. But shooting with Sony\u2019s first E-mount fisheye was a lot more fun than I expected.<\/p>\n

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Today’s best Sony FE 8-14mm f\/3.5 Fisheye G deals<\/p>\n

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For more distorted ultra-wide inspiration, browse the best fisheye lenses<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"As a portrait photographer, I tend to avoid ultra-wide lenses like I avoid crowds in flu season. But…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":623566,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[307,304,305,306,308,93,61,60],"class_list":["post-623565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-arts-and-design","tag-arts","tag-arts-and-design","tag-artsanddesign","tag-artsdesign","tag-design","tag-entertainment","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623565","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=623565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/623565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/623566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=623565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=623565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=623565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}