What's a good fish eye lens?

Fish-eye adapter on a super wide angle lens?

• I was just curious on what the result would be from putting a nice fish-eye adapter onto a super wide angle 18-200mm lens. As anyone tried it with good results or would it be better to put it on a more standard lens? I'd just like to try experimenting with a fish-eye adapter before going out a buying an expensive fish-eye lens.

• Answer:

  The quality you'll get from an add on Fish-Eye lens is usually very poor. Now I've got nothing against lenses that cover a large focal range, but they do tend to distort at the extremes. So if you want to use an optically dubious fish-eye add on with a lens set to a range where it's already distorting, then the effect is not going to be particularly fantastic! It will work better, if still not very well on a more standard "kit" lens. Fish-eye lenses are a bit of fun, make than an expensive bit of fun. I've two of them, one based on an old Vivitar design, and the other is an optic for my lensbaby. They are great for shooting in tight spaces, interesting items very close up, and dramatic architecture among other things. I jut think you may be wasting your money buying one of these adapters.