Leonard Paris wrote: > A Zenitar 16mm f/2.8 fisheye and a Sto-Fen Omnibounce on your flash will > give you some great results. The Sto-Fen covers the whole field of view of > the fisheye. Else, try to borrow one of those 14mm f/2.8 rectilinear > ultra-wides. They are really good for that kind of work, too.
Hi Leonard, I agree with the advice about the 14mm rectilinear lens, but not the fisheye. The fisheye lens is fun to use, and produces interesting results. But most of the time no-one except the photographer ever wants them. They might look, and maybe even smile, but try getting them to pay for them! It's even more difficult with the 8mm circular fisheye. Maybe the more fun a lens is to use, the less likely is that you will sell any of its results. I would agree about using much wider lenses than the original poster suggested. Rent a 14mm for the day for your SLR, or a 15mm or 12mm Voigtl�nder lens plus a Bessa body. Nothing over 24mm is of much use indoors, where a 35mm is a short telephoto! A 35mm or even 50mm can be used to produce detail shots, but I would rely on 17mm and 20mm lenses for most of the work, maybe a 24mm if the rooms are very large. I did a long and detailed interior shoot for a friend's hotel some years ago (I was foolish enough to volunteer) and found the most challenging aspect was the lighting. After several trials, reading a book or two and taking advice from people who knew much more, I used an array of softboxes in an attempt to replicate daylight, and it sort of worked. It was published in a glossy magazine and the interior won the magazine's annual readers' award, so my pics cannot have been *that* bad. The one (former-) Soviet lens I would recommend for this job is the Arsat 35mm f/2.8 tilt and shift. Even the shift (only) lens is amazingly useful for interiors, but the 8 degree tilt has to be worth the extra cost. John
