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General Climbing Discussion

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climbing photo tips 14-Oct-2003 At 3:41:38 PM dodgy

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If you want a fisheye there are a couple of (non-electronic options). Some of the lesser known manufacturers made fisheyes that are around for a hundred or so dollars. If you buy the lens for the right money in "whatever" fitting, then buy a (really basic) body to suit you can save hundreds.

I bought a 15mm Konica fisheye at a swap meet for $40 once, inbuilt filters too. And pentax made a very compact fisheye 18mm f11 with no diaphragm or focussing! Who needs apetures when you have almost infinite depth of field, it's a screw mount so a spotmatic body for $50 and you have a setup for maybe $150.
I don't suggest a thread adapter as the extra shift from the body will put the whole lot out of focus, wide angles have lots of "depth of field" but very little "depth of focus", in other words it takes very little travel of the lens to go from minimum distance to infinity; and a fisheye it's tiny.
There are also Sigma and zenit available. Are they sharp? who cares, the biggest problem you will have is lens flare which is almost impossible to control (but use a hood anyway). The Zenit (screw mount) are probably copies of old german designs and are probably sharp but the coatings maybe not as good as the japanese stuff... Best coatings are arguably Pentax's SMC (BTW), they invented the process of multicoating.
And if you like the look of Leica images, try Minolta lenses (they made a 7.5mm)