By Andrew Long
This fish-eyed friend packs in a whole boatload of creative features so you can sail away on a wave of photographic freedom (Lomography).
First things first, it’s worth noting that I’m not your typical Lomography customer, missing their demographic by several decades and with conservative (some would say dull!) tastes. As my children regularly remind me, I am anything but “hip”. I mostly shoot Nikon 35mm, but also dabble in other formats: Minox, 16mm, and 110 sub-miniature cameras, 127 and 120.
However, Lomography were kind enough to send me one of their Fisheye No. 2 cameras to play with, so, embracing my inner hipster, I went off to explore the wacky world of extreme wide angle.
The Fisheye No. 2 has been around since 2009 and comes in a range of “cool” colours – mine was the original black and silver version, which probably suits my more conservative tastes! Here are the camera’s specifications:
- 10mm f/8 Fisheye lens with super-wide 170° field of view
- Two shutter speeds: 1/100 (N), Bulb (B)
- Built-in flash plus a hot shoe which also holds the bulbous-shaped viewfinder
- No ISO Adjustment
- Multiple Exposure mode (MX)
- Shutter lock setting (L)
- Tripod Mount: No
- Cable Release: No
- Battery: 1 × AA
The Fisheye No. 2 currently retails for £59 on the Lomography Shop.
This review focuses on the camera, but I developed my test film (a roll of Kentmere 400) in the Lomo Daylight Developing Tank, which will feature in a separate review.
The camera
It’s hard to get away from the fact that this is a basic plastic camera, albeit with some very distinctive styling! The large lens barrel wrapped in brushed metal is hard to miss, but it’s the bulbous fisheye (perhaps eyeball is a better description!) viewfinder perched on the top of the body that really stands out … literally
Using the hot shoe to attach it to the body is an innovative approach that gives you the ability to see an approximation of the round fisheye image that will be captured on the film without increasing the body size to accommodate it, although some of my framing was off a bit as a result. The camera has a small built-in flash, but if you wanted to use an external speedlight flash you would have to slide the “eyeball” off the hot shoe and compose your picture without a viewfinder – which would be literally ‘point and shoot’.
Although the construction is all plastic, Lomography have blinged it up by adding a shiny trim to the front of the body and around that massive lens housing.
I assumed this trim was going to be genuine-artificial brushed aluminium (sprayed plastic!), but a couple of minutes with a small Phillips screwdriver revealed that it was actual aluminium, adding a bit of heft to the body and a (slightly) more quality feel. This approach also lets Lomography ring the changes with different coloured mouldings and trims, something they have done very successfully (Acapulco, Papaya Pop, Rodeo Denim, Grape Jam variants), thus extending the product’s life span. I should point out that I spent many years working on product development, liaising with designers, engineers, and factories, so I take a keen interest in product design in general.
The designers chose a piano-black shiny plastic finish to the body which looks great for about two minutes of handling, after which it becomes marked with smudges and fingerprints – bit of a design own-goal, to be honest. They’ve also, somewhat incongruously, moulded the shape of a crab into the top panel, next to the chromed shutter button …
The camera comes with a silicon wrist strap and lens cap, which I initially thought was a great idea, but soon gave up on it – the cap wouldn’t stay on, and the different loops of the strap kept getting tangled in things. I think if the cap was a bit more substantial, it would have been a great idea.
The film chamber is accessed by a catch on the side, which was quite difficult to open – a nail breaker if I’ve ever seen one, and I ended up using the tip of a pen. Opening it up, you get a real feel for the plasticky build quality – the film loads OK, but the little springs inside to hold the leader in place seem very flimsy indeed. When you start winding the film on with the thumb wheel you are rewarded by various creaks, squeaks, and grinding sounds, which are a bit disconcerting, plus you get quite a plasticky ‘clack’ from the shutter release button.
The controls on the camera are, unsurprisingly, basic, but that allows you to concentrate on the wacky compositions you can get with the fisheye lens, I guess! A slider on the top panel, to the left of the shutter release has three positions: L, which locks the shutter; N for ‘Normal’ shooting at 1/100th of a second exposure, and B for bulb, giving you a bit of creative control. On the back, to the left of the film advance thumb wheel, is the MX switch, which re-cocks the shutter, allowing you to take as many exposures as you like onto the same rectangle of film. I tried (unsuccessfully) using the B setting, but multiple exposures was a bridge too far for me …
The final control is to operate the built-in flash, a small slider on the front, with a LED flash-ready indicator on the back. It is powered by a single AA battery, loaded from underneath. I don’t shoot with flash, particularly, so it is not something I tried, but I expect you could get some interesting results indoors, especially with the light bouncing off all that bling!
The last stage of the shooting experience was also rather disconcerting. Unlike every other 35mm manual-wind camera I have, there is no button to release the lock on the film take-up spindle to allow you to rewind the film into the cannister. You simply start winding back when you get to the end of the film with a conventional, albeit flimsy, rewind crank, accompanied by quite a lot of grinding and squeaking again. Open the back, preferably not breaking another nail in the process, and there’s your film ready for developing.
The results
The first surprise was the circular negative format, which makes sense but was a bit unsettling when I hung up the negs to dry and had a quick peek!
I scanned them using my normal 35mm set up – a Nikon D5600 DSLR with a Micro-Nikkor 55mm f/2.8 lens and the Valoi easy35 system. Their Precision Framing Helicoid was particularly useful when tackling those unusually shaped frames. The D5600 was tethered straight into Lightroom Classic on my Mac, and the negs were converted using Negative Lab Pro. I’ll do a parallel scan of the negs with the Lomography Digitilza + and Digitliza Max they’ve kindly lent me, but I wanted to get the Fisheye No. 2 scans done quickly to see what it had produced.
I may have been rather critical of the camera itself, but I was pleasantly surprised with my first foray into weird and wonderful world of Lomography – the results were far better than I expected, which is what it’s all about at the end of the day!
I deliberately shot the sort of subject matter I normally shoot with my other cameras – pictures of my village, buildings, street scenes, and land- and seascapes, living right on the coast down here in Cornwall as I do. The super-wide fisheye lens was enough of a diversion without trying to reinvent myself as a hipster …
What I got was a decidedly different take on these familiar scenes… and I rather liked them! I managed to get 32 (sort of) useable shots from the roll of 36, which is sometimes better than I get from one of my more conventional cameras! Here is a small selection of them (details below the images):
The Kings Arms, Tregony, Cornwall – the porch over this 17th Century former coaching inn in my village dramatically juts out in the middle of the shot, and the (much-hated by me) overhead cables curl around gracefully above.
The Clockhouse, Tregony, Cornwall, a real landmark that sits in the centre of the village and chimes on the hour, every hour, roughly keeping time … dreckley, as they say down here! There was another swoopy cable at the top of the “frame”, but I took it out in Lightroom as it looked odd.
Beckoffi’s, Tregony, Cornwall – our village café, joined at the hip with the Clockhouse.
The famous K6 phone box, still a feature of many of the villages round here, and an essential service, especially after we lost all power, and therefore mobile phone signal, for three days recently after Storm Goretti. The fisheye lens makes the rectangular panels of the iconic design bulge out like with a fairground mirror!
Mevagissey Harbour, Cornwall. Mirror-smooth water and an interesting sky make this a nice shot, and the accentuated curve of the tender’s mooring line leads you in.
Another one of Mevagissey Harbour, Cornwall, crowded with mostly fishing boats (Mevagissey is still a working port), with a dramatic sky and the buildings lining this picturesque inner harbour.
A muddy entrance to a field in the hamlet of Polmassick, near Tregony, Cornwall. I particularly like this one, a bit Constable-esque, perhaps, even if I say so myself! The trees either side curl inwards to frame the shot. It’s a bit ‘soft’, but that’s part of the charm. Made me think of one of those painted plates my grandparents used to have on their wall.
St Cuby Church, Tregony, Cornwall, our parish church that dates back to the 12th century, dedicated to a 6th century saint, St Cuby. The path from the lych gate at the roadside is lined with gravestones, presumably from the graveyard which lies either side of it. Local legend has it that the church groundsman got fed up with mowing round all the gravestones and uprooted them, laying them all against the banks either side of the path, which is a great story even if it’s probably completely made up! Anyway, the 170º lens makes the gravestone-line path up to the church even more dramatic.
The photos were much sharper than I expected, capturing sufficient detail but with a degree of softness, which was accentuated by the grain of the Kentmere Pan 400. Overall, I really liked them!
Conclusion
Lomography have done an amazing job revitalising the film photography sector, and, despite being not their typical type of customer, I have the greatest respect for what they have done, and what they continue to do. There’s no doubt that a new generation of photographers have been introduced to the wonderful world of film photography by the films and cameras from the Lomography brand, and many will progress to more serious equipment, materials, and techniques.
Apart from being the strangest camera I’ve ever shot with, the Fisheye No.2’s 170º lens was quite a leap for me creatively speaking, and while I might not have been particularly impressed with how the camera was put together, the overall design was intriguing, I’d even go as far as saying endearing, and the images it captured were surprisingly good. At £59 RRP, however, it’s quite an ask for the youngsters who may be attracted by the funky styling and wacky results. And as a “one-trick-pony” (any angle you like as long as it’s 170º …) users may quickly tire of it and relegate it to the back of the cupboard.
But accepting it for what it is, the Lomography Fisheye 2 is a fun piece of kit, which produced some interesting and impressive results, and has certainly made me want to explore the idea of wider-angle lenses on my conventional cameras, which is, given my “conventional” tastes, the best outcome this product test could have achieved.
- For more information on the Lomography Fisheye 2, visit Lomography.
- Lomography also do a Fisheye in 110 format, which could be quite fun!
Hi Andrew,
I loved this detailed review of yours. it was very entertaining to read the section about loading the film in, and useful to know as someone who barely has nails to work with when cracking things open! thank you for sharing your works at the end with the camera.