This week I took delivery of some new camera gear. Having tried ‘fisheye’ lens add-ons and  also having use of a wide angle GoPro, I decided to invest in an 8mm 3.5 fisheye manual lens for my DSLR.

While these lenses can be a bit gimmicky, with a trip to Switzerland in the Easter holidays I am hoping to capture some really wide landscape shots of the Swiss Alps and valleys. The lens has a 180° angle field of view so it can capture a vast landscape.

To get some practice in, I tried it out in my local park – A glorious spring day in Ealing. I can only hope the weather in Interlaken, Grindelwald and Wilderswil is as good!

I also used the opportunity to work on some editing to try and clean up lens distortion associated with fisheyes. Sometimes the curved distortion is a cool creative effect and sometimes its a bit cheesy.

I feed the pigeons, I sometimes feed the sparrows too.