"Classic Beauty"

"Classic Beauty"
©David A. Ziser

This image was made years ago as I was transitioning from film to digital. As I've mentioned  before, I'm a big fan of wide angle lenses.  Using the 30mm Distagon - Hasselblad's $6000 fisheye lens -was always fun to use.  In this shot, I used the much more affordable - about $600 - 8mm fisheye from Sigma.  Using it on a APS size sensor camera causes some cropping of the 8mm lens field of view.  That never bothered me, I still liked the shots I was able to obtain.  The important thing to remember is to keep the subject in the center of the viewfinder to minimize distortion.  The other challenge was to get enough light on the bride in the bright outdoor setting.  My assistant was bringing the light in from "camera left".  In the original shot, you could actually see the flash head and monopod in the top left quadrant of the image are.  I always say, "If you need the lighting close and find the need to photograph your assistant holding the light close to your subject, always keep them is a "Photoshopable" area of the scene."  That's exactly what I did in this example.  It was easy to remove the strobe and monopod from the sky using the "Rubber Stamp" tool in Photoshop.  Back in those days - we were up to version 5.0 of Photoshop - we didn't have the "Patch Tool" yet. Camera specs: Nikon D1x fitted with Sigma 8mm fisheye, F 16 @ 1/500 second, ISO 200.  Enjoy! -David