Hello/hylo

Has anyone hear ever tried photography with excessivly wide angled lenses. The Nikon 8400 I think is rumoured to be one of the best digital, but as for cameras with removable lenses, has anyone taken something of the sort.
When wondering around the fells the other day, I managed to get a look at the top of Broughton Moor Quarry of which I took such a photo (Film camera!)

Regards
Linden

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Before I gave up using my 20d underground I did look at wide angle lenses for it, but they were excruciating expensive, like £600+. If I were a profressional photographer then yes, maybe ok, but to knock around underground, no way :)

The 8400 has a 35mm equivalence of about 24mm I believe, which is fairly, but not excessively, wide angle.

Remember with all digitals (apart from full frame sensor SLRs) there is a magnification factor to consider with any lens, basically on something with a 2/3 size sensor it'll be lens / .66 meaning a 24mm lens works out about 36mm. The same is not true of film cameras however.

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Cheers!
I agree, not something to take on a slimy SRT exploration. Perhaps a more timid mine, like Cathedral Cavern :lol: but they're very expenside. I thinik my dad's cost about £700...

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I tried some photography with (a borrowed) 16mm lens once, the novelty wore off very quickly. The distortion was fine for "arty" effects, but gets in the way if you're trying for a straight (no pun) record.

LAP - your signature is coming under the influence of South Wales! 🙂

I have a 19mm, no distortion lens for my Nikon SLR (proper film one). I have used it u/g once and it's pretty good when the space is vast.

However, beauty in photography usually works like Fractals. Seeing more is'nt always more, the closer you get the more detail comes out. It's tempting to go mega wide sometimes, in the belief that the more that's in the frame means a better picture. Consider though the fact that 80% of photographs that win photography compotitions were taken using a standard (50mm) lens, which offers the same perspective as the human eye.

Whether you like Nick Catford or not, have a look at his photos on SubBrit. All pretty good I'd say. All taken with a "standard" lens 50mm equiv. (not actually 50mm as he uses Medium Format (brave man), probably 80mm or 90mm which equates to 50mm in 35mm format)

::)

Hi, I've just joined the group and saw this post.
Many years ago before the advent of digital photography I used an old bellows 120 roll film camera. The camera was tripod mounted, shutter locked open and I painted the scene with flash to get an image! Today with the digital camera, techniques may be different but you can with software stitch or merge images to create the format you require.

Taking a good cameras below ground is not for the faint hearted but a DSLR while a very nice bit of kit has no advantage underground. Not easy to see everything through the view finder in near complete darkness, whereas an LCD screen presents a totally different view. The Nikon 8400 is a fine camera but even on E-Bay today it tends to hold its price. It is or was the preferred choice of camera for KAP (Kite Aerial Photography) but like everything it has been superseded. Currently I'm using a Canon A640, at 10mp and able to accept remote USB commands fits the bill nicely for my aerial work. Like underground the advantage of wide angle in the air helps with being able to photograph at reduced altitude as opposed to confined space. But think on, underground even if you hand hold photos, over lap and stitch you should be able to create some good shots. This will be the approach I'm going to try when given the opportunity. You can pick up recon A640's and the like from the Canon store on E-Bay for about 120-150 quid. Nearly all these compacts will accept conversion lenses with an adaptor.

Meanwhile to see some of my amateur work check my web site out. Not much there at present and the 2 big panos I've enlarged too much really but I was just pushing it. Imagine doing these underground even in tight spaces.
http://www.kap.toadstone.com 

I'm looking forward to trying out underground photography again after all this time (I'm talking late 60's early 70's when I was last underground seriously) with a digital camera.

I've put 3 'straight' aerial views up on the Magpie Mine pages.

Peter.

heheh, so the 8400 is also the prefered camera for a totally different hobby. Frankly I'm not surprised and I am quite certain that nothing better has come before or after it - the Nikon 8400 is an absolute stonker of a digital camera.

I'm also a big fan of 120 folders. One of my favorite cameras is my Zeiss Ikon Super Ikonta 6x9, a folding rangefinder from 1937 Nazi Germany. The Carl Ziess Jenna lens is so good it's actually quite silly, and the detail it lays onto a 6x9 frame of Fuji Provia takes my breath away. When your TIFF files measure 12,000 pixels across in 48 bit colour and no subsampling (like digitals do) and still remain razor sharp at 1:1 one can only wonder how many years it will be before digital cameras catch up with the 70 year old folder. It'll be a long, long time I would imagine...