Fish out your fears
The distortion is as huge as the fun with the EF 15mm fisheye lens

If you already have all kind of lenses, maybe it's time to consider having some sheer fun with a fisheye. The Canon EF 15mm is an undistorted glass which allows some extreme new points of view. Its 180 degrees of vision are perfect for tight interiors, huge landscapes and to make some great portraits of your archrival.

This particular lens has some interesting attributes:

- The minimum focal distance is around just 8" (hey, that's pretty close!)
- It's actually quite petit in comparison with most lenses
- It has a built-in petal hood and metal cover
- This lens has a retro look

But not everything is perfect with this, the only undistorted lens on the Canon line:

- Expect chromatic-aberrations in high contrast situations
- It's not an ultra-sonic lens, so it's noisy
- It provides heavily distorted images (hey, but that's what a fisheye lens is all about!)

Well, there is another little problem. If you want to take full advantage of this piece of glass you will  need a full frame camera. You may use a film SLR, but if you wanna go digital and take full advantage of those 15 millimeters, you'll have to use a full frame dSLR, and the cheapest in Canon line is the -still pricey- $2,500usd (street) EOS 5D. If you mount this particular lens in a 1.6x body you'll get a heavily distorted 24mm lens; not funny at all.

OK, let's assume that you have a 5D or any film Canon mount SLR. Your fisheye fun has a $585usd (street) price tag, so it is not that expensive. If you don't want to spend almost $600 bucks, you may also check the Sigma 15mm f/2.8 EX DG Diagonal Fisheye Lens at $470usd (street). With those $115 you can get almost 30 cappuccinos at your nearest Starbucks.

The optical quality of the EF 15mm is quite good. The f2.8 widest aperture is fast enough for available light photography. With such a huge wide angle vision flash photography is not easy. Someday will feature some tips to use a flash with a Fisheye. As Pablo Picasso said "Deformations simply do not exist."