Everything's Still Cooler Through A Fisheye Lens

On a trip to Las Vegas, I made time to visit the Charleston Antique Mall where I found a vendor by the name of Classic Cameras & Lenses. This 10x10’ space was filled to the brim with you guessed it, classic cameras and lenses of all types. I could recognize all the lenses and cameras my eyes laid on except for one. What I thought would be a lens was actually a lens accessory. I have never seen a fisheye adapter like the one I purchased on that hot Vegas day. To me, it resembled an actual fisheye lens, which got me thinking what adapter I would need to use it. Turns out, I would need a less talked about adapter, step-rings.

The “Kenko Fish-Eye Conversion Lens” was marketed as a color-corrected attachment that could be used on various systems and formats. It promised to focus everything in front of the lens and encouraged in commercial photography, especially with large format view cameras. This is partially due to the large image circle it projects with longer focal lengths.

This conversion lens provides a 0.16x magnification and fixed focus when your take lens is set to infinity. If you’re using it with an adapted lens like me, it’s important to find where you lens hit infinity to get the proper results. You can also get a minimum close focus up to 10mm depending on how short your lens can focus.

The stand out feature of this conversion lens is the five stop aperture mechanism that varies in range depending on the focal length of your take lens. The manual advises you use a fast lens in order to get a workable shutter speed since the f-stop values range from F5.6 to F90. You can set your focal length on the conversion lens from 30mm to 200mm which then couples with the appropriate f-stop range. When using the conversion lens set to 200mm, your max f-stop is F90 while you minimum is F22.

A setup like this requires a ton of light due to the f-stop range, but it presents a challenge worth trying out if you’re looking for something new. The optical effect alone is a characteristic that in my opinion makes taking photos on a bright sunny day more interesting. The default thread size on the Kenko conversion lens is 48mm and we offer step-down rings that adapt this filter size to a 52mm and 55mm. Beyond that, you’ll need to further adapt the step-rings, but just as we have the largest lens adapter catalog on the market, we also have the largest selection of step-rings.

I took some test shots with this lens for the first time using a Konica Hexanon AR 50mm F1.4 which turned the lens into an 8mm fisheye. There are various lenses I want to try with this converter, especially with telephotos lenses. I have plenty of them that do not get much use and this simple accessories enables these lenses to behave like a wide-angle.

At the time of sharing this, there are roughly 20 offerings of the Kenko fish-eye conversion lens at around $40-$80. If you’re looking for something new to adapt that offers endless possibilities, then I cannot recommend this accessory enough.