eMarkLee

I was introduced to Lomography this past weekend when a friend snapped some shots with her Lomography Fisheye camera. Lomography is a former Russian state-run optics/camera company that produced pictures with characteristics of distortion on the edges while keeping the center sharp. My friend’s camera was a basic non-digital film camera with a big fisheye lens on it($50). The Lomo effect is basically a fish eye look with a grainy, darkened border. There’s a subculture of people that take cool artistic pictures with their Lomography cameras.

Typical Lomographic picture

While I like the fisheye effect, it is a very specialized look that you only take certain shots with. If you take all of your shots using fisheye, you would be missing some detail in your pictures for good or for bad. The biggest deterrent for me has been the price of these lenses. At ~$600, this lens in itself would cost more than my camera cost me. That sucks. While I’m prepared to spend a lot of money on a nice lens, it won’t be on a fisheye lens. I did find what looks like a cheap alternative adapter but the distortion and blurriness on the edges would not be desireable, although for $40+s/h it might be worth trying.

I decided to see how I could simulate the Lomo Fisheye effect with Photoshop CS2. First to simulate the Fisheye effect, then to simulate the Lomo effect. I found a Photoshop action here, which seems to give the effect I am looking for.

Original image

Fisheye effect using the Photoshop Edit->Transform->Warp->Fisheye effect

Fisheye effect using the Photoshop Filter->Distort->Spherize

Lomo effect using the Lomo action

The effect I am looking for is best applied to wide angle shots (shots that span a wider area rather than zooming in on specific objects), so here we go again, with a wide angle picture I took at the auto show.

Original Image

Lomo effect

Lomo with Fisheye

That last one came out pretty well, although it still is not perfect. To truly achieve what I want, I would need to get the real lens or probably tweak the image in Photoshop a bit more. Since I am not all that great at Photoshop, it will probably take a while before I create the desired effect…..fun stuff though.