If you recall to stereotypical amateur (and let's not forget professional) skating of the video's you'll remember the distorted circular area around the screen yes? The ultra wide style of filming action sports has even influenced inventions to this day such as the GoPro but the fisheye lens itself is just a nickname coined by American physicist and inventor Robet W. Wood to metaphorically convey how a fish would see things in its hemispherical view.

More commonly known as an 'ultra wide' lens they will typically capture 180 degrees of what is in front of it. Usually this will cause distortion the further out from the centre the image gets and many artists/photographers are using this and adapting it to their photos to emphasise the meaning, for example abstract, or the effect.

There are two types of fisheye lenses: circular and full frame.Circular may be more familiar to the amateur eye as these are the typical one carrying the infamy of 90's sport videos behind them. They were the first type of fisheye developed having a 180 degree view both horizontal and vertical creating a smaller image with darkened corners of the frame.

Full frame fisheye lenses instead measure 180 degree view from corner to corner with the horizontal and vertical measurements being much less. When these types of lenses started becoming available for commercial consumer use companies wanted to enlarge the image, cutting out the dark parts while still keeping the general effect. This was the result:

Overall the fisheye lens as a piece of camera equipment is worth the buy, especially now due to the commercial availability of them. They allow for experimentation as well as access to features that will enhance certain aspects of photography without external editing. This reason is enough for anyone to consider buying one if they want to branch out to other areas of photography.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/benheine/4879042572/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/pss/4138684969/

Some amazing uses of the fisheye lens in photography.