Johannes Leistner

Originally developed for use in meteorology to study cloud formation (and also called “whole-sky lenses”), fisheye lenses quickly became popular in general photography for their unique, distorted appearance. So what can you do with such a lens you might ask?
These four photos show quite well how much fun one can have with a fisheye! Not only that you can toss a camera with it into the air for taking crazy tossing photos, its extreme wide angle it is also useful for catching unique and “unseen” perspectives.

Lately I have been using my Nikon D3 with the 16mm f/2.8 fisheye whenever I am inside a vehicle. This could be a car, boat or even an airplane. I then place the camera right in front of me (i.e. by the windscreen) and use the self timer in combination with the non-auto-focus mode (I set the metering before the shot). The results are amazing and rather funny, as you normally couldn’t take photos from that positions, respectively only from outside…

I have a new passion: camera tossing. Yes, you heard it right! Toss your camera into the air and you’ll have a good laugh when watching the results. What you get afterwards is always funny and tossing itself is fairly simple.
There are two different results one can expect and they need different settings on your camera. One result could be to produce funny patterns and blurred images (which requires a long shutter speed), I like to take sharp tossing photos where you can see the people on the ground, trying to catch the camera.

For these kinds of photos you should use the following settings:

1.) Take the most expensive camera you can possibly get - no joking! Get a camera which can shoulder a drop on the ground, whether it is the cheapest one or the most rugged one.
2.) Use a wide angle, best would be a fisheye lens. The wider the lens, the more you’ll catch on the photo and it will look like the camera would have been far up in the sky!
3.) Set your camera to self timer mode and turn the autofocus off.
4.) Estimate the height you’ll probably toss and set the manual focus to this distance.
5.) Set the autofocus mode to manual by using the estimated distance.
6.) Use a good compromise for a short shutter speed and a closed aperture, for getting sharp photos with a good depth of field.
7.) If necessary, mount a flash light on the camera, like I did on the second photo. But the flash will make it more difficult to toss!
8.) If you are not alone out there, tell everyone that only you will be allowed to catch the camera! Otherwise people might get insured by trying to catch the flying thing…
9.) Hit the release button, wait a few seconds (depends on your self timer mode) and toss it!

Try this several times, to get a feeling for the camera, the timer and the spin you might need to have the lens facing the ground, when the timer goes off.
Only one time I dropped my Nikon D3 so far… But nothing happened because of rule number 10.) make sure you are standing on a relatively soft ground! And don’t forget to keep smiling when you drop it

He is a Special Agent with a special mission. Nobody knows exactly for whom he works for. Some say it is a government, some say he works only for one client with the queer abbreviation "WW".

Nevertheless, Skinner is a tough guy who can smell a smoking gun 10 miles against the wind and can break ones neck like a straw.

But he’s got a weak spot too. He enjoys the stories about Philip Marlowe and also wants to be like that wisecracking, hard drinking and tough private eye, Marlowe is. Unfortunately that works not always well and Skinner has to realize that Raymond Chandler just wrote novels, which have nothing to do with the reality of special agents in the year two-thousand-something.

Let’s see how Skinner develops, let’s join his missions…
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Seit kurzem habe ich eine Schwäche für die Kombination zweier Nachbearbeitungsstile: “Urban Acid” mit “Cinemascope”. Dadurch entsteht ein schönes altes B-Movie Feeling.
Diese beiden Fotos passen nicht nur im Stil der Bearbeitung zusammen, sondern auch in ihren gegensätzlichen Aussagen.