Alright, so I’ve had this since June, but figured I’d blog about everything else first.

This is a door peephole. I bought the biggest size for under RM40, with a viewing angle of 170 degrees.

But guess what happens when you put it in front of a camera! (Yes, that’s my pocketable Canon Powershot A520. I do not have a big camera!)

Fisheye, baby.

The distortion made the satellite dishes on the left look suggestive on the right. I had to get closer to get the dishes to fill up the frame. Note the strong chromatic aberration, or purple fringing.

This can be countered in Photoshop by going to Image – Adjustments – Hue/Saturation…, choosing the color channel closest to the purple fringing (usually Blue or Magenta) and then decreasing the Saturation and Lightness.

What if you took an already curved surface? More distortion!

A normal fisheye mirror…

…seen through a fisheye lens.

Surprisingly, the fixed focus front camera of my Nokia N70 wields decent results. Another issue with the fisheye is that the brass keeps it a distance from the lens, making it hard to have sharp focus at the center of the image. So I have to focus as close as possible, and choose as dark as aperture (F7.1 is safe) to get a sharper image.