This photograph was made with a fisheye lens placed into the middle of the plant's fronds. The extremely wide angle of the lens makes it look as if the camera was a couple of feet from its subject, but it was actually inches away. By choosing to render the picture in black and white, the texture of the plant is emphasized
Photographic Notes
We have had this lens for quite a long time, from the days of manual (non-auto-focus) film cameras. It is one of Nikon's classic lenses and it works as well on today's digital cameras as it did with film. Because it is so wide, you really don't miss modern image stabilization and the depth of field is so deep that auto-focusing is not missed.
We acquired a Hasselblad H3DII-50 because we wanted the excellent quality it achieves. The lens is a key ingredient to image quality and the Hasselblad lenses are very good indeed. However the Fisheye-Nikkor used for this picture is surprisingly good, given that it is over 35 years old. It, along with the D850, gives image quality close to the Hasselblad. The lens was bought second hand without a very specific filter that attaches at the back of the lens. Without that filter, the lens is unusable. It was six months later before the Nikon repair depot in Richmond B.C. found a filter for us. It cost almost half as much as the lens.
This fern was in a dark spot under trees. We needed a large depth of focus, so a small aperture was used. As the camera was being held in the fern, the screen on the camera's back was used rather than the eyepiece, Nikon calls this "Live View" mode. A faster shutter speed was needed to avoid blur from camera shake. Consequently a high ISO was used here. Despite this, a large print can be made of this image with satisfying results.