Fisheye photographic lenses were first invented and used for scientific and military purposes. Especially for the measurement of the angular position of points on the object hemisphere, in areas of study such as woodland canopy studies, metrology, full-sky astrophotography, meteorology, and aurora surveys. In these areas, calibration of the relationship between the radial position of an image point and the object space angle was critical.
Back in the 1990s, a group of women and men started to work together to understand how to take the first VR images, build software, hardware, and knowledge base in free web resources. Suddenly a new life and use were put in fisheye lenses and adapters allowing to shoot spherical panoramas with less struggle, to achieve cheap and high quality wide-angle digital photography, and, finally, new perspectives to be created.
I started to experiment with these lenses and to test, modify and collect them, discovering a big fascinating world in the untold and “parallel” history of non-linear perspective photography. I started to collect, information, data, trivia, and, well… lenses.
These pages are dedicated to those innovators, and whoever will struggle to gather so much information from different fields to build new perspectives for everybody.
Luca Nicolò Vascon.
All this would not be here without the help, friendship, and professional aid of Sam Rohn, that mixes knowledge of the matter and exceptional web developing skills with great ideas about how the whole thing should work, and Chiara Masiero Sgrinzatto with her graphics skills and capacity in keeping people and projects together.
My thanks to them both will never be big enough.
The Fish List was based on the original information collection work by w.j.markerink and continuously implemented and verified since 2003, thanks to the help of a lot of experts, collectors, proud owners, users.
You can contact me on Facebook as well as by email, luca (dot) vascon (at) thefisheyelist (dot) com, and if you find this resource useful and really feel grateful for that you can help by donating here:
THANK YOU:
Michael Thoby, Jeff Starley, Marco Cavina, Andrea Aprá, Keith Martin, Franco Zampetti, Sandro Vascon, KC Lai, Mario Vascon, Albano Rossano Sanavio, Alessandro Dini, Massinissa Dalla Costa.
