William Hamblen writes:

On 2011-12-21, David Dyer-Bennet wrote:

A couple of shots of mine with the Pelang:

http://dd-b.net/cgi-bin/picpage.pl/photography/gallery/Como-2009?pic=ddb%2020090926%20010-004
http://dd-b.net/cgi-bin/picpage.pl/photography/gallery/fourth-2009?pic=ddb%2020090704%20010-354

I guess you had to use a remotely controlled camera to get that close
to the mortar in fourth-2009. It's hard to catch the flash of a
propellant charge. I've caught the muzzle flashes of cannons at Civil
War re-enactments. If you see the flash in the viewfinder you know
you've missed it. I'd like to set up a remotely controlled camera to
get a view from the front of the gun. For safety reasons you can't get
in front of the cannon when they do a shoot.

This is why shooting 8 frames per second is useful :-).

That second summer, where the fisheye shot comes from, we were using
electrical ignitionl, so basically I started the camera running at 8 fps
about a half second before the current was sent to the igniter. That
got me a decent range to choose from.

I'm waiting (they say February now) for Trigger Trap to deliver their
camera trigger product; then I might be able to be more precise.

"Mounting" the camera for that one was easy -- it's lying on its back on
the ground. I did clean gasoline residue off the front element of the
lens immediately after the shot.

I managed this one of a civil war cannon firing just by finger timing,
though. http://dd-b.net/cgi-bin/picpage.pl/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/2004/05010-Freedom-Day?pic=ddb%2020040501%20010-011.

I'm actually in front of that last gun -- but well to the side. I was
reasonably sure they weren't going to turn it quickly enough to catch
me. I'm not sure why *they* were happy with the setup, though. Then
again, doing that kind of demo in a public space (that's actually on the
state capitol lawn) it's hard to keep a clean firing line.

Fisheye lenses go way back for scientific photography. According
to this article, fisheye lenses were in existence in 1924:
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/qj.49705021110/abstract.
A whole sky lens is the same as a circular fisheye. I don't know who got
the bright idea to sell fisheye lenses to regular people. Probably the
Germans had them first. Nikon's first fisheye was in 1962.

Much older than I've found any evidence of before, then. Thanks!
--
David Dyer-Bennet, ; http://dd-b.net/
Snapshots: http://dd-b.net/dd-b/SnapshotAlbum/data/
Photos: http://dd-b.net/photography/gallery/
Dragaera: http://dragaera.info