Conventional wisdom says one cannot get an acceptable photograph using inexpensive add on auxiliary lenses, especially ultra-wide/fisheye adapters. I used to agree with this. Close-up lenses rarely deliver good results. An Optek multi-coated auxiliary fisheye lens I bought has never rendered a single usable image, no mater what the host lens. However, from the 1960's through the mid 1980's a large New York, NY camera store offered its own brand of oddball and useful lenses, filters and accessories -SPIRATONE. Most Spriratone products were made in Japan and of good quality for the price.

The Spriatone Curvatar is a Series VII thread auxiliary lens. When mounted on the front of a 28mm or shorter lens (35MM film camera) produced a 150 degree full circular semi-fisheye effect. Used on longer focal lengths the effect was reduced. Original price for a Curvatar in the '80's was $39.95 plus $5.95 for a Series VII lens adapter. I decided to hunt up a Curvatar on eBay, scoring a like new unite for $29 including shipping and state sales tax. I also bought two Series VII rings from another vendor for $ 9 total, a 49mm and 52mm.

I played around with several of my lenses and found that the Curvature would render a fully circular image at the 18MM setting on my 18-55MM Pentax DA-L kit lens. I never use this lens anymore, so I figured if the resulting images were at least usable, the Curvature would have a semi-permeant home on the cheap kit lens. Much to my surprise, the $60 kit lens with forty year old $29 Curvatar delivered surprisingly pleasing result when used for extreme closure-ups of my neighbors daffodils!

The images were adjusted in Photoshop Elements 12.

[Tonytee]

A well executed series sir. Provided an excellent and pleasant viewing experience. Thanks for posting.

TT

[eaglem]

Very nice, must get my Fisheye out and start using it