My high school friends were ready to retire after the Michael Jackson One show, but I was raring to go. It was my last whole night in Vegas, and I was determined to document the casinos again, but this time with a fisheye lens. As you may last recall, I busted out the fisheye to document Hoover Dam and Grand Canyon West.
I brought the fisheye for the dam but realized that massive wide-angle distortion could make the over-the-top Vegas architecture even more dramatic. I re-walked many of the same casinos I visited on the first night, armed with a different camera and lens — this would be fun.
Circular objects like this chandelier in the Park MGM Casino look fantastic with a fisheye lens, so it was a logical place to start.
Nearby was this curved bar at the Eataly Food Hall, also at Park MGM. I framed this scene about the same as this post shot with a 24mm equivalent lens. Notice the increased drama.
The curved entrance of the Aria was another logical choice for the fisheye treatment.
24mm is no slouch, but this smartphone-equivalent focal length no longer feels very wide — it’s the new normal. I used this focal length to document the opulence and playful interior of The Cosmopolitan, but compare those images to these two fisheye pictures. This lens is so broad that removing excess visual clutter is the challenge.
I made it to the Bellagio and shot many images there; these two might look familiar. I created two posts with a similar framing with the 24mm equivalent on the Fujifilm X-S10. Contrast those with the fisheye version on the Fujifilm GFX 50S II.
Finally, I returned to the Luxor, where I was staying, to create this final image under the giant pyramid.
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