Giant 6mm Nikon Fisheye for $160k

Wide angle lenses are some of my favorite. Imaging resource has identified the widest of wide angle lenses for sale at a bargain price: $160,000.

According to Amateur Photographer, the jumbo fisheye lens was created as the "the world's most most extreme wideangle lens to cover the 24x36mm image area when it was unveiled at the Photokina trade show in Cologne, Germany in 1970."

imaging resource: The Camera Bag: Moby Dick-sized Nikon 6mm F/2.8 Fisheye Lens on Sale for $160,000+

Jason Weisberger is Boing Boing's publisher. He often does what he ought, instead of what he should. On instagram and twitter he is @jlw

MORE: photography

More at Boing Boing

Eurovision 2013: An American in London

The technology that links taxonomy and Star Trek

Andrew Snee

And I thought the 13mm rectilinear was a beast.
bcsizemo

Hal I’m gonna need you to open pod bay doors.
- MyrddinWilt
  
  Very good! The eye of HAL was in fact a Nikon 6mm fisheye.
  
  Just not this particular one. It was a 6mm f/5.6 that can be had for about $1000.
  
  The replica prop community has started making replicas of the lens so that they don’t end up destroying the collectable Nikon lenses.
  
  Even the original HAL prop had the Nikon lens removed…
- niktemadur
  
  Good for freaking out sci-fi geeks from afar, first thing they’ll think is “They’re reading our lips!”
http://twitter.com/WpgCameraMan Rock Hardwood

Criminal that there isn’t any photo examples of what this lens can do.
Ultan

220 degree field of view (diagonal). It can see behind you.
Edit: actually it’s a circular field of view. The corners aren’t covered.
- oasisob1
  
  Actually it will take a photo of the back of the camera. It will.
  - http://profiles.google.com/chudez Ted Bautista
    
    so when used on a digital camera, it can take a photo of the photo appearing in the rear LCD? a recursive camera?
    - zarray
      
      A recurcamera
    - http://www.matthewpetty.com/ Matthew Petty
      
      Wormhole!
- Paul Renault
  
  A long time ago, I worked in a camera store. One weekend, we had a Nikon ‘special event’. We were blessed with the until-now-only-seen-in-brochures 6mm f/2.8 Nikkor! (Note: there’s a tripod mount under the lens. You can see the edges of it in the photo.)
  
  I peered through the viewfinder… “Yup, just like in the brochures and magazine articles.”. Remembering the too weird field-of-view spec…I brought my elbows up and out, keeping my hands on the camera body. I could see them!
  
  I knew I’d never see one again. Trust me, it’s a very, very impressive piece of glass.
http://allanjosephbatac.com ajbatac

Meanwhile in 2006, http://www.nikonweb.com/fisheye/
mccrum

“Nice camera, but why do you need a second backpack?”
“For my second lens.”
pjcamp

Giant Silicone Comedy Lens.
KBert

So discrete.
- http://stephenrice.eu Stephen Rice
  
  It really is. You can take pictures of things behind-and-to-your-side with it. No one need know you’re photographing them.
oldtaku

It’s staring into my soul. My secrets revealed.
angstrom

Whale-eye lens
- AlexG55
  
  Giant-squid-eye lens, surely?
Kibo

I bet Carel Struycken buys it. Hmm, it’d probably fit in his hands perfectly.
benenglish

Nikon, Canon, and Leica occasional make lenses that they know they won’t sell. It’s a “mine’s bigger than yours” thing. Example? Nikon cataloged an idiotically expensive, non-distorting ultra-wide lens for over 20 years even though they sold just a little over 1 per month over that entire time frame, which is even fewer than they made of the 6mm behemoth shown above. They did it just so they could say they could do it. Here’s an article about it: http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/13mm.htm

Camera makers do crazy stuff to get attention. At least the Olympus “O-Product” line was relatively affordable compared to these crazy lenses even if they were some of the silliest cameras I ever saw. And don’t get me started about some “special edition” Leicas…
- MyrddinWilt
  
  The lenses were designed to showcase the state of the art in lens design. Just like technology from fast supercars eventually makes its way downmarket, technology from the exotics made it into everyday use.
  
  For example, the current 85mm f/1.4 provides the same sagital coma flare performance as the legendary 55mm noctilux at a far lower price than the older lens will set you back. The lens grinding technology used on the legendary fisheyes has since become mainstream on the 14-24mm f/2.4.
  
  There is no point in this particular lens on a digital camera as it is easy enough to stitch digital photos together. But in the film era it made a difference.
  
  If you actually bought one of these lenses you could collect it from the Nikon factory in person where it would be blessed by a shinto priest.
  
  What you are much less likely to see than the wide angle lenses is the exotic tele zooms. Most of those ended up converted to film use and are still in service.
Paul McEvoy

you could take some really, really expensive ugly pictures with that lens…
- http://twitter.com/incarnedine_v Dan Hibiki
  
  if you do so in black and white, they’re also art.
  - zarray
    
    I’m waiting for the holga mod.
eselqueso

This post is pointless without pics.
Will Bueche

It was created for use in colonoscopies.
daev

No. I just can’t spoil the fun.
AlexG55

The lens was bought by a London estate agent, and paid for itself within weeks…
zarray

~swoon~

If you need me I’ll be in my bunk.
thepod

Someone wanted pics?

http://www.talkphotography.co.uk/forums/showthread.php?t=331960
- bluest_one
  
  Wow. They’re shit. (There is no “the” missing from this sentence.)
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_66OXLJMEGWLNKCQAC5NAFVFG4Y JasonW

An F3? Really?
Sigmund_Jung

My wife complains of the size and clunkiness of my DSLR equipment on our trips. Wait until she sees me show up with this for our trip to Niagara.
- Sigmund_Jung
  
  This sounded OK in my mind.