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I was back at Absecon Lighthouse in Atlantic City, New Jersey again, this time when the grounds were open. I was also able to secure special permission to photograph the Fresnel lens in the lantern room using ultrawide angle and fisheye lenses, which is about the only way that you can get all of a Fresnel lens in a frame, given the tight confines of most lighthouse lantern rooms!
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Absecon Lighthouse is located in the north end of Atlantic City. The light is a challenge to photograph because of the buildings that nearly surround it, making wide angle or ultrawide ange lenses almost mandatory. These photos of the lighthouse and grounds were shot on my most recent visit to Absecon - more photos of the grounds will be added...
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Part of the
fun of climbing any lighthouse is the spiral stairs leading up
to the watch room and then the lantern room. There are so many
different ways in which these stairs have been designed with landings
incorporated, with or without central posts, etc. that
each lighthouse is a treat the first time you climb it... and
more so when you photograph it!
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Opportunities to actually climb to the level of the lantern room, as keepers once did are rare treats. I had that wonderful privledge on my most recent trip to Absecon. Photographing the beautiful Fresnel lenses still housed in the lantern room of many lighthouses makes an ultrawide angle lens or a fisheye lens mandatory if one wants to capture all of the lens in a single image since, after all, there is no way to back away from the lens inside of the lantern room to give you more working room! Some of the images on this page will soon appear on the Absecon Lighthouse's new web page which is presently being designed as well as in a Fresnel lens display that is being prepared for the oil house on the lighthouse grounds... |
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The four images below were shot with a 10.5 mm full framefisheye lens, giving the equivalent of about 16 mm on the Nikon D200 DSLR body used when the images were shot. The first image shows the usual "fisheye" distortion of the image. The second image shows what was actually "seen" by the lens - the blue insert is where there was essentially nothing seen. The right image below shows the perspective corrected for the distortion of the lens making the image "normal." Finally, the bottom panorama image was cropped from the center image directly below.
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