Using the Camera in Blender to Create Distorted Lens Effects

I’m fairly new to Blender. I have only done some basic modeling and rigging so far. Now I’m trying to learn how to create different camera effects.

I want to capture still images of a scene that I put together in Blender. I have to position the camera in the angles that I want and I need to create some camera effects by applying exaggerations and distortions. After getting the right camera shots, I’m planning to export the image files in order to work with them in other programs.

These are some effects that I’m interested to create with the camera in Blender.

1 – Wide Angle Lens (Barrel Distortion)

2 – Fisheye Lens (Curvilinear)

3 – Extreme Foreshortening (e.g., a hand throwing a punch in front of the camera appears a lot larger than it would under realistic foreshortening; There’s many examples of extreme foreshortening in manga comics)

4 – Worm’s Eye View

5 – Bird’s Eye View

6 – Tilted/Oblique Camera Angle

7 – Wavy Distortion (e.g., like in “The Scream” by Edvard Munch)

Are there any simple tutorials that can explain to me how to create different camera effects with Blender? Are the camera effects that I have listed possible to accomplish with Blender?

The default camera has a couple fisheye options, although only in Cycles:
-Change from Blender Render to Cycles at the top
-Click on the camera object in the Outliner (upper right)
-In the Properties right below the outliner a new camera icon will appear in the row of icons at the top
-Select the Panoramic mode
-In the Type pulldown there are two options: Fisheye equisolid and fisheye equidistant.

Other than that I don’t know. Can’t extreme foreshortening be achieved just using extreme focal length settings?

Zoom vs. wide-angle lenses are simply a matter of f-stop. Both renderers have this. Don’t know about the other effects.

Maybe you could fake extreme-foreshortening by scaling-up the object as the punch is thrown.

When placing the camera extremely close to an object beware of camera’s clipping value :wink:

Sundial, you’re absolutely wrong. Zoom vs Wide has nothing to do with f-stops. Glossy, the main settings you will need to experiment with are in the camera, especially the FOCAL LENGTH. That’s what makes a lens wide or long. Something like an 8mm lens will distort like a fish eye and something like a 85mm will compress your foreground and background making things seem closer.
There is also post processing in the compositor that can mimic barrel distortion and shallow depth of field.

Thank you everyone! I’m not very familiar with advanced stuff yet but I will keep your suggestions in mind while I experiment.

Does anyone know any video tutorials on this topic? I’m a visual learner, so I tend to learn better by watching videos.