On Wed, 12 Sep 2001 20:40:26 +0200, "Mac" wrote:

>What's your experience with wide lens adapters? Is the
>quality degradation substantial with even the best of them?
>I have Sony PD150 equiped with pretty high quality lens.
>Will I loose a lot in terms of sharpness and distortions while
>using w.l.adapter? And which is the best?

There are four WA converters of interest for the
VX-2000/PD-150:
- Sony .7X (about $350 [?], large, heavy - very good
sharpness [essentially the same as without the
converter], some noticeable linear distortion
at short end of zoom range, zoom-through)
- Canon WD-58 .7X (about $180, large, heavy - very
good sharpness, some quite noticeable linear
distortion at short end of zoom range, zoom-through)
- Raynox HD6600-58 .66X (about $100, short, light,
very good sharpness, very little linear distortion
at short end of zoom range, almost zoom-through
[last 1/4 of zoom range at tele end not optimal])
- Sony VCL-ES06 .5X (rated .6X, but it is wider - about
$60, very light and small, good sharpness, very
noticeable linear distortion, not zoom-through for
more than about 2X range, needs a 58->52mm step-down
ring)
General comments:
- with wide-angle, barrel distortion can be desireable
(or panning/tilting/people-at-edges, barrel distortion
has advantages over "low-distortion" WA (which actually
looks more "distorted"...). For more on this, see:
http://www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/perspective-correction.htm
and:
http://www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/articles.html#perspective )
- the best reduce corner sharpness at the widest zoom
setting almost none (true of the first three, with
the 4th close - this is where the most degradation
of sharpness would generally be seen)
- the best increase ghosting and flare very little
(all but the Raynox, which shows more than the others)
- the Canon WD-58 is good enough overall to leave on
the camera - and needs only a "flag"-type shade to
block out-of-image-area point light sources (well,
the sun, actually...;-) to perform nearly as well
as the lens without the converter
- more info, and frame-grabs, in the reviews at:
www.David-Ruether-Photography.com/camcorder-comparison.htm