"dingleberry" <dingleberry_pinksock@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:28b9720d.0309141045.45b6d979@posting.google.c om...
There are several makers of good WA converters: Sony, Canon,
Raynox, and sometimes Kenko are the best. Fitting a WA converter
to a camcorder is a bit of an art (optical matching with a particular
camcorder lens can be as important as the inherent quality of the
WA converter). You can match mounting-thread sizes with
stepping rings (mostly step-up rings, to avoid vignetting, but
sometimes a smaller thread-diameter WA can be fitted to a larger
thread-diameter lens front). WA converters with moderate viewing
angle increases often work the best, and even "poor" .8X converters
can be sharper at the edges than "good" .5X converters. Converters
also come in "non-zoom-through" (little zooming possible away
from WA, but these can be cheap, compact, and excellent),
"zoom-through", and also "fisheye" (extra-wide and often sharper
than other types, but with considerable curving of off-center subject
straight lines - and these are generally not zoom-through). The Sony
TRV-series cameras have 30mm or 37mm (or 52mm, in the case of
the TRV900) thread diameters, but most 37mm (or larger) WA
converters can be fitted. The best (which will fit all the TRV-series
Mini-DV camcorders) is the Sony HG0737 .7X 37mm-threaded
converter, but it is fairly heavy and large. The .6X 0637 is OK for
many purposes, and it is lighter/smaller/cheaper. I like the
cheap/light/compact/excellent ES06 non-zoom-through, but it
requires added spacing between the converter and most lenses
for best results. The Raynox Pro works well on most camcorders,
also...
--
David Ruether
rpn1@cornell.edu
http://www.ferrario.com/ruether
