Hi there

I have a much loved FX1e and recently bought a couple of 'budget priced' lenses for it on ebay. The telephoto caused so much distortion as to make it unusable and the wide angle lens vignettes and after zooming in to lose the vignetting, I get a shot thats no wider than if I hadnt used a wide angle lens at all!

I do need to be mindful of how much I spend and am wondering if anyone has an suggestions for lenses that are good value for money and arent going to cost half the value of the camera!!

Has anyone tried out the 'bower' ones? The price is good and think I remember hearing something about them.

or...should I just forget the whole wide angle/telephoto lens idea due to money being an object?

Any advice appreciated

You know the old saying, "you get what you pay for"? :-) This definitely seems to be the case with lenses. You should be able to find a wide adaptor which doesn't vignette for a reasonable price, but it will probably have significant barrel distortion (turning the horizon line into either a "smile" or a "frown" depending on which way you tip the camera).

Have you seen the following threads?

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-hvr-z1-hdr-fx1/58525-just-got-century-6x-1-6x-lenses.html
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-hvr-z1-hdr-fx1/77240-z1-wide-angle-recommendations.html

I suggest you get the Sony 0.8x WA (sorry, can't remember the model) that is made specifically for the FX1/Z1 cameras. The price may be a bit steep compared to some adapters made by unknown makers but the quality is excellent, optically and structurally speaking. Though the added FoV is not much, such is the price you have to pay for an adapter that has virtually no vignetting, minimal distortion and lens aberrations.

You can pay much more to get a wider FoV from certain third-party makers but again there will be downside, aside from costing you more money, in terms of optical aberrations and probably also limited zoom range.

Wacharapong

Thanks for that

I will have a look for it and check them out.

Jamie