Based on a "recipe" for combining telephoto adapters posted by John Jay in this thread:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=51686

I decided to try a combination of a Century 2X tele-adapter used on my PD150 and a Century 1.6X tele-adapter used with my Z1U.

You can see the combination mounted on the Z1U here:

http://www.clamcamvideo.com/telephoto.html

along with frame grabs taken with each of the combinations.

In summary, center-field imagery with the combination seems to be quite good.

Carroll Lam

It looks to be good outside lighting Carroll, so can we assume you used both internal NDs and something like f/4? Just wondering if some of the edge nasties can be cleaned up by switching off one of the NDs and shooting at f8 or so.

I find shooting perpendicular to brick walls better than trees. The latter wave in the wind and disguise any linear distortions.

tom.

BTW, there's some nice lenses here. I've been impressed with the Raynox lenses I've tested.
http://www.raynox.co.jp/english/dcr/egindex.htm

The images were quick shots to get qualitative info so all the collection parameters were not recorded.

It was outdoors so probably at least ND1 was activated. The f-stops ranged from 5.2 for the Z1U lens alone to 6.2 for the add-on combos.

I expect to collect more quantitative and variational data soon.

I live in Tucson, AZ so most of our walls are adobe not brick. 8-)

Carroll Lam

Hey Carroll,

If you play back the footage in your camera and press the Status Check button, it should tell you the exact settings you had.

Tom Hardwick - can you post more on your experience with the two raynox lenses, the good and the bad? I need to pick up a telephoto and the Century is out of my range for now ....

thx!

The two Raynox lenses I've tested are the 6600 Pro and the 0.5x snap-on wide-angle converters.
http://raynox.co.jp/english/video/egwidehdxl.htm

The 2.2x telephoto is shown here:
http://raynox.co.jp/english/video/hdrfx1/index.htm
with comparison shots here:
http://www.raynox.co.jp/english/dcr/dcr250/indexdcr250eg.htm

tom.

There is another approach you might try if you already have some good telephoto lenses for still-cameras.

There are people building adaptors of similar principle to the P+S Technik Mini35. I have removed the groundglass from one that I made, for using lenses which have an aperture tighter than f5.6 which are not good for using via a groundglass system.

On the PD150 with a 4:3 frame I can get inside the vignette on full zoom with the following combinations :-

7+ Century Optics Achromatic dioptre.
Camcorder zoom at 100%.

The following lenses on wide-open aperture.

Tamron 300mm prime (adaptamatic version ).
Nikon 500mm mirror telephoto f8.
MTO 1084mm mirror telephoto f11 ( a bit soft, with 2x = very soft).
Sigma 50mm - 500mm f4 - f6.3 zoom. (with 2x, a bit soft but acceptable).

I fitted the arrangment up to an FX1 but found the 16:9 screen is a bit wide for maximum zoom to entirely eliminate the vignette. I think it can just fit as I have some problems with the arrangement of my design due to the prisms I used to flip the image. If you leave the image unflipped, things are simpler.

The image the camcorder sees in back of the lens is upside-down unless prisms or mirrors are added into the path to flip the image upright and right-way about.

Here's a link to footage of the DCR-2020PRO (2.2X) on a FX1.

http://raynox.co.jp/actualimage/video/movie/hdrfx1/MPEG/fx1-dcr2020pro-duck.mpg

I have not heard a review of this lens but you can see abberation in the demo video. However, you can get one for $188 so it might be worth looking at. I'd really like to see some high-res stills and example footage from anyone who may have taken some with either a Z1 or FX1.

http://www.1oel.com/comersus/store/comersus_viewItem.asp?idProduct=7842&ref=6586&refsession=0306