My friend has a couple of lenses from a L1(the off white color) just wanted to know if there is an adapter to buy to use these in any way , especially the wide angle lens?

Thanks for any suggestions!!
RB

Do you mean the Canon L1 (VL lens) as in Canon's Hi8 machines from the early 1990s? If so, the answer is no. And for good reasons.

The L1 (VL series) lens was designed for Hi8 resolution (about 400 video lines) on a 1/2" CCD. The XL serise lenses are desigend for DV resolution (about 500 video lines) on a 1/3" CCD. Thus the L1 series lens was not designed to do justice to the increased resolution of the DV format and smaller CCD. The net result would probably be closer to VHS quality resolution. Also, you would see an effective increase in apparent focal length due to the smaller CCD, making the image look more telephoto at the wide end. (From memory, the old L1/L2 standard lens had an 8 mm minimum focal length vs 5.5 mm for the XL series, and the 3x wide angle was no shorter thatn the minimul focal length on the XL lens.) ALso, it is not clear whether or not the intenal lens electronic controls woudl map to the curent XL series commands/controls.

Don yes those are the lenses! Thanks for setting me straight on that. Yeah it really sounds like its not a worthwhile conversion. Thanks for the input and help and the conversion info,some good stuff to know.

regards,
Roy B.

Don's sage advice was immortalized here long ago: see http://www.dvinfo.net/canon/articles/article13.php