wide angle lens and 170

[Sam Alcoff]

I'm strongly considering getting the hpx-170. I've read a bit about the lens being relatively wide angle. But I want to know about going even further. Does anyone have any of the wide angle attachments (panasonic, century, 16x9, or other) and what are they like? Are there frames online where one can compare shots with and without the attachments? Are some of them zoom through and some of them not? Are there are a lot of issues with chromic aberration? And how do you treat it in final cut pro? Thanks.

[Dan Brockett]

Originally Posted by Sam Alcoff

I'm strongly considering getting the hpx-170. I've read a bit about the lens being relatively wide angle. But I want to know about going even further. Does anyone have any of the wide angle attachments (panasonic, century, 16x9, or other) and what are they like? Are there frames online where one can compare shots with and without the attachments? Are some of them zoom through and some of them not? Are there are a lot of issues with chromic aberration? And how do you treat it in final cut pro? Thanks.

Hiya:

Received my Century Optics .06 WA adapter yesterday. It is great, played with it all yesterday afternoon with the dolly, jib and hand held. In 35mm terms, it turns the 28mm widest angle on the 170 to a 16.8mm. If you have shot with an SLR, you should know the difference, the 28 feels mildly wide, the 16.8 feels really wide, right on the borderline of a fisheye. It almost turns your camera into a Steadicam, with a little effort you can get really smooth walking shots in comparison to the stock field of view.

The build on the Century appears to be excellent and I see excellent edge to edge sharpness. The term is "chromatic aberration" and frankly you will usually see more
of it at the telephoto end of long lenses, I see none with this lens. You don't treat it any differently in FCP because it is not anamorphic or squeezed, what you see is what you get.

With this adapter, I can zoom through to about 50 to 60% of the zoom range, which frankly I am surprised at. With other WA adapters I have used on other cameras, I could barely zoom in at all without losing focus ability. The Century .75 lens is the one with full zoom capabilities although it costs more than twice as much as this lens and is not as wide so I don't see the point. Usually when you are shooting extreme WA, it is for a specific reason to get a specific effect so I can't see the reasoning behind having a full zoom through adapter, why would you want to go telephoto in the same shot? It sometimes happens I guess but I find zooms cheesy most of the time anyway so I don't usually do it.

The .06 does give you some barrel distortion, it is not a rectilinear WA and you can exaggerate the effect easily by moving the camera off vertical axis to your subject but I like the effect, that is why I am using a WA lens. Personally I love wide angle lenses, you can do a lot of fun things with them.

Dan