New wide angle lens
 

Century has built a new, wide-angle lens attachment for the XF300. This is a zoom-through wide angle. Was the previous Century WA-H82 a zoom-through?

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At UKP 594 for a 0.8x mild wide-angle converter it had better be a full zoom through. Mind you, my single element 0.52x is listed as 'non zoom through', yet on my NX5's 1 to 99 zoom scale in the v'finder I can go from 0 to 84 before the image suddenly blurs.

That means I'm left with a 16.8x zoom. Not bad for a 'non zoom-through' combo.

tom.

The WA-H82 is a Canon WA, made for the XHa1, fully zoom-thru.....nice piece of glass, somewhat heavy.

That Century WA convertor by Schneider should have great resolution and hopefuly not much barrel distortion, but you'd have to add the cost of a lens hood.

Here's Canons entry .. http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search...tialSearch=yes strange shape lens hood, I read that petal hoods are not as good as rectangular shaped ones.

I bought the Canon WA-HD43 (no hood) for my HV20 and on the strength of its results, bought the WD-H72 (with hood) for the XH-A1/S. The first thing you notice is the great resolution and the colours, both are worth the price.

You'll see some user reports saying they never take them off .. and I agree.

Cheers.

Aspect ratio hoods are good in that they can be 'shadowed hoods' - whereby a rectangular mask at the front of the hood means all the interior surfaces are in shadow and they therefore reflect far less light onto that front element. The original PD150 hood was like that, but the introduction of Sony's barn-door shutters has meant the loss of this shadow mask. Canon have never bothered and Panasonic (DVX) have the mask too close to the lens.

Rectangular hoods are only efficient at the widest end of the zoom though - every mm you zoom towards telephoto your hood becomes less efficient. That's where the petal hood shines - it's never shadowed, but it's forward reaching petals hood the lens at longer focal lengths.

tom.