Wide lens choice on the HM700
 

I'll be purchasing an HM700 end of April. Hey, waiting for NAB goodies... just in case. I need a wide field of view for 90% of my gigs. So, I'm seriously considering the Fujinon 13x3.5 lens. I heard it's great, 3.5mm at the wide end, with no distortion, and low chromatic aberrations overall, and is a solidely built lens. I have not heard anything concerning breathing though. Does this lens breath at all? Overall, I'd like to know your impressions about this lens.

The next contender on my extremely short lens list is the Canon 14x4.4, with a 0.8x wide angle adapter (getting an equivalent 3.5mm fov). I'm not fond of single element adapters, as I'll need to zoom in for some shots, and we all know that single element WA adapters aren't zoom through. But if I go for a 2 or 3 element WA, I'm afraid I'll add more weight in front, throwing the camera off balance; and possibly adding some unwanted CA, barrel distortion, vignetting, or other image altering artifacts. Not to mention the wear and tear, and possible damaging, by installing and removing, the said adapter. Any thoughts on that?

Sounds like we're in the boat Frederic! Will you be looking towards the Canon stand by any chance?!
I don't think I'd ever consider a front of the lens adapter for serious work, it'll never be as good as a purpose-made lens.
Steve

I have the Canon 14x on my HM700 and it has some pretty strong barrel distortion at the wide angle end of things. Given that, I'd be a little surprised if the converter would be usable in situations where straight lines are a large part of the intended scene -- it's bad enough without the converter...

With the distortion on the wide end you get some CAs on outside of the picture,
when you stop the wide at nearly 34 mm it is the best, so when you wirk with an 0,8-Adapter its like a 27 mm. Look at the shots of
http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/jvc-gy-h...ml#post1507616

or this

http://www.dvinfo.net/forum/jvc-gy-h...ml#post1507019

All shot with the 0,8-Adapter.