I have the lens.

First off, it is advertised as .75, but on the lens it actually says .8. It is really only a marginal increase, but it helps when you need it.

It is zoom-through, and while I haven't done any testing the footage does look flawless to me. I can't tell if it is on or off.

The only other issue of note is that it is both huge and heavy. There is a lot of glass in that lens. We shoot a lot of hand-held and that doesn't make it fun.

i'm picking this up next week hopefully since there arnt really a lot of options available for wideangle adapters.. i never heard it advertised as a .75 though.

It is big and heavy, but it is a gorgeous piece of glass .. It's zoom-through and transparent (I can't tell whether it's on or off either), so you can leave it on all day, and takes the A1 to being really very wide indeed.

I warned a A1-owning steadicam friend against getting one, as the A1 is really pretty wide anyway, and the extra front-weight would take a really nice light cam into being a bit more difficult to handle ... it really does depend on your circumstances.

For me, there are a lot of jobs/locations where being that wide is a huge plus-- I was considering getting an XL-H1 to shoot alongside an A1, but the H1's 20x lens is SO, SO less wide than the A1+WD-H72, that I found shooting run-and-gun with the H1 to be really frustrating ... The whole time I was trying to backtrack and finding it hard to believe that the lens wouldn't go wider. So I'm getting a second A1 instead, not decided whether to get a second WD-H72 or not, but I reckon I will at some point.

does anyone have any comparison pics? just to show exactly how much wider it is?

I think Chris posted some long ago... do a search and they will probably show.

Received one today
 

Thanks very much for the input. Based on Barry's comments, I went ahead and ordered one. Yikes, it really is a huge piece of glass! I was really happy to see that it comes with both a huge lens shade and a pouch to keep it in.

I am actually happy to get a little more weight on the system. I use a Steadicam Flyer with the XL H1 which weighs about 8.5 pounds loaded and the rig is actually easier to use with the additional 3.5 pounds over the XH A1. The Flyer specifies a minimum of 5 pounds of camera weight and the XH A1 is just under that with a normal battery and a tape loaded.

Even at .8 is appears that I'll be able to get down to a 35mm equivalent of 26mm which is plenty wide.

Thanks for the input from everyone. I'm stuck here at work looking at this monster with the camera at home. It's going to be a long day.

Glad you like it Richard, I'm definitely happy with mine ... and to be honest, you can see where your moneys has gone when you hold it and look through it ;)

I don't own an H1 but I've hired one a couple of times-- are you finding its relatively tele lens as restrictive as I found it ...? I loved the cam, but the A1+wide has been an eye-opener... If I remember right, the H1 goes to ~42mm equiv, A1+wide to ~26mm equiv

As I said, I was going to go H1+A1, but now going 2xA1 with a semi-custom shoulder mount for one

Richard - glad you like it. And you are correct - the A1 is so friggin' wide already that with this monster on it you'd have to go fisheye to get wider.

Tell us what you think once you've shot through it.

A 0.8x wide-angle converter that's so huge 'n' heavy? I had a look at it at the Video Forum in London earlier this year, but to me it's just too mild an increase. Nice that it didn't seem to add any barrel distortion and that it's full zoom-through.

Good when it's on, but what with all the hassle and palava of storing it, carrying it, mounting it on the camera - well, if you're going to all that trouble my thought is that you might as well fit a REAL wide-angle while you're about it.

Have a look here to see what a 0.52x converter does for the field of view my Z1 gives. And it would do the same thing for your A1 of course.

http://tinyurl.com/2bxrv5

tom.

Finally Got a Chance to Use the Lens
 

Thanks for all of the input everyone.

As Chis said on another post, I'm amazed that it costs so little. I did a lot of testing with it and it's perfect in every way.

One thing that really surprised me is that when using the XH A1 in full manual mode, there is no loss of light with or without the adapter. The aperture and shutter speed don't change at all with -3db, and auto gain control off. I was expecting some light loss but so far, I don't see any.

I does make the camera a bit nose heavy but also smoothes out the handheld aspects...especially when shooting from the waist. I hope to get it balanced on the Steadicam Flyer later today and take it for a spin doing some interior shots of large homes. The XL H1 was a little unwieldy on the Flyer and the standard lens wouldn't get any where near wide enough for interiors. The wide angle Canon lens for the H1 is I'm sure quite good, but for $400 the WD H72 is a no brainer

I'm pretty sure your wide converter is of three element construction, and with good multicoating (Canon know how) each air to glass surface probably loses less than one hundredth of a stop. So you lose possibly 5% of the light - unnoticable in practical situations.

What the converter will do is add to the vignetting of your image, where the centre of your frame gets more exposure than the edges. It'll only really be noticeable at wide apertures on very evenly lit subjects, and isn't really worth worrying about.

tom.

hey tom, where did you get that .58 adapter from? whats the model #? price? is it rectilinear or fisheye? thanks.

Best wide angle lens for XHA1
 

I need a wide angle lens. What do you recommend? Do I really have to spend $900 on it? What do i sacrifice if I dont spend $900?

Here are some photos of the adaptor kit. I use the lens fairly often and am happy with it overall. For me the down sides include: the weight, no easy way to add a filter and it blocks the Quick Focus lens (shown in the last photo).

How wide do you need?

What quality do you need?