Best Wide Angle for the $
 

I'd like opinions on the best wide angle lense on the market, within a reasonable price range (lets say no more than $2000 US) for the XL1.

The only one I'm some what familiar with is the Canon one, but I'm sure there are better ones out there even if they do require adapters.

What is the lens specification, that is:
How wide?
What zoom range?

Staying under $2000 total cost will tend to keep you with the Canon lens.

Most bang for the buck might be a wide angle adapter/converter; e.g., one of the Century models.

I talked to Mizell at ZGC recently and Optex has what amounts to a 10x zoom-through converter with 30% wider coverage than the original lens for I believe $540. You also have buy a clamp ring, which will run around $150, depending on what lens you plan to attach to.

For another $400 (maybe a little less) you can buy an additional piece of class that attaches to the previously mentioned converter to form a super wide lens with 50% more coverage. This additional glass is not a stand-alone element (you must buy the other piece for it to work) but the first piece I mentioned is stand-alone.

This shebang can of course be attached to any of the zoom lenses (stock, 16x manual, assumedly 14x manual).

When I eventually have the money, this is what I will go with, for several reasons.

You get a much. . .um. . .larger zoom range than with the canon wide angle lens (10x as opposed to Canon WA's 3x), plus all the properties of the lens you choose to attach to (for me the 16x manual, which means calibrated focus). I believe the Canon wide angle lens uses the same focusing mechanism as the stock lens, which drove me nuts.

Anyway, even with both pieces of glass and the clamp ring, I think this whole thing is still cheaper than Canon's wide angle lens.

John, that sounds like a good solution. I currently only have the stock lense, and find myself itching for a manual and a wide angle. I should get a solid manual first, and look at clamp-on solutions. One peeve I have with my canon stock lense, is the slow response from the focus ring. I'm still prefer the faster and smoother focus I had on older svhs ENG cams :)

Yeah. You'll probably hear this a lot, but I don't know how got a long with the stock lens (using manual focus, that is). With the 16x manual lens, you can achieve critical focus using the color EVF, plus you can turn off the servo motor on the zoom ring, which allows you to manually zoom, and I believe it saves power if you're using batteries.

One thing I forgot to mention, and this might be a dealbreaker, so I apologize. I think you'll have to buy a matte box to use as a lens hood if you get that combo of converters I mentioned, or even just one of them. This will of course increase your cost, possibly significantly.