Or 3.7x the resolution to be more exact.

I have both the Century .6 and the Sony Wide Angle Adapter. I used the Sony Adapter once to test it out and now it's been sitting in its box for months now. The Sony Adapter is too heavy and is a pain to twist on for the slight bit of extra coverage you get.

The Century Adapter is good and I use it for stationary shots during weddings for cakes, venues, and the dance floor. It might be good for showing off rooms because from a high enough angle, it can make a room look bigger and larger than it really is which might help in selling a home?

Don't think you'll be selling many homes with bendy walls, floors, doors and window frames Chris. Too much barrel distortion for my liking.

Yea probably not. It's a good thing i'm not in the house selling business. hehe

One thing to keep in mind is that the Sony cameras are already pretty wide-angle to start with, due to the 16:9 aspect ratio. I bought the .8x Sony adapter, and while it's heavy, it's also very sharp and I'm happy with it.

The 0.8x is a bayonet fit and comes with that rather good looking petal hood, right? What news on the Z1's inherrent barrel distortion dwon the wide end - does your 0.8x make this condition worse?

tom.

It's not just that--pretty much all cameras (DV, HDV, etc.) with 1/3 inch CCDs need to have wider lenses to help out.

heath

Has anyone tried the 0.7x multi-element Century ($799 at B&H)?

By the way I seem to remember that Premiere 6.5 had a filter or at least a method for "reverse barrel distortion". Don't know about Premiere Pro or other programs. Some people used it for removing vignetting (black corners) from underwater footage.

Nick

The problem with using software based post production correction of distortion is the loss of resolution that accompanies such processing Nick. Much better to buy a lens that doesn't distort in the first place, and I hear good things about the newer Century designs. The old 0.65x was pretty poor in this respect, so I hope things are looking better today.

tom.

Thanks Tom, and I understand that such processing will affect the quality.

By "newer Century designs" are you talking about the 0.6x, 0.7x, 0.8x that we've discussed? As far as I understand they're all spherical, so surely they're going to give just as much increase in barrel distortion for a given FOV.

Nick

Generall you can take it that a zoom-through is a spherical-elemented assembly, but some (like the Raynox 6600PRO) use what I believe is an aspherical element to control the barrel distortion. The snag with such lenses is that they're not very sharp at telephoto, but as it's wide-angle you're after, I've never seen this as a disadvantage.

The Z1/FX1 has most noticeable barrel distortion down the wide end and this makes the camera unsuitable for a lot of work. But a single aspherical element widie (not the Redeye, BTW) zoomed in just a little will increase your field of view dramatically while at the same time keeping straight lines straight.

tom.

At a shooting an accessoriebag got "lost", unfortunately with my Century 0.6 Wideangle inside.
By chance I got the opportunity to buy a 0.7 from16x9inc
What makes me now wondering is, that no one mentions this adapter.
It is a zoom through Adapter, with slightly less barreldistortion than the Century, I couldn´t compare them side by side, but to my feeling the 16x9 gives sharper results at the edges.
Disadvantage: no bayonet, but at the end using them both, now I would decide for the 16x9.

alex

Does anyone know what the field of view of the Z1 in full wide is in terms of degrees?

I am interested in a comparison between it and my existing VX2000. The VX2000 has a limited FOV and really needs a wide angle adaptor, but reading the previous posts makes me think that perhaps it's much less necessary for the Z1/FX1.

Nick

Using 35mm still camera terms, the wide end of the Z1 lens would be 32.3mm. The wide end of the VX-2000 zoom is 43.2mm. So a little quick math says:

(43.2 - 32.3) / 43.2 = .2523

Therefore the Z1 has about a 25% wider field of view than the VX-2000 at full wide. Looking at this another way, if you put a .75x wide angle converter on your VX-2000 then the field of view would match the Z1 at full wide (43.2 x .75 = 32.4).

I will leave the field of view calculation in terms of degress as an "excercise for the reader" :-)

You're right - the FX1 has a much wider-angle 12x zoom than the VX/PD range. In 35 mm film terms the FX1 has a 32.5 mm focal length whereas the VX has a 43.2 mm. Of course if you shoot with the FX1 in the 4:3 mode they're a lot closer.

Many people find the FX1 is 'wide-enough', but I feel that it makes the 0.5x converter even better value for money. Shots can look very wide indeed, whereas on the VX they just look so-so wide.

tom.