Camcorder Lenses

[Guest]

My Mum and Dad bought me a camcorder the other night for graduating, It has a 27mm lense, which I want to buy either a wide angle lense or a fish eye lense for, but have a few questions that I expect someone here can answer.

What's the differance between a fisheye lense and a wide angle? From what I can see they both do the same thing, just in differant ways, fisheye tends to 'distort' the image somewhat while a wide angle lense seems to maintain a normal look.........

Where can I get (cheap) lenses?

I have found this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/27mm-0-45X-Wide-Angl...1QQcmdZViewItem

but am more after a fisheye if what I've said above is true.

Can anyone offer any advice as to where I could pick up a 27mm fisheye online???

[GlynnP]

You have pretty much got it fisheye gives it this distorted 'rounded' effect

Where as wide angle gives you a a normal look but with a wider field of view.

As for lenses i dont know of many best place is ebay

But for a normal dv camcorder it seams you can normally just get cheapy ones

I had a cheap fisheye for my mini-dv camera spent about £20 on it was fun but quality wasnt great.

[Greetings]

0.45x is very wide yet doesn't distort the image too much unless your filming indoors.

0.6x has very little distortion and is good for pretty much everything but the view angle is much less

i think an 0.6 is a wide angle lens, whereas 0.45x is a semi-fisheye

obviously the better the lens, the less distortion there will be

[Janson]

pretty much. in my time, i have used one of those raynox snap-on fisheyes and a better raynox fish. both are listed as 0.3x, but the snap-on gave more distortion and more wide angle.

better and expensive one, raynox 3031

cheap snap-on, raynox qc303

I much prefer the 3031. Less fisheye, much better image quality, and zoomable. Camera can't focus when zooming through the qc303.

i also own a 0.6x sony wide angle lense. pretty pointless if you ask me, but i guess it can be OK depending on the situation. Nothing great for trials, as you either want very wide or not at all.