lenses

[bonnie]

Has anyone had experiance with telephoto add ons ? I am considering using a telephoto lens on my HD30,in order to get wildlife video, there is a lens made by Raynox which apparently is very good,though,naturally,one would have to use tripod,etc,any advice will be very gratefully recieved,bonnie

[Steve Grisetti]

Are you talking about clip-on lens that's added over your camcorder's zoom lens?

I use a wide-angle clip-on like this.
http://www.adorama.com/RXQC505.html

Can you show us a link to the kind of lens you're talking about?

[Chuck Engels]

My HV40 will take pretty much any screw on type lenses, 43mm.
There are telephoto lenses, filters, fisheyes, lots of cool stuff.
Don't know how good the telephoto lenses are though.

[sidd finch]

I recently purchased a Raynox HD-2200PRO-LE for my Sony HC1. It is a good lens but it with this type of lens I am forced to use a tripod, otherwise it is like shooting video on the ocean.

My only issue is that they seem to cause an extra amount of purple fringing. But it is still a cool lens.

Sidd

[bonnie]

The raynox HD2200 is the lens I was considering,is it all its supposed to be ? and I doupt one could use it WITHOUT a tripod,bonnie

[sidd finch]

It is a quality lens. The one thing I notice that is common to all these types of lenses, is that when you have the camcorder set to fully wide, there is a black circle that appears around the outside of the image. I had to keep the camcorder zoomed about half way in to make sure this went away. So for me this was not so good as I was filming a soccer match and It made it difficult to not be able to use half of the cameras zoom function.

Maybe you could get an oversize telephoto lens and use an adaptor to connect to the camcorder. That way it might not show the black circle when set to fully wide. It would be a more expensive lens. (Just a thought, I have not done this)

If you are concerned about price I would suggest getting a cheap sun-pak zoom lens approx $20 an see if you can live with the above mentioned issues. I purchased both thinking the Raynox would not have this issue but it still did. As far as quality goes the lens on the raynox is pretty good. The housing is plastic which makes it light weight but kind of gives it a cheap feel to it.

Hope this helps.
Sidd

[bonnie]

Thanks Sidd,I think we will find that most of these add ons will cause vignetting,especially in the telephoto line,but though,for me,its not a great issue,since I,m trying to record wolves,bears etc,while camping on the river,invariably the animals are on the other side of the river,!!!
I have got some shots using an ancient optex thing that I had used on an old panasonic analog,but there must be better lense's around,thanks for your comeback,have a good one,bonnie

[Chuck Engels]

I,m trying to record wolves,bears etc,while camping on the river,invariably the animals are on the other side of the river,!!!

How does that work that they are on the other side Bonnie? Sounds a little dangerous to me
How do they know not to come over to your side for a little lunch?

[bonnie]

in thirty years of paddling these rivers,I've so far never had but one real scare,a very large black bear casually ambled though my campsite just after dark,not eight feet from where I was sitting,even had a small fire going,certainly non agressive but scared the %&^* out of me,most animals are more concerned about us than we of them,though just what this one was thinking is beyond me.
I hope to get better shots now that I've invested in the raynox 2200,up here,(western canada ) we come across cougers bears and wolves fairly frequently,but it is a challenge to get them on film,and almost impossable from a kayak !!!,,bonnie,