Adaptor lenses Digital

Opteka adaptor lenses 2x & 0.5 How good or bad? These are sold by

47St.Photo

I bought the 0.5x opteka from 47st.

No good on my Sony F707

It has a 58mm thread, so no adapter rings necessary, but it looks to me as it the angle of view is not twice as large

I also have the 0.7x wide angle converter from Sony , that has the same angle of view as it appears to me.

 

The 0.25x fish eye is fun to play with though

and with some zooming you'll get a very wide shot without the circulare frame of the lens.

Image quality is not super, especially at the edges, but it is still a nice-to-have thingie

Not the brand you are asking about, but for general information: I ordered wide and tele-converters in the Digital Optics brand for use on my Canon G3. Not only were the specs not accurate, the images were very poor - especially from the wide angle. There was a total loss of sharpness at the edges and VERY bad chromatic abberency. I obtained a return authorization and sent them back for a refund.

I bought a 2X and 0.5X Opteka Lens from 47st.photo and my results with a Fuji Finepix 3800 were very disgusting. I could get better quality pictures with a disposable camera with a magnifying glass in front of it - (ok I'm exaggerating, but; they were awful)

 

To tell you the truth, I took two pictures, one with the lens, one without, and even zoomed in on the picture that I did not use the lens with the quality is still better; so therefore, digital zoom is better than this lens. If you want closer up pictures, (i dont know how many megapixels your camera gets) - just use digital zoom or crop your pictures on your computer, because the lens would not be worth buying even if it was free.

 

Hope this bad news didn't find you in the same situation as me

This answer is not fool proof; I don't know how the lenses act with different cameras, but with the Fuji FinePix 3800, it is worthless!

 

--Jason Sypkens

My experience with the .5x Opteka lens sold by 47St.Photo on a C-4000 Zoom Olympus is that the color aberration and lack of sharpness out from the center of the lens is so bad as to make the lense totally useless to me. It's like shooting through a hemispheric prism. I have a Digital Optics brand comming and I will post the results once I try it. I suspect maybe these off brand lenses in the same price range all have the same Japanese manufacturer.

Yup, I recieved what was to be a Digital Optics brand .5x Wide angle lens, this time from e-pixphoto of New York City, and they switched the brand they shipped me to Taconic. This lense is exactly the same in every respect except color to the .5x Opteka wide angle hemispheric prism... er lens that 47St. Photo is peddling on ebay. Don't waste your money, these off brand wide angle lenses in the $50.00 range are very low quality, and even though they are being touted as "Fully Multi-Coated, Every Element" they are really just fully coated lenses, meaning of course that 1 or more of the lenses is fully coated with something. These guys are basically just peddling trash lenses in this price range. The photos you get after shooting through these lenses are so blurred out from the center and smeared with diverged colors that you'd be as well off shooting your photos through the bottom of a beer glass, really!

Hi John

So did you eventually buy a decent lens? If yes what was it/they?

Have you or anyone tried the Raynox lenses or are they no better than the stuff John has been experiencing?

 

Dave H (UK)

Thank you all for saving me making the same mistake. I was totally thrilled and excited to see 0.45X and 2.0X lens for G3 for a total of $90.00 on eBay. The only thing that was bothering me was that I couldn't get any reviews of those lenses anywhere on the web. The manufacturer is Digital Optics. After reading your reviews I realized why they are so cheap. The eBay store that is selling these lense might have put a false wide angle picture of some other lens to show as if it was taking with this attachment lens. The picture was very sharp and clear with excellent wide angle result.

 

Thanks again and good luck !.

 

Aqueel.

I have seen in this thread and others, a number of people asking about Opteka lenses and adapters. I have not personally tested any of them, but the general consensus appears to be that they are all crap. A number of people have also posted many articles looking for the Opteka Website, or other info on the manufacturer of these lenses. From all the info I have been able to gather from a number of reliable sources, I have concluded that there is no such "manufacturer" or website. Opteka is simply a house brand of 47th Street Photo in New York. That is all! The lenses themselves appear to be only very cheap generic lenses which are being distributed under a number of different names, Opteka being one of them. If you search any of the major search engines for the name Opteka, you will eventually come to either the 47th Street Photo website, or to an eBay auction, also being hosted by 47th Street Photo.

 

Here is the registration of the "Opteka" Trademark. (Notice that this Long-Standing company [Opteka] as we are led to believe, registered their Trademark name only 1 year ago. Really!!!

http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=doc&state=ve0v51.2.1

 

Notice also the address of the Trademark owner. Now either go the 47th Street Photo website at http://www.47stphoto.com, or better still, check the website domain registration for 47stphoto.com. Note the same address.

 

- Lloyd

Have any of you used other telephoto lenses for digitals? I have a Canon A80 and am looking to add a tele lens on to it. I have seen the ones from 47th.st and thought about buying, but after the reviews glad I didn't. Has anyone tried the "Official" Canon offering?

 

Allen

Hello, I appreciate all the above information. I too was going to buy either digital optics, or opteka 2x telephoto for my Sony F-717. Would still like to know if anyone has experience with Raynox teleconverters. Also Opteka makes which seems a little more professional 2x telephoto selling on ebay with 7 elements & 5 groups. I understand that a 7 element telephoto gives the best quality. If anyone has any experience with this lens or info would appreciate your comments.......... Mike

I was searching the net in view of buying a set of these lenses, when I stumbled accross all your comments. Thank goodness people can be bothered to voice their opinions, the lenses sound really toss and I shall stay well clear,

cheers, jillos.

After using my Canon G5 at some recent sporting events, I knew I needed something more than the digital zoom. I decided to look around and decided to try the Opteka- I ended up with quite a bundle for a little over a 100 bucks on Ebay. (mini tri pod, filters, adapter, .5 and 2X lenses) and knew the quality wouldn't be Canon for sure. I haven't tried the .5 yet, however after playing with the 2X, and knowing from my 23 years with my A1, that a doubler will not work as good as a decent telephoto or zoom, ended up with some fairly decent shots. (On a non-removable lens Camera, you just don't have much choice :)

I sent a few of these shots to some fellow photography buffs, and I got positive feedback.

I was using the 2X over a polarizer, and I was very suprised how a flash shot of my Cat turned out. Sure, there where many deletes, but using a fairly high aperature setting, I ended up with keepers that I would expect from a "Doubler" of any type on any Camera..

Hi, thanks to your opinions i didn't buy opteka. My question is, if any of you tried panwebi lens for a80 or any other camera?

 

I have canon ps a80 and i would like to buy a telephoto and wide lens for it. Do you have any feedback on using canon or raynox lens or maybe other cheaper and good quality lens?

thanks for help

I have used adaptor lenses with digital cameras for several years with mixed results. Like most contributors on this site, I have found that you clearly get what you pay for.

 

My current camera is a Nikon Coolpix 5700 and I needed more wide angle than the 34mm or so equivalent that the lens zooms to at the widest setting. I would have bought Nikon original, but since only 0.8x and fisheye are available, I decided on a Raynox DCR-6600PRO, it is a 0.66x adapter. I have used this lens both outdoors and indoors with external flash with decent results. At f2.8, the sharpness decreases noticably around the edges if viewed with 100% zoom on a computer screen. At f5.6, I cannot detect any degradation. I can detect minor vignetting in the top right corner only.

 

I also bought a cheaper 0.38x lens made by Bower. Though sold on eBay specifically for my camera, it does not work at all. The vignetting is so bad I have to zoom in quite a bit to get rid of the shadows in all 4 corners. Effective full frame usability puts it more at the 0.7x level with Nikon Coolpix 5700, even with a very short barrel adapter.

 

I previously used a Nikon Coolpix 880 with Nikon original 0.63x and 3x adapters. These lenses provided excellent quality. Again, you get what you pay for with adapter lenses. Do your research and make sure that the lens you buy will actually work with your camera. If you plan to use it the lens more than occasionally, spend the extra $$$ on a good lens.

I just bought a Canon A75 and was going to buy the Digital Concepts lenses and am very glad I did not.

Could you, please recommend a good 2x or 3x and 0.5 or 0.45 lense?

Thank you,

Laurent Urich

so dital and opteka (and did i hear phoenix?) are garbage, can anyone recommend some good wide angle and telephoto lenses for the S7000?

I did not see the discussion before I bought the opteka 0.45X wide angle and 2.2 tele. After I tested that the wide angle is about 0.8x.

The tele is not realy 2.2x after comparing with a tele 2.0x I had. It definitly worse than 2.0 one. I am going to return them.

Has any one deal with the company called Panwebi-electronics?

I am thinking to buy some lenses from them but I do not know whether their lenses are what they exactly posted.

Thanks for help

I bought a Bower 2x tele converter from Panwebi on E-bay. after playing around with it for a bit, I am fairly satisfied with it. I have used the Opteka 2x converter with a 500mm lens, and hated it. The Bower converter seems to be a good bit higher quality, plus it allows me to use the auto-focus feature on my Rebel XT. for $70, inc. shipping it's not a bad deal.

I've seen these advertised on Amazon as well, and the Amazon reviews make them sound fantastic....

One of the main comments i have noticed is that these have metal frames whereas the Canon ones are cheap plastic ones.