Fisheye conversion lens

Hi there. I have been looking at some fisheye conversion lenses and have found a few that appear to be of good quality. Some of

them say that they are meant for digital camcorders, but still have filter threads for attachment. Is there any reason why I couldn't just

slap of of these lenses meant for video recorders on the end of my trusty Canon AE-1 and start snapping pictures?

<p>I once used a Raynox fisheye converter on a Sony F717 camera. It may well have been a cam-corder attachment however, it was remarkably sharp well into the corners, cast very little vignette on my old Sony and rendered colours quite true to life. It was very heavy compared to the camera and made for an unbalanced unit for hand held work but all in all was a quality piece of glass.</p>

<p>I wonder about the field of coverage being enough on a 35mm film size. There are many wide-angle adapters available for the larger lenses, many of them reasonably priced.<br>

I have a couple of them, and they work sort of OK if you are stopped well down.<br>

I think one of the best of them was a Spiratone 0.17X adapter also sold by other vendors. Again, stopped down, it was fairly decent.<br>

Most of the current crop on eBay are 0.45X or so. Search for 'wide angle adapter" although with key word spamming they tend to show up everywhere.</p>

<p>You do realize that the results will not be equal to a real fisheye, but they're fun to play with, all the same. Sort of Lomo effect.</p>

<blockquote>

<p><em>"I wonder about the field of coverage being enough on a 35mm film size.</em>"</p>

</blockquote>

<p>Indeed. There's a big difference between using them on a tiny 2/3" CCD camera (11mm diagonal) and a full 24x36mm format (43mm diagonal). But there's no reason you can't slap one on the end of one of your FD lenses to see what you will get. But I certainly would not expect "remarkably sharp well into the corners" on 35mm film.</p>