Photography can become a pretty expensive hobby. Especially if you don’t think carefully what you really need for your shooting. A lot of professional photographers give the advice to save your money for good quality gear and not wasting your money for crap. In general, I agree with them. But the expectation on the quality level can be very different and this has huge implications on the price. Nice tip to save your money for better gear. But how long do you need to save money to afford a 1.000 $ lense? And what would be a really cheap alternative in the mean time?
I’m a big fan of ultrawide angle shoots. I think the distortion gives picture a very special look. But the special lenses by Nikon and Canon for such shoots are around 1,000$. Is there an alternative? Not, really if you are a perfection guy. But if you can make some small compromises, you get pretty great results with a wideangle lens adapter. It is a lens that you put in front of your normal lens. I have a 18mm-105mm zoom lens and bought for 30$ a .45x lens adapter. Thus I get with the adapter something around 9mm. Ingredible !!!
Pro:
– really cheap. Around 30$
– It is very practical, because you do not need to change the lens for a wide angle shot
– It is slimmer than a normal wideangle lens
– Sharpness is decent in the center part of the lens
– It comes with the capability to use your normal lens as marco lens (pretty distorted in the corners, but you can use if you have nothing else).
Cons:
– It has a very small black vignette (It doesn’t bother me much. Sometimes it fits nicely to the image and sometimes I correct the distortion with photoshop and get ride of the black vignette)
– It is more distorted in the corners (But every ultrawide angle lens has that)
– It has more aberration than normal wide angle lenses (But every ultrawide angle lens has that)
– Not very sharp in the corners (But every ultrawide angle lens is distorted in the corner and thus not really sharp there)
– Not so fast than normal wideangle lenses (Usually not such an important issue for wideangle shots)
(Warning: Don’t buy a tele zoom lens adapter!!! Same concept, but the result is horrible)
How good are the results for 30$. Here are some of my results:
Here are some shots, where I corrected the distortion with photoshop lens correction
One example of a ultra macro shot (100mm and the macro lupe of the wide angle adapter. As already mentioned the quality is much inferior):
Hope you like the photos
Best
Werner
Related Post:
Great shots with a simple, economic solution…
Learned something new and interesting from you today!
Prozit!
Fun way to experiment with the ultra wide format.
Hi Edward,
just checked out your stuff. Great work.
More recently, I use my favorite Tokina 11-16/2.8. But this adapter is still very nice tool of trade.
All the best
Werner
Hi Leo, get that you jump by. I plan to continue here to post some ideas. Thanks for the encouragement.
Hey, what camera do you use if you’re using such a cheap lens? I’ve just got a Canon Powershot S5, and I bought a cheap (~$40) .45 wide angle to play with it, as well, but my results don’t look half as nice as yours.
.-= Jake´s last blog ..Editing =-.
Hi Jake,
I used for the shots a Nikon D40 and later a D90 with a 18mm-105mm zoom lens. It works fine with this lens at 18mm and generates this nice almost fish-eye effect.
I had bad experience with my 50mm prime lens (bad this could be also because I used a step up ring that biases the optics maybe). I would assume it works fine with every DSLR at 18mm.
I don’t know so much about the Canon Powershot. Maybe the bigger DSLR lenses bring a little bit of advantage. If your widest focal length is 35mm you can only generate 18mm. Maybe in my examples the inferior quality in the off center is hidden by the distortion.
Hope that helped
All the best
Werner
Finally, the photos are mostly HDR and heavily post-processed. That doesn’t change the sharpness or optics, but I hope it improved the impression of the shot 😉
EXACTLY what I’ve been looking for! Thanks so much!
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I’m not so certain I acknowledge.
Hi Werner,
Your tips are great! I have a Canon 50D and I would love to buy a lens adapter. I’m not well-versed with lens adapters and was wondering if you might know of where I should look to buy one?
Thanks!
Mal
you find such lens adapter I showed above everywhere on ebay.
http://cgi.ebay.com/58mm-45-Wide-Angle-Lens-CANON-G7-G9-S2IS-S3IS-S5IS-/230469135309?cmd=ViewItem&pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item35a907ebcd#ht_1494wt_1069
All you need to care is the lens size for the filter. I have 67mm for my filters. Indicated Brand doesn’t matter. Looks there are manufactured somewhere in China and than distributed around the world with different labels.
Cool thing is you can use it also for macro shots (if you do not have anything else). Check out my results here.
http://www.werner-kunz.com/world/2010/03/tech-ultra-macro-shot-on-low-budget/
Hope that helped
All the best
Werner
Great Thanks! So this adapter on ebay (the link) should work for the 50d despite it not being one of the models listed?
Your shots look excellent – I can’t wait to start playing around with wide-angle shots myself!
right!
all what you need to care is the filter size and that it looks similar to my photo of the adapter above. Than you should have similar results.
Very small warning: I get great results with my kit lens 18-105mm. On my 50mm with a step up ring the results are not so nice (But 25mm make anyhow no sense for me).
Once again: The link I send you it not for your camera, please look it up ebay and you will find the right size for yours (can be slightly more expensive because your camera is bigger).
Hi Werkunz
where did you buy the lens?
Hi Jerry,
somewhere at ebay.
Here are some examples
http://cgi.ebay.com/58mm-45-Wide-Angle-Lens-CANON-G7-G9-S2IS-S3IS-S5IS-/230469135309?cmd=ViewItem&pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item35a907ebcd#ht_1494wt_106
Best
Werner
Hi Werner, thanks for this very helpful post. I have a D90 as well so I’m pretty hopeful I could get the same results with the kit lens like in the photos you have here.
I know it’s been almost a year since you’ve written this, but would you happen to have the name of this lens adapter and any other sites I could purchase it from? I’m currently having a hard time finding it on eBay and amazon.com. 🙁 Thanks so much!
I think I’ve found it…
http://cgi.ebay.com/67mm-0-45x-WIDE-Angle-Macro-Conversion-LENS-67-0-45-/110631717296?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item19c22a09b0
you are welcome. It looks to me that they are all the same and just differ in the lable on it. Somewhere in China must be a big manufacturer 😉
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