Wide angle lens - eBay caution

[disjecta]

I bought a wide angle lens from eBay last week and thought it was a pretty good deal:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... :EOAB:US:6

What I received was a piece of crap. The supposed .5 wide angle was closer to .95 with almost no discernable difference between the original lens and the attachment. Also the quality of the optics is not good.

Now I should have known that "you get what you pay for" but this is just blatant misadvertising. The lens is simply not .5 and I don't know how they can get away with saying that it is.

So beware, my friends, anything bearing the name "Opteka" must be avoided at all costs.

I am hesitating leaving negative feedback for 47th Street Photo until they respond to my email demanding my money and the cost of return shipping back.

Steven

[marc]

Did they give it to you with the box shown in the picture? Did you ask them any questions before you bought it? Such as: Does this cut any given focal lenth in half? To me .5 would imply that but I do not know if this number can be taken for face value. Did any instructions come with it indicating it's potential?

[marc]

The before and after photo indicates about a .5 reduction. Something must have gone wrong like maybe they gave you the wrong lens.

[disjecta]

The lens is exactly as they said it was. The box indicates that it is a .5 lens and even the pictures on the box show a gain of about x2 in the wide angle view. It's perplexing and others have experienced the same thing.

Unfortunately I learned this after the fact. I did a search on the Web under the name of the lens and found multiple photographic forums where users where experiencing the same problem and frustrations.

[marc]

Has anybody come up with a possible explanation for this. Is it only compatable with certain optics? Maybe the macro feature has something to do with it. Have you tried adjusting this?

[skyliner]

Perhaps I'm missing something here but are you trying to use this digital lens on a cine camera (long lens to film path) as opposed to a digital still camera much shorter lens to sensor path. ?
This could be the problem

[disjecta]

It shouldn't make a whole lot of difference. I've got a Century Optics .7 wide angle lens and when I look through the lens itself (not on the camera), I can clearly see a huge difference in the image versus what my eye sees. When I do the same with this lens, there is barely a difference.

THe lens is in 2 parts, a macro "ring" part for the back and the wide angle part in front. There's no way to make the lens fit or focus properly on either my video camera or Super 8 without the macro part, which is actually magnifying the wide angle lens.

I don't know, it's a weird lens and I'm getting rid of it.

[Skylab001]

does the lens have a removable MACRO section...it looks like it does from the picture. Many of these lens' have them and don't have quite the same WA with the MACRO portion attached. Just a thought....

[ericMartinJarvies]

i have experienced with a half dozen or more wide angle attachments that in some instances they do not work correctly with particular lenses, which is to say they do next to nothing to open up the image. for example, use the nizo III wide angle attachment on a lens other then a schneider ... see what happens

eric

[disjecta]

Eric, why don't you spoil the surprise and tell me what happens?

[ericMartinJarvies]

nothing happens. or very little happens. the curvature of a particular lens plays a significant role in mathing a particular or specific adapter. for example, several months back i had forgot to bring my sony wide adapter with me to the beach for a family outing, but i did have my s8 beaulieu that happened to have the schneider lens and nizo wide adapter i nthe bag. i pulledo ut the adapter and it fit like a bottle cap over my sony's fixed lens. i thought to myself .. great! but then i looked at the lcd and noticed nothing wide about the scene. so while i was looking, i removed the adapter and noticed it did not do a darn thing. not anything ... it served absolutely no purpose other then to skew things just a bit, or make it appear mildly fisheye'd. but the coverage/scene area was not in the least bit wider. and so that is when i started messing around with adapters and lenses .. back the in collimate my own lens period

[tgreathead]

disjecta,

I had the same problem with a lens like this and finally figured out the solution after much frustration. If you unscrew the macro attachment there should be a sopt on the inside of the ring with a very small notch. Use something small (paperclip, etc.) to unscrew the fitting. This is a piece that holds the macro glass against the rim. After you take that out the macro ring is just an open adapter, like a step-up ring. Screw it back into the wide lens and put it on the camera:)

Hope this helps,
--Taylor

[disjecta]

Thanks for the info. I tried your suggestion and, although I got rid of the macro lens and it fits on my camera, it will not focus correctly. I can't get anything to even approximate sharpness. Did you have this problem? If I hold the lens about an inch away from the camera's lens, it begins to get sharp but what's the point, you lose full wide angle viewing.

[tgreathead]

I actually bought mine for my video camera. I haven't tried it with my film cameras yet but plan to at some point.

The focus is going to be shortened to the distance of the Wide Angle lens itself. So if the WA is screwed in 1 inch from the camera lens, the focus will be 1 inch. The problem that comes up is how close your camera can focus. I tried my WA lens on my digital camera and found that I had to set the manual focus to almost the closest Macro to get the image, but then it was fine. If your camera doesn't have Macro then you might be out of luck.

--Taylor

[disjecta]

It doesn't have a macro but I appreciate your trying to help me.

I still stand by my opinion of this lens - it's a piece of crap 8)