Opteka .45x HD² Wide Angle Lens for Canon Powershot G10 & G11 Digital Camera
Amazon.com price : $29.95
In Stock.
Nothing changes the way you see the world like High Definition², and no company does High Definition² like Opteka. In the professional setting, Opteka’s glass optics define High Definition. Change the way you view the world. Enjoy outstanding detail, enjoy enhanced clarity, enjoy Opteka. Since it fits right over your camera’s existing lens system, a wide-angle converter affects the full zoom range of your camera’s lens. A wide-angle converter increases your angle of view – sce…
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Tagged with: .45x • Angle • Camera • Canon • Digital • HD² • Lens • Opteka • Powershot • Wide
Filed under: Canon PowerShot SX20IS
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After many comparing and contrasting with the other lenses, I found that this actually works really good for me. I’m not a professional but I do like taking good photos. Recently i’ve been taking action shots in football games and basketball games. My recently purchased G10 wasn’t really helping me out since it wasn’t up to its full capacity. So i decided to get some lens for it.
I must say, the Opteka .45x HD2 Wide Angle Lens really helped me out! A lot! The ghosting went away and also the lens flare. My pictures came out much better than last time.
As for the delivery, it delivered right on schedule! Now I just need to buy a flash system for my camera, and maybe it’ll deliver me even better pictures than without.
The lenses are also very cheap. Don’t hesitate. It’s worth your money.
I guarantee it.
I am a professional photographer so what was I doing buying a $30 piece of glass for my Canon G11? Well sometimes I have to take elevated photographs of homes from the top of a 40ft mast and need a light weight camera and wondered if I might get away with this wide angle lens added to the G11. The G11 is just not wide enough to often get the whole house in and I finish up stitching two images together. I must admit however I was expecting to return it to Amazon after trying it out.
My 4 star rating is based on the price and, for the price this is not to bad piece of glass. In fact it is much better than I expected and I’m keeping it.
Now there are issues. Chromatic aberrations are quite high (color fringing at the edges) much of which I can correct, or at least reduce in Photoshop Camera RAW. There is also some curvature at the edges of the frame noticable on verticals. PT Lens software can help here but at the cost of loosing some of the image. However even the G11 prime lenes used alone has noticable chromatic aberrations at its widest setting. For me the Opteka lens would not be good enough for professional home interiors where verticals are important. Here I rely on a Nikon D300 + Sigma 10 – 20mm which is good but still not perfect.
So this lenes is by no means perfect and nor should one expect it to be for $30. It does come with the extension tube that fits directly onto the G11 body (and I think also G10’s) – so don’t buy the extension tube as a seperate item. That is not always clear from the sales information. The tube is in two parts and for using the wide angle Opteka lens only the bottom half is used. If you use the whole tube you get a black ring around the image creating a circular looking picture. Nothing like a fisheye just a circle instead of rectangle, although I believe Opteka do make a fisheye lens.
I think for landscapes and groups of people this may do the trick and at a modest price provided the prints are not too big.
I’ve bought lens attachments like this before and learned quickly that they usually hurt more than they help. I tried very hard to find information about this particular lens but there isn’t much out there, so I decided to just go ahead and get it, without expecting much. I was pleasantly surprised when I received it because the quality was much higher than I expected and it also came with a metal Bower lens attachment for the G11, equivalent to the Canon LA-DC58K ($40) which clicks into the bayonet mount around the lens. I was expecting the adaptor to be cheap plastic with 52mm threads. I didn’t know beforehand that the threads on the adaptor and the rear threads on the lens are 58mm, not 52mm, which is what I’d seen in pictures. This works out great because the lens can also be screwed onto most SLR kit lenses as well. There is absolutely no vignetting when used on the G11, with slight softness at the corners, but it focuses and performs great. There is very obvious barrel distortion, which some weirdos out there really freak out over. I don’t mind it, and it can be easily removed in Photoshop or equiv. Chromatic aberration and flaring seem minimal. I haven’t figured out yet what size the front threads are on the lens, but I figure it to be about 72mm, so other filters like polarizers and what not can be added. The macro attachment doesn’t offer the G11 much because of it’s already awesome macro ability. The flash and optical VF are severely crippled with the attachment on, but that’s to be expected. Overall, I’m extremely glad I bought this lens and I hope I offered some information that will make others more at ease about purchasing it. The filter adaptor alone makes it worth it.