Century Optics 0.6 Wide Angle

S

steve997

Member
Hi guys,
I'm looking at purchasing the 0.6 lens for use with my HVX. I need it to do indoor shots of houses.
Is anyone using this converter lens and how have you found it ?

Also, does the hood have to come off when the converter is in place? What about if you're using a Hyson matte box ?

Regards,
Steve
 
Yes the hood comes off. Don't know about the Hyson matte box.

I'm so-so on the .6, it definitely makes the shot a lot wider but it's got a significant amount of barrel distortion too. If you want to save some dough I'll sell you mine. :)
 
personally like mine. it does give a bit of barrel distortion, but I only use it in situations where that is ok. Know that going in and yer fine.

Hood has to come off, as do any filters you have screwed on to the front of the camera.

this little teaser for a project I'm working on has some shots with the .6 lens in it.

rtsp://qt.scoe.net/alan/zoomzoomteaser.mov
 
Barrel distortion is a substantial problem on the .6 wide adaptor.

If you plan on projecting your images on large screens you should avoid it, for small screens like computers or regular size TVs it's still there but looks less pronounced.

I don't know about the .75, anybody have some comments on it?
 
I've got all three of the Century adapters for the HVX. .3 fisheye, .6, and the .75 zoom through

Barrel distortion is of course very pronounced on the .3 with a huge field of view. It's a very specialized lens where the distortion of a fisheye lens is desired. Everyone here already knows what the .6 looks like, the .3 is at lest 2x worse. The .3 also has chroma distortion on the frame edges...but the center is pretty good for an adapter.

The .75 is a really nice adapter. The Barrel distortion is significantly reduced from the .6, and you can zoom through. So you can leave it on and frame with zoom for those occations where that quick frame and shoot approach is warranted. I've used it for feature shooting and the results were very satisfactory. It's great when you just need a little more field of view, but don't want the heavy distortion of the .6.
 
It's actually surprisingly good. Out of curiosity I just shot a res-chart to see, and the sharpmess fall off is barely discernable.
 
I really like my .6 Century.

Here's a reason I've not seen anyone bring up...

...Ever been frustrated that your horizontal FOV is limited when shooting cropped 4:3 SD with the HVX? Using the .6 Century when shooting cropped SD will give you back a good approximation that original 16:9 HFOV, and the most objectionable barrel distortion is cropped off...

Regards,
 
Hi all

The Century Optics is an afocal attachment: it changes the FOV by changing the diameter of the beam of light entering the camera (like looking through a telescope from the wrong end). That's why it introduces a lot of barrel distortion: it's either that or a lot of astigmatism, coma, chromatic aberration and what not. (Well, what else is that it could be cured by aspherical optics but it could end up more expensive than the HVX, and I think few of us would pay that for wide FOV.)

I mention this because the Red Eye is not an afocal attachment (though it's very attractive because it's light - presumably because it uses resin for the optical elements - and screws on like a filter). It appears to work by shifting the rear nodal point, which means it is focused by using the back-focus adjustment. In fixed lens DV cameras, it relies on the lens being able to focus very close up: I'd advise confirmation from the manufacturer that it'll work on the HVX before slapping in an order, and that the deep hood of the HVX does not vignette at widest FOV.

Anyone with experience of the Red Eye? Please report back.

cheers
Tom
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top