wide angle converter/adapter?

[cleo7613]

This may seem a naive question!

Loss of IQ aside, has anyone any experience adapting/mounting a wide angle converter to an M mount lens to increase the angle of view? (there are plenty of converters on the market for P&S digicams and camcorders... of varying degrees of quality) - is this a feasible way of compensating for the 1.53x factor?

Your replies welcome...

 

[Finder]

You would be better off buying a lens that gives you the angle of view you want.

You could try it, but there are a number of issues:

The weight could shorten the life of your lens by placing stress on the focusing mechanism.
It may not optically fit and you may get vignetting
Image quality would not be as good - loss of resolution, distortion, etc. However, since you are not using a 35mm image plane, the results may be acceptable.

I am not sure why you would want such an expensive camera and put such a compromise on it. But you certainly can try - image quality is subjective and you may be satisfied with the results.

 

[cleo7613]

I'm not necessarily advocating this but thought the idea might be worth considering - if there is a high quality compact adapter around, one advantage that comes to mind is that the lens could still be rangefinder coupled...

 

[Finder]

I'm not necessarily advocating this but thought the idea might be worth considering - if there is a high quality compact adapter around, one advantage that comes to mind is that the lens could still be rangefinder coupled...

That is an interesting thought - would the rangefinder still be accurate with the converter? Most converters use a camera with AF where the camera would naturally conpensate for changes in the optics.

 

[Doug]

May not focus correctly... Adapters like this were not unusual for the many leaf-shutter fixed-lens RF cameras of the 1960s... My Dad's Petri 7s has such a set of wide and tele adapters, with auxiliary viewfinder. With these, as I recall, one focuses normally, but then you need to refer to a chart to correct the focus manually for the presense of the adapter.

And my wife's much more recent Nikon 990 digicam has a similar set for it too. We've noticed a marked effect of barrel distortion with the Nikon wide adapter.

I'd say, all-in-all, this is not a decent quality solution. Especially for a Leica, for which we have better expectations! 🙂

 

[pfogle]

...I am not sure why you would want such an expensive camera and put such a compromise on it. But you certainly can try - image quality is subjective and you may be satisfied with the results.

perhaps this (link) is a case in point?