0.45x Wide angle lens Converter - is it worth it

[Alkabir33]

Hi, I don't have the budget at the moment for a dedicated wide angle lens (e.g. the sigma 10mm - 20mm) so have been considering buying a wide anlge converter lens priced around £45 to fit on my 18 - 75mm Canon lens.

Has anyone used one before? Know anything about them? I would guess they are nowhere near as good as the 'real thing' but would a converter make any difference at all?

Cheers

[chris-p]

Hi Alkabir,

I presume it's one of those that screws on to the lens filter thread? They're often found on eBay for not very much money.
If it is one of those, they are a bit of a double edged sword. Firstly, they DO work. You do get a pretty wide view (on your 18mm wide end it works out at the equivalent of 8.1mm) too. The main downsides are geometric aberration (they tend to bend the view pretty badly), refraction(you get stray light trapped between the cheap glass of the converter and the lens leading to flare, washed out images etc) and chromatic aberration (lots and lots and lots of colour fringing).

However, if you know that these problems exist it's often easy enough to work around most of them. It really depends on how much the converter is. If it's less than £20 and you're prepared to work around it's shortcomings, you could get some decent shots with it.

[plasticmorph]

i have a 0.45 screw in. Its very nice for arty shots