Conversion Lenses

[filmoreha]

Hi all, I am thinking of picking up a conversion lens or two, probably a wide angle and/or fish eye. I'm curious if anyone has had experience with these and if so would you recommend using them and/or have brand you recommend?

I'm not exactly on a tight budget, that is I could go out and buy an actual lens, but I probably wouldn't use it enough to justify buying one. I just want something to play with on the weekends.

Cheers!

[OsmosisStudios]

Most conversion lenses are terrible. The fisheye ones *can* be fun as a "toy" lens, but it's not going to be very good for anything more intense than that.

[inkista]

Have you considered the Samyang 8mm/Opteka 6.5mm/Vivitar 7mm fisheye? (It has a lot of names, as it gets rebadged by a lot of different companies). It might be within your "toy" price range. Here in the US, it's just shy of $300 new on Amazon. You could possibly also find a Zenitar 16mm fisheye for around $200 on eBay or the usual haunts.

Or you could do what I did--learn to shoot cubic panoramas with one and do it so much that eventually it's worth it to blow the $600 on a good fisheye.

[filmoreha]

Thanks for both of your inputs. I have also found that the general concensus on conversion lenses is that they are terrible as far as image quality. Might still get one though since mega image quality isn't what I will be going for. I will look into above recommend lense as well. Thanks again! :-)