Customer Reviews

Digital Concepts 37mm Tele & Wide Camcorder Lens Kit

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

After viewing the Flip MinoHD mod on youtube, I went to amazon to get me a adapter ring and a 37mm wide angle lens. After some searching I came across Digital Concepts kit that comes with two lenses (wide angle and Telephoto), 4 different size adapter rings, plus two carry sacks for your lenses. The cherry on top is that the wide angle lens is very crisp and every low (almost nothing) distortion on the edges of view finder. The best 15 bucks I spent in a very long time...

This is a great product!! The step up rings are great, there a lot of them. It attaches wonderfully to my 26mm miniDV camcorder lens. And, unlike what you see in the picture, they look pretty cool! And it says on them, "Digital High Definition Lens" now I don't have an HD camcorder, but they look fantastic! The only problem, however is this. If you have the wide angle lens on, and your camcorder set to 16:9, I got the inside edges of the lens on the screen, little dark sections in the 4 corners of the screen. However, if I zoom in a tad, I can't see them. And even with zooming in a tad, its still a much, much bigger view than without the wide angle lens on. I won't even take away a star for that. I give this 5 stars!

I have a panasonic SDR-H80 camcorder with a 70X optical zoom and a 37mm thread. I was a little wary of buying this product due to its inexpensive cost and some poor reviews, however, for $[...] with free shipping, I decided to take the risk. I ordered this product from DigitalGoja with standard shipping late Thursday night and revived it Monday morning.

I did find that the product description is incorrect. Possibly the description is from a pricier product Digital Concepts sells, as the product claims to include 7 adapter rings to fit various thread sizes, however, I (like many others) received a product that included only 3 adapter rings:

30mm, 30.5mm, 43mm

Luckily for me, the lenses are 37mm, which fit my camera without an adapter. However, if your threads are not 30, 30.5, 37,or 43mm, I would suggest not buying this product or finding a different adapter for it.

Upon opening the packaging, I was pleasantly surprised by the quality of the lenses. Both have a heavy-duty-like feel to them and thread incredibly easily! Even though I did not need the adapters, I put them on the lenses just to test the quality and ease of threading, which was fantastic. I was also happily surprised to discover that each lens comes with its own thread and lens cap (which was not mentioned in the description) and carrying bag (which was mentioned, but I did not realize that I would get one for each). The lenses also came with a cleaning cloth which was not included in the packaging, but in the bag it was shipped in.

One thing I would like to mention, because it is not included in the description, is that the product includes a 2X telephoto lens and a .5X wide angle. These figures are a little more or less than comparable products, and it was hard information to find unless you squint really closely at the product image.

I found that on my camera, when I was completely zoomed out, the wide angle lens has a tiny amount of vignetting in the corners, however, I had to zoom in less than 1X to remove them.

The telephoto lens, on the other hand, has a LARGE amount of vignetting when zoomed out, so if you require only a small amount of zoom, I would not recommend using this lens, HOWEVER, I had to zoom in less than 3X to remove the effect, and if you desire to zoom in quite a lot, I would definitely use this lens to reduce the amount of zoom required to get the shot you need, thereby reducing the amount of over-sensitivity and blur/lack of focus that you get when zooming in large amounts.
For example, I wanted a shot of a house window that was very far away. Without a lens, I had to zoom in 50X to get the shot, however, at this zoom, the image was very hard to stabilize and focus. Conversely, when I used my telephoto lens I needed only a 25X zoom to get the exact shot, which was much easier to focus and stabilize.

Overall, I am quite happy with the product I received, but for anyone looking to purchase this item, be aware that the description leaves quite a lot to be desired and that the items in question may not work with your camera if you need an adapter other than the ones I previously mentioned.

i got this for 15$ and im really glad that i did.
the fisheye is really wide,
the telephoto is an extra 3 or 4 optical zoom.
it came with 30-37,30.5-37,43-37mm adapter rings.
i have a canon fs100 so i had to glue on the 43-37mm adapter ring but it was well worth it. i like the fisheye more than the telephoto but they're both great lenses.

I have used these extensively and I like them alot. The wide angle view is a necessity to get 'filmlike' shots of alot of scenes. And the 2x zoom avoids your camera's digital zoom, whick simply enlagres the pixels and gets blury. Keep your zoom in the optical realm. However; they're are blury spots on the lens, though not bad. My Panasonic PV-GS320 overall picture quality looks better without the add-on lens. The effect makes the trade-off worth it. Excellent choice to begin with, or as a disposable lens. I expect to upgrage to better optical quality.

If you don't already have a wide-angle or 2x zoom lens, then i suggest you buy these. You won't regret it.

I mainly bought this lens for the wide angle lens and just thought I purchase the pack to try out the telephoto.

As many of the review states, you will get black edges around with the wide angle lens, but you can remove it by zooming in a little bit.

The telephoto lens is pretty bad and almost unusable. I will rarely be pulling it out, but I was kind of expecting it.

The adapter step up ring doesn't fit very well. I figured out the problem, and the cut on the thread on the step up ring was not evenly cut, but I ordered a separate one anyways, so it does not matter to me.

Overall, this is a decent wide angle lens with good quality to start with, but don't expect too much from this lens set.

I just spent the past 1 hour doing "before and after" shoots with and without these
lens on a JVC MS120...Overall impression. Keep them with you for special shots, but
do not leave them on your camera. They add about 2" in length to the camera, and it was no
longer a 'stick it in your pocket' camera, it becomes a 'carry it in your hand or in a camera bag'
camera. The zoom does zoom, both macro and distance. However the auto focus on the ms120 would not
keep up with the zoom of the lens. Perhaps a manual focus camera would work better.
The wide angle does capture wide angles, but it is not a particularly great improvement over
what the camera does by itself. The OTHER thing is that these lenses have a ring that shows
up at lower zoom settings..Kind of annoying. So bottom line is that Yes for the price you get
something that extends the range and capabilities of your camcorder. However not by very much.
But both lenses could come in handy for special, like group shots....
I do have to comment that the zoom lens macro feature was pretty good, I could almost see the microbes
crawling around the grass I was zooming on, but again the auto focus of my camcorder let me down.

Lens set includes rings 27, 28, 30, 30.5, and 34mm....... is what the writeup says.....but what you get is 30, 30.5 and 43mm adapter rings.....since my camera has 27mm, I was unable to use kit. Waste of time and effort. Description is wrong....

Wide Angle:
I have a nice Canon HF20 and sadly the only thing I did not like about my camera was the lack of area the lens captured. It was 12/23 when I decided I must get some sort of wide angle lens for Christmas Eve (as the kids open presents at midnight in my house) and I knew in order to get more I would need a wider lends. Now I did not want one that left dark areas around the corners, but I knew that I would get some with this lens. It is very minimalistic, at least on the screen of the camera, I've not yet uploaded them to my computer, so I will come back and add to this review when I do to see if it has more black than it seems.

Either way, unless you spend a lot of $$$$ for a pro type of wide angle lens, you are gonna get one with black around the corners. I think its a well trade off for the extra space you get in the shot.

Telephoto:
I will update this when I try it,however I do not expect it to be much use.

Shipping:
With a free year of Amazon Prime (Student) I ordered this Wed 12/23 and got it early afternoon 12/24 on time for what I needed it for. Awesome!

The wide angle lens is very nice. the telephoto lens is okay, but apparently the lens does not screw far enough on to the camcorder, creating a ghosting effect, for example, when taking a picture of the moon. The ghosting is only slight but it is enough to offset the detail that the 8-12 MP resolution offers. All in all, for the price, I recommend these.