Customer Reviews

Kodak Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 0.7xWide Angle Lens (55mm)

5 star:		(25)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

the lens is sharp to the edges without distortion. sharp, sharp, sharp! excellent all glass quality, and it looks neat. people stop to ask me about it (i do scenery shooting) and it looks impressive.
as with any large lens, it partly covers the cameras built in flash. the flashes on any camera would not brighten the wide view anyway. the camera's normal built in wide angle is wide enough for indoor shots.
in sum, love the lens and it is a great price! great Kodak quality.

bought kodak wide angle lens for use with kodak camera and improved the variety and style of pics considerably...be aware that some kodak cameras will need an adapter (cheap) to use this type wide angle setup

This is a quality lens and works seamlessly with the P850. Camera focus and exposure work well with it. One neat thing is that if you do not zoom the built in camera zoom you get a picture bordered with the round barrel of the lens framing the shot. It is heavy so will need a monopod or tripod to get quality shots.

Let me start right out by saying that I had high expectations about the build quality and optical performance of the Kodak Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 0.7x Wide angle add-on lens after reading some of the other reviews, and this lens did not let me down!

It's incredible!

This converter lens is not even in the same class as some of the others that you will see out there. First it is an extremely high quality 4-element design, and stays with a conservative 0.7 ratio. Some others have fewer elements and try for much higher ratios like 0.5 or even 0.45 which limits their optical quality.

The 0.7 ratio is just fine and actually makes more of a difference than you might think (the difference between about a 35mm and a 24.5mm equivalent lens).

Here are a few things that haven't been noted by many reviewers:

- YES you will ALSO need to buy a 55mm lens adaptor to use this lens with a Kodak z710 (or other Kodak cameras, make sure to get the correct 55mm lens adaptor for your camera).

- YES you can ALSO use this lens with Panasonic FZ7, FZ8, FZ30 etc. Just buy the standard Panasonic 55mm lens adaptor. This is the same adaptor used for the 55mm ND filter and 55mm MC protector (not the plastic 52mm lens shade adaptor that comes with the camera). The Kodak Schneider-Kreuznach 0.7 wide angle converter is half the cost of the Panasonic version, and in my opinion much higher quality.

- The converter even works (and works incredibly well) on a Fuji S5200 camera. In fact this the only camera of those I have listed that does NOT need any 55mm adaptor, the Schneider 0.7 converter lens just screws right on, and fits like a glove.

Image detail is sharp down to the single pixel level from edge to edge (how much sharper does it need to be?).

Chromatic Aberration is well controlled, with only slight purple fringing showing up in ultra high contrast scenes like sunlight through trees.

There is a little barrel distortion, but it is relatively low for a wide-angle zoom lens.

Are there any negatives? Sure, nothing's perfect.

This lens sets in front of your main lens so any slight imperfections are magnified if you zoom with it in place; plus it was optimized for wide angle; so you should not expect to use much of the full 10:1 or 12:1 zoom range of your camera with the converter lens in place.

Technically this isn't really a big problem, because once you zoom up by about 1.5X you are back into your cameras main zoom range, and can just remove the converter to cover this range.

Note that the Panasonics FZ series Lumix cameras disable all zooming (and set to the camera to the maximum wide setting) as soon as you tell the camera that it is using a wide-angle-converter lens. The reason Panasonic gives for this is to insure optimum image quality. You could bypass this by not using the 'converter' menu setting on the FZ cameras, but then the image stabilization will not be recalibrated to allow for the 0.7 factor and will not work as well. Since this limitation still applies with the twice-as-expensive Panasonic version, the Kodak Schneider-Kreuznach version is still a bargain on this camera. (even as a fixed focal length wide angle)

Another issue is that the typical `super-zoom' camera (Kodak z710, Panasonic FZ7, or Fuji s5200), has a very complex zoom lens with a dozen or more optical elements, and with this add-on lens you are adding another 4 elements, so if you shoot towards the sun you have to be a little more careful about lens flare and reflections (sometimes they look really cool, but usually you are going to want to avoid them).

The quality of the multicoatings on the Schneider-Kreuznach Xenar 0.7x look about as good as any I have seen on any lens, so they did what they could to avoid these reflections, but they do show up under extremely bright contrasty conditions like shooting towards the sun (even without the converter lens, you can get some reflections under these conditions).

If you avoid these extreme situations, you will get perfectly clear images that look incredible, so I don't want to make this seem like more of an issue than it is, but it is something to consider so you won't be disappointed the first time you run into it.

If I had one wish-list item, it would be for someone to offer a custom four-lobe flower petal style wide-angle lens shade for this lens (or even better for Kodak to supply one with the lens).

For those that haven't read the other reviews, there is also a problem with this lens while using the camera's built in pop-up flash, because the Kodak Schneider-Kreuznach 0.7 converter lens is so large that it's front partially blocks the pop-up flash leaving a shadow in the image.

Since I mentioned a few other cameras that this converter lens can be used with, I thought that I had better also mention that even though the lens will indeed work very well with these other cameras (Fuji s5200, Panasonic FZ series), ALL of them will ALSO suffer from the same flash shadow issues.

One admittedly kludgy solution, is to rig a small piece of foil about 4 inches square in front of the camera's pop-up flash at a 45 degree angle, so the flash gets bounced up off the ceiling. It takes some tinkering to get this to work, and obviously the trick won't work outside or with a dark colored ceiling, but with a little fiddling, I found that by bouncing the flash off the ceiling, I could get around the dreaded lens shadow problem. You loose a lot of flash power, but at ISO 200 or 400 you can still light things up pretty well with this trick out to a distance of several feet.

For more flash range, there are fairly reasonably priced slave flashes you can use to add an external flash to a point and shoot type camera that does not have a hot-shoe (search Amazon for "Cameta Digital Slave Flash"). Be sure to check the specs of the flash you plan to buy to make sure it can properly slave trigger from the funny double flash that most digital cameras generate and can go nice and WIDE to cover this lens. Also, be aware that even a fairly powerful external flash may not completely drown out the shadow from the camera's pop-up flash (which unfortunately must still fire to trigger the slave). The solution to this, once again, is to rig a little piece of foil or something similar on the cameras pop-up flash to direct it upward or to the side, so it can still trigger the slave but won't add it's own partially shadowed contribution in the forward direction. I know this may be more bother than some are willing to go through, but using a powerful external flash in bounce mode gives much better flash pictures anyway, so this is a good option if you really need to take ultra wide flash shots with this lens.

Despite the lack of the lens shade, and the flash issues, I have really been pleased with this lens's overall performance, and can highly recommend it to anyone who would like nice wide angle performance.

I ourchased this lens for my P850 Kodak camera to expand my wide-angle viewing options. I have had other Kodak lenses for an eariler camera, and was very happy with them. While not a fisheye lens (and therefore not allowing for fisheye effects), the lens definitely increases the field of view dramatically. Pictures taken with the lens are very sharp with no distortion, as sometimes happens with accessory lenses. The only issue I have had is the lens does add weight and bulk to the camera while in use, but it is well worth it for wide shots.

I have the Kodak Z740 and you can't use the built in flash when using this lens. It may be the same for other models too. Update: after becoming very familiar with the Kodak Z740 camera, it seems this lens does not work with flash. But it takes great photos and you can easily fill in flash with any editing software. I emailed Kodak about this and asked why doesn't the popup flash work with this lens but I got no response. I only see my review here. Apparently some of you do not agree with my review but no one is writing anything. I'd like to learn more and hear other's opinions on how they use this lens without the flash option.

Well, this lens does work wonderfully to expand your angle for better shots, but if you don't have good lighting, you end up with pictures that are worthless. I suggest never using this in poor indoor lighting as the flash that comes on the DX6490 does not clear the top of the wide angle lens and therefore becomes useless. Best for outdoor shots or areas where overhead and backlighting are sufficient enough to take pictures without the use of a flash. Plan ahead before just attatching the lens and taking pictures. Also remember that because you can't use the flash option, you will need to stabilize the camera better to avoid blurry shots. Otherwise, this lens is excellent. It fits easily into my camera bag, is simple to attach (with the lens converter of course) and takes great shots without the fisheye effect. Other than the inability to use my flash with the lens, I think it is great!

Multi-element add-on lense used with Kodak DX-7590 provides good wide-angle capability. Note that this is a very large add-on lense (screws into DX-7590 extension-piece which costs an additional $20). Does the job well in most portraiture and scenic applications, however two caveats:
(1) Slight curvature of field in extreme corners of wide-angle shots (ie, corners of shots may be noticeably out of focus). Suggest cropping to 95% of original picture to maintain sharpness across plane.
(2) Size of lense will render pop-up flash and outside the lense focusing system (Ultra-sonic) less functional.

This item will work just fine on any camera with 55mm threaded lenses. I'm using it on a FZ50 and it gives me a 24.5mm equivalent wide angle. I'm extremely happy.

Excellent optic. About the widest angle you can get without Fish Eye Effect. Requires an additional adapter on most cameras.

It will NOT work with the flash units built into most cameras. In fact almost nothing that attaches to the front of the camera will work with the built in flash or the secondary focusing system. This is so large it might cause shadows with some Shoe mount flash units depending on the unit and settings.

You need to reprogram the Focus system on most cameras so that all focusing is done Thru The Lens. (TTL Focus.) For many models this means you have to dig in the camera settings and find the Accessory Lens item. Turn that on. For some reason Kodak didn't put this with the rest of the Focus controls in some cameras.

These limitations apply to most lenses, hoods, and filters, especially on cameras that need an adapter to mount them.

Keep the lens capped on both faces and in its bag whenever is it not in use. The front glass is only barely behind the rim and would be easily damaged.

Using large amounts of Zoom with this lens can produce some unexpected results. Depending on the camera, you may not be able to zoom in very much at all before odd things start to happen to the images. Make sure you play with it before doing anything important. Some effects may be interesting and useful.