Panasonic help - fisheye

[lil ben]

Im looking at the Panasonic hdc sd600 and possibly the sd700
They both seem really good cameras. Has anyone had any experience with either of them? Are the 700 models much better than the 600? Apart from the manual focusing capabilities of the 700

Also, it says that they have 35mm wide-angle lenses. What is this?

The filter diameter is 46mm, can anyone recommend any good fisheyes to fit this diameter, with minimum/no step up rings?
I was looking at some opteka fisheyes but the biggest one i have seen is 43mm


Thanks a lot in advance

P.S im from the uk

[al dolega]

Not sure which cameras those are, exactly, in US terms... I'm assuming they're the UK version of the TM700.

35mm is the minimum focal length of the lens (basically how wide the lens is when zoomed all the way out). 35mm is pretty wide for a camcorder. For "normal" filming, this is sweet, because when filming indoors and in tight spaces, you don't need a wide-angle adapter, which you do with most other camcorders.

For skate filming, it's still pretty cool, for the same reasons (good for long-lens filming in close spaces), but it makes choosing a fisheye adapter a little trickier. Since the camera's lens "sees" a wider angle, the back element of the fisheye has to be bigger, or else you'll get vignetting (black corners), where the camera is "seeing" part of the casing of the fisheye (not just the glass part).

So, you're looking at getting a fisheye with a rear thread/element that's bigger than the camera's threads (bigger than 46mm), and mounting it with a step-up ring. Check out the 58mm Opteka fisheye, a used Century MKII (preferably the 58mm threaded version), or a Century MKI if you're ballin'.

There's also a Nikon lens called the FC-E9 that has a 46mm thread and would mount directly to the camera, but it's going to have a lot of vignetting. You can zoom in with it, so the vignetting disappears, but that's a pain because it turns out different each time. It's also really long/big, heavy, and doesn't have any sort of lens shade/guard.

[andrew nemo]

buy my century optics mk2 for $400!