Wide angle 0.7x adapter test and review
This is a test of Digital King DSW Pro 0.7x Wide Angle Lens Nikon/Pentax 52mm which I have recently received as a gift from Santa. I needed a wider angle for use for my landscapes or some architecture photography for being able to capture wider area or for dramatic effects with close-ups. I was searching for a proper ultra-wide angle lens but was scared by their price tags. I had a thought or two about the more affordable ones you can get on the internet like Zenitar 16mm Fisheye or more expensive Samyang 8mm or 14mm but eventually I turned my eyes towards wide angle adapters. After reading a lot of very mixed reviews, researching pros and cons and spending some hours looking at options I decided to give Digital King DSW Pro 0.7x a go and put it on my letter to Santa.
It arrived quickly in a nice box including soft pouch and front rear caps for protection. Built quality is very good. See photos below:
It arrived quickly in a nice box including soft pouch and front rear caps for protection. Built quality is very good. See photos below:
First of all I’ll maybe explain why I decided to get “only” 0.7x factor instead of more wide one that would give me more fish-eye effect or bigger coverage (there are 0.6, 0.42 or even 0.35x available): well, the thing I was concerned about the most was sharpness in the corners of pictures. I was afraid that anything with bigger factor (smaller number) would worsen the quality of a photo (the more bulging glass on top of my standard lens the more blur it would cause, I thought) and decided to stick to 0.7x.
I read a review by somebody claiming that the very Digital King adapter was good when used on standard kit Pentax lens with 52mm filter thread and it gave pretty bad results when attached to Sigma lens with 52mm thread used on the same camera. Sorry I cant recall where I read this to point you in the right direction but I made a phone call to a seller on Amazon asking why and if it was a case and he told me that this was because this adapter was custom made to fit standard kit lens 18-55mm. There are 2 versions of Digital King being sold on Amazon: one for Pentax/Nikon and one for Canon. Maybe I’m a bit naive and this division exists only for marketing purposes but it made a good impression on me and decided to get this very converter. (Well, a statement from the seller, while we were on the phone, that he would give me a full refund if I’m not happy also helped to make a decision:-) )
One more thing is worth mentioning here (because plenty of people still speak old SLR language): what wide angle will I actually get when I use this converter?
My lens is 18mm, so 18mm x 0.7 = 12.6mm (speaking DSLR), and translating it to SLR(35mm camera) it would be about 19mm (my camera sensor is APS-C which will give you a crop factor 1.5 so 12.6mm x 1.5 = 18.9mm). Sorry if I confused the matter here. So again, simply: on my digital camera - 12.6mm, which would be 19mm on 35mm camera.
Now to the test.
I took a camera to some random location, set it on a tripod, attached Digital King DSW Pro 0.7x to my lens, set ISO to 200 (lowest available), turned zoom to its widest angle and shoot 7 photos using self-timer from f3.5 to f22 aperture. I repeated this process with the converter detached with standard lens alone for comparison purposes, so you can see what loss in quality is there when using adapter comparing to standard lens quality. The day was overcast and quite windy, tripod solid :-)
Below you can see the pairs of photos in 2 rows: left shows photos with wide angle converter and the right shows the photos without the converter, both taken at the same f-stop. I didn’t make any corrections in software to the original photos but I resized them so you don’t wait too long for them to upload on the website. You can click on each one to see it in bigger size.
I read a review by somebody claiming that the very Digital King adapter was good when used on standard kit Pentax lens with 52mm filter thread and it gave pretty bad results when attached to Sigma lens with 52mm thread used on the same camera. Sorry I cant recall where I read this to point you in the right direction but I made a phone call to a seller on Amazon asking why and if it was a case and he told me that this was because this adapter was custom made to fit standard kit lens 18-55mm. There are 2 versions of Digital King being sold on Amazon: one for Pentax/Nikon and one for Canon. Maybe I’m a bit naive and this division exists only for marketing purposes but it made a good impression on me and decided to get this very converter. (Well, a statement from the seller, while we were on the phone, that he would give me a full refund if I’m not happy also helped to make a decision:-) )
One more thing is worth mentioning here (because plenty of people still speak old SLR language): what wide angle will I actually get when I use this converter?
My lens is 18mm, so 18mm x 0.7 = 12.6mm (speaking DSLR), and translating it to SLR(35mm camera) it would be about 19mm (my camera sensor is APS-C which will give you a crop factor 1.5 so 12.6mm x 1.5 = 18.9mm). Sorry if I confused the matter here. So again, simply: on my digital camera - 12.6mm, which would be 19mm on 35mm camera.
Now to the test.
I took a camera to some random location, set it on a tripod, attached Digital King DSW Pro 0.7x to my lens, set ISO to 200 (lowest available), turned zoom to its widest angle and shoot 7 photos using self-timer from f3.5 to f22 aperture. I repeated this process with the converter detached with standard lens alone for comparison purposes, so you can see what loss in quality is there when using adapter comparing to standard lens quality. The day was overcast and quite windy, tripod solid :-)
Below you can see the pairs of photos in 2 rows: left shows photos with wide angle converter and the right shows the photos without the converter, both taken at the same f-stop. I didn’t make any corrections in software to the original photos but I resized them so you don’t wait too long for them to upload on the website. You can click on each one to see it in bigger size.
As we can see on the above photos the converter gives really bad results at f stops 3.5, 4.0 and 5.6. But as soon as you close the apperture to f8.0 the improvement is quite dramatic and it contiues all the way till you reach f22, although the steps are not as much defined as when I jumped from f5.6 to f8.
You can see it better on below samples that are 100% crops of left bottom corner of each of the phots taken with the converter in order form f3.5 to f22 (click to magnify):
You can see it better on below samples that are 100% crops of left bottom corner of each of the phots taken with the converter in order form f3.5 to f22 (click to magnify):
Because weather was quite bad with strong winds at the time the photos were taken I decided to confirm above results with some more photos taken in more contolled environment. I prepared an jpeg file with some sample text, uploaded it onto TV and took photos of the screen.
Below again you can see the whole screen followed by 100% crops of left bottom corner. And again in progressing f-stop order from f3.5 to f22:
Below again you can see the whole screen followed by 100% crops of left bottom corner. And again in progressing f-stop order from f3.5 to f22:
Well, the results are conistent with previous photos taken outdoor and show that quality of pictures improves from f8.0 with further small improvements when you keep closing the apperture.
And yes, you noticed right - the converter gives very noticable barrel distortion. But this is something you might have expected as this is typical for wide angle lenses and, to be honest, it's something I was after. If you don't like it you can easily find a free software on the internet to "repair" this distortion. Never tried it myself but I came across it in the past.
See below a photo that better shows the barrel distortion (it was a grid of straight lines):
And yes, you noticed right - the converter gives very noticable barrel distortion. But this is something you might have expected as this is typical for wide angle lenses and, to be honest, it's something I was after. If you don't like it you can easily find a free software on the internet to "repair" this distortion. Never tried it myself but I came across it in the past.
See below a photo that better shows the barrel distortion (it was a grid of straight lines):
Time for a conclusion.
The 0.7x wide angle converter, namely Digital King DSW Pro used in this test, produces softer image than standard lens. You can also notice some chromatic aberration in high contrast parts of the image (see particulary right top corner when thin branches are placed against much brighter sky) but I think it's not too bad and it doesn't concern me. The thing I was afraid of the most was vingetting (which is not existent on the sample photos) and of course blur in corners of the picture. Well, the blur is significant at f3.5 to f5.6 and I'm not happy with the results, but from f8.0 onwards sharpness improves significantly and I find the quality of the photo usable, acceptable and fit for MY purpose.
You need to answer yourself a question whether you want to/can afford to spend from £300 to whatever on a proper wide angle lens or to spend around £70 on a wide angle converter, and also whether you will be satisfied with results provided by such a converter. Just prepare a balance sheet, fill it in with pros and cons and you will have your answer.
I'm personally quite happy with the quality of this adapter. Just need to remember to stay at f8 or - even better - above.
The 0.7x wide angle converter, namely Digital King DSW Pro used in this test, produces softer image than standard lens. You can also notice some chromatic aberration in high contrast parts of the image (see particulary right top corner when thin branches are placed against much brighter sky) but I think it's not too bad and it doesn't concern me. The thing I was afraid of the most was vingetting (which is not existent on the sample photos) and of course blur in corners of the picture. Well, the blur is significant at f3.5 to f5.6 and I'm not happy with the results, but from f8.0 onwards sharpness improves significantly and I find the quality of the photo usable, acceptable and fit for MY purpose.
You need to answer yourself a question whether you want to/can afford to spend from £300 to whatever on a proper wide angle lens or to spend around £70 on a wide angle converter, and also whether you will be satisfied with results provided by such a converter. Just prepare a balance sheet, fill it in with pros and cons and you will have your answer.
I'm personally quite happy with the quality of this adapter. Just need to remember to stay at f8 or - even better - above.
Update:
It has been almost 4 months since I started using this adapter. During this period I took much more photos and I must confess that with the time I was getting less and less impressed with this wide angle converter. Now I could describe the results I was getting only as "bearable". I found that in post-process I was using sharpening tool each time to achieve results I was happy with. And I don't mean sharpening only the blurry corners of the pictures but rather the whole frame had this "soft" look which I didn't like. Even with aperture settings at f11 or f16 it only improved slightly and to shoot outside with these settings you talking having a tripod with you all the time. For me it was not practical.
Well, I sold the Digital King DSW Pro 0.7x Wide Angle converter on Ebay recently and I think I'll start looking for a proper wide angle lens. Samyang 8mm and Peleng 8mm recently caught my attention. So maybe one day? ...
It has been almost 4 months since I started using this adapter. During this period I took much more photos and I must confess that with the time I was getting less and less impressed with this wide angle converter. Now I could describe the results I was getting only as "bearable". I found that in post-process I was using sharpening tool each time to achieve results I was happy with. And I don't mean sharpening only the blurry corners of the pictures but rather the whole frame had this "soft" look which I didn't like. Even with aperture settings at f11 or f16 it only improved slightly and to shoot outside with these settings you talking having a tripod with you all the time. For me it was not practical.
Well, I sold the Digital King DSW Pro 0.7x Wide Angle converter on Ebay recently and I think I'll start looking for a proper wide angle lens. Samyang 8mm and Peleng 8mm recently caught my attention. So maybe one day? ...
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