A95/A80 Lens Choices. Good? Bad?

[newtocanon]

Hey All,

I have recently aquired an A95 with just what came with it retail. I want to add a few lenses to my bag so I can be ready when I travel a lot this summer. After searching a lot on here and reading reviews I have narrowed my choices down to the following.

Adapter:
Lensmate 37mm

Telephoto:
Tiffen Mega Plus 2X 37mm w/spacer ring

Wide-Angle Converter:
Tiffen .56X 37mm w/ spacer ring


Has anyone had bad experiences with this combination?
Does Tiffen make quality products?

I would most likely be shooting outdoor inanimate scenery, good family pics, but want to be able to shoot anything I can see.


Thanks,
Clay

[Bodryn]

I don't have experience with any of these products but from what I know they would probably perform well. I am planning to acquire those and other items. Lensmate has been mentioned elsewhere on this website awhile back and I believe they would be good products. You can even see actual test photos on the Washington State website as you may have seen. I looked at them and was very impressed at the quality/clarity of the results over wide zoom ranges. Also the 37mm size made these much better to use with the A95 viewfinder - the Canon 52mm adapter and lenses are so large that the viewfinder becomes rather unusable and you must rely on the LCD image. I hope somebody else comes forward who has direct experience with these products.

[snowrdr]

I have the Canon TC-DC52 2.4x lens for my A95. I don't use it alot but seems to work ok. Here is a shot from last Thursday of Mt. Hood from down at the ski area parking lot. I was not all the way zoomed in and the quality is reduced to 60% to fit as an attachment... http://www.photography-on-the.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gifhttp://www.photography-on-the.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gifhttp://www.photography-on-the.net/forum/images/smilies/icon_biggrin.gif

[Paul Engen]

I have no experience with the Tiffen lenses, but I have experience with the Lensmate products. Very good build quality and very good service. Though they sendt me a wrong spacer ring (to Norway) - they told me just to keep the wrong one and they emediately sendt me the right one (free of charge). A good tip is to buy one adapter for each lense you buy. It becomes much quicker to change the lenses (snap - snap :-).

I use the Canon wide ange converter and are very pleased with this! I also use the Canon TC-DC52 2.4x tele converter. It works well with the Lensmate spacer, but the problems with chromatic abberation becomes slightly worse. I guess you know that you can remove such problem to great extent in Photoshop. (And if you haven't digged into USM - unsharp mask - to finalize your pictures, you should really check up a couple of articles on the Internet as well. You get rid of that "soft-filter" feeling on your images. I have investigated the matter the last few days with great results!!! But that's another matter.)

It would be nice if you could read my "Canon Powershot A95 - mechanical zoom problems?" and tell me what you find.