16:9 lens

[<confused??>]

Hi..our station is looking at upgrading to 16:9 cameras....I would like to know can we still keep our lens's or do we need to change over to 16:9 switchables....thanks!

[<Twenty % Less Wide>]

If you use your 16:9 native 2/3 inch chip cameras in the 4:3 mode without the crossover lens you will loss 20 percent of you wide angle.

Let's say if your existing lens is 8mm on the wide side and 120 mm on the telephoto side and you shoot on the new 16:9 native chip camera in the 4:3 aspect ratio mode your lens will be like a 9.6mm to 144mm. If you plan on shooting in 16:9 you won't loose the wider field of view.

The crossover lens has a .8X zoom thru converter on the back side of the lens to correct for this loss. Its back by the 2 X extender. These cross over lenses are about $3,000 dollars more than the non crossover lenses. Something that is suggested is that you use a Century .8X Wide Zoom thru Wide angle converter to compensate for the loss when shooting in the 4:3 mode. However if you already shoot with the Century Wide angle converter with your native 4:3 camera and are used to the 6.6mm on the wide side you'll have a hard time adjusting to just having 8mm when shooting 4:3 on a 16:9 native block.

I think I've explained it.

[photogguy]

Huh?

[Curves Ahead]

uhhh...something about native americans.....or something.

[<Twenty %>]

Come on...somebody tell me I was right!!11 :)

[dinosaur]

An older (non-crossover) lens will work fine when the camera is in the 16:9 mode. I recently used one on a DVW 790 in 16:9 mode with no loss of width or vignetting.

I believe that its when you use a non-crossover lens on a switchable 16:9/4:3 camera in the old 4:3 mode that you lose that percentage of wide angle.

Confused yet?