Ab Work Outs: Canon TC-DC58N Tele Converter Lens for Canon A710, A700, A630, A640, A610, A620, A720IS, G3, G5 & G6 Digital Cameras Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)This lens is well worth the money if, like me, you bought the A710 IS in part for its 6x zoom, recording wildlife encounters is important to you, and you don't want to carry around an extra camera for such occasions.

The main shortcoming of this converter is that it increases the minimum focus distance (at camera's longest zoom) to a whopping 6 ft.At this distance, the field of view is about 7.6 inches wide.Without the converter, at longest zoom, you can get down to a view about 4.1 inches wide, at about 22 inches from the subject.So, regrettably this means that if you want to capture miscellaneous subjects in nature that may be approachable (butterflies, lizards, whatever), you can probably get a much better closeup without the converter.I suspect it will mostly sit in my bag just in case I see a large animal standing around (but not too far away), in which case it can really improve the shot (almost doubling the subject's size).

You will probably not use it unless the subject is really special and worth digging the converter out.But it is helpful that a large leatherette bag is included with this lens so you can leave the adapter attached to the lens and just pop the whole thing on and off.

In an effort to get closer to the subject, I have experimented with reducing the zoom while the converter is attached.This seems pretty useless.For example, at 1x the view was ca. 4 inches across, 2 inches from the subject.At around 2x, at closest focus, you get ca. 3.5 inches across at 2.5 inches away.At around 3-4x, the closest distance goes up to 6 ft.

Vignetting seems a minor issue because you will mostly use this converter when zoomed all the way out.However, I could imagine situations where you are mostly shooting distant elk or something and you want to take a quick landscape shot without removing the converter.FYI, slight vignetting starts to appear when you drop a little below the halfway zoom (maybe ca. 3x), but even at 1x (35 mm equiv.) where you have almost a completely circular vignette, you still have plenty of real estate left in your image so it is not a big deal if you know how to crop out the blackened edges; but it is easy enough to pop the whole thing off, so that is what you would do instead.

In the end, the best thing (for me anyway) would be a highly compact camera with a built-in 10 or 12x zoom with good optics.This doesn't exist yet, so I bought the next-best thing, the A710 IS with about half the zoom I'd like (but much more than the competition among good compact cameras).But once that commitment is made, it's definitely worth having the 1.75 teleconverter as well.I may even buy an extra adapter ($20) so I can quickly pop on/off either this or the closeup lens without having to screw things together.

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Product Description:

If the combined optical and digital zoom on the PowerShot G3 and G5 doesn't reach out far enough for your special purposes, add a Tele Conversion Lens that extends the optical range another 1.75x.

NOTE:Conversion Lens Adapter LA-DC58B required for use with the Canon Powershot G3 and G5 Digital Cameras.
NOTE:Conversion Lens Adapter LA-DC58D required for use with the Canon Powershot G6 Digital Camera

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