Are you ready to be converted?
From wide to tele madness, may be an adapter and conversion lenses are your answer.
by Oscar Colorado

Intro
The S3 has a great lens range, but Canon decided to go further allowing this compact marvel to go wild.
The S3´s powerful x12 optical zoom may need a little extra if your photographing animals or any other distant subject. The tele converter will certainly help you to push S3 capabilities. The TC-DC58B Tele Converter Lens will give you an extra 1.5x optical zoom. That means that the S3 will have a telephoto end equivalent to 648mm (instead of the original 432mm).
In the other hand, we have the wide converter. With it the wide end of the S3 is about 28mm. That´s good for landscapes and interior photography. Probably you´d use this to capture the big outdoors scene. I find it more useful for interior photography where you sometimes need a wider lens.

Price
These are the prices of the converter set at Amazon:
Tele converter $100
Wide converter $134
Adapter+lens hood $29
Total= $263This particular review is about Canon adapter and converters, although there are other alternatives of cheaper converters.
Lensmate has some nice adapters and Raynox offers super macro to super tele adapters.

Size
When I see it besides a 5D, the S3 looks quite petit:

The S3 is a really good camera in such a compact form. It won’t fit in your jeans pocket, but certainly will in a jacket pocket. The thing is, with the adapter and converters forget about it, it is no longer a very compact camera and I have to carry a little bag because I feel the converters quite bulky (and heavy, specially the wide converter).

I think that one great advantage of the S3 is having such a good lens in a small package and that means (at least for me) a great alternative to my dSLR. My point is: the advantage of a compact size is lost when you use the adapter and converters.

Born to be wide
The 36mm wide aperture of the S3 doesn’t leave much room for tight interiors and leaves out of the scene some important parts. I do enjoy having a wide angle, but I’m not sure if the $134 plus the size plus the weight are the right price to have “just” 28mm.

Look at the shots: left 36mm, right 28mm


If you are not that sure of the wide capabilities of the conversion, what about going tele?

Shakin’ da house
Having a 12x factor is pretty impressive and going 18x is tempting. I don’t know if I’m being extra-picky but, to be honest, when I examined the tele shots for this review I didn’t find them so exciting.

36mm, 12x, 18x

Now, here’s the thing: once you put that tele converter you’ll see everything movin’ and shakin’. That’s great for rock & roll, but in photography that means blurred photos. Look at these examples (left 36mm, middle 12x, right 18x).

If you enlarge the last one you’ll see it is blurred. It is blurred! And it is blurred even with the S3’s image stabilization and I shoot this photo with a monopod. And it was blurred! OK, it was an overcast day and I shot at ISO 80, 1/15 sec at full 648mm. But anyway you should not underestimate that you’ll need a tripod, crank up the ISO (which is not great in the S3) and shoot in bright sunlight to obtain sharp images.

Optical loss
I confess I’m a pixel peeper. My first impression with the wide converter was that the photos had more chromatic aberrations but when I shot these set for this review I was surprised: there is actually very little (and maybe practically none) optical loss. There’s not additional chromatic aberration and there is not softness with both wide and tele converters. That’s quite something!
From these two photos, can you tell which one was taken with or without the converters?




Answer: the sharpest photos are those shot with the converters. Pretty good, huh?

Cool factor

OK, let’s admit it: the S3 looks extra cool with that adapter and that nice ultra-sonic lens cap.
I haven't mentioned that the adapter includes a lens hood. That's one nice extra that is not standard, my G7 adapter did not include such amenity.

A word of caution: if you buy the adapter, you may want to use an UV filter or a Polarizer filter. Do not use a filter and the lens hood at the same time or your lens hood will be attached to your filter forever. I did it and it was really difficult to undo. I found some other S3 owners having the same problem.

Overall opinion

The tele converter would be a good thing if you are into bird photographing or any other situation where going extra-tele is a must. If you do not need to catch a cheetah from your Range Rover in the middle of the Serengeti, maybe the tele converter is not such a good idea.

What about wide converter? Well, I like it more and find it more useful than the tele converter because I do a lot of tight interior photos and the 28mm is good to me. If you want to capture landscapes, great skies or small interiors, it is good but not excellent. For that price I would expect at least 24mm.

With practically no optical loss, a hefty price and a somewhat bulky addition to your photographic arsenal these converters are fun, but if you don’t examine yourself sincerely they may end in the closet.