Wednesday, April 4, 2007

Limitations of The Static Adapter

Besides the grain, the other thing you will notice immediately with a static adapter is how much cleaning you have to do. Even very small pieces of lint or dust can ruin your image if it lands on either the ground glass or condenser. I made the mistake of using the pad end of a lenspen to clean the ground glass and now there is this little black spec embedded in one of the very small pits. Use air, brush, and microfiber cloth to clean your groundglass.


The dust speck is on the lower left quadrant when rotated 180 degrees. Two more fibers of lint next to it which got muddled by YouTube's compression.

The static adapter is small and light. But the attached lens isn't. I'm using a Non-AI 50mm Nikkon S-C which is about as heavy as the entire camcorder. It must be conceded that the ZR200 is a featherweight as camcorders go, but that totally makes balance different. Learning to frame and hold the image takes a bit of practice. And did I mention that the camcorder's image stabilization won't help you because the SLR lens is doing the work? Live and learn. But it's fun. While taking this video a passerby asked me "Is that a camera or video? How much does it cost?" My answer, "I just put it together myself."

No comments: