Nike 0.8x Wide Angle Converter WC-E80

General Information

The Nikon 0.8x Wide Angle Converter WC-E80 package comes with the lens and front and rear caps. See the left image below. The WC-E80 cannot be mounted directly on the 5700. In fact, an adapter is required. See the adapter page for the details. The right image below shows the use of Nikon's UR-E8 to mount a WC-E80 on the 5700.

Here are some important notes:

• After mounting this converter, the camera becomes front heavy (see the right image above). As a result, handle it carefully with two hands if necessary, and do not pick up the camera by the lens alone.
• Since this lens is heavy, make sure you will hold the camera (and lens) firmly or use a tripod to minimize camera shake.
• The WC-E80 has a very large and concave front element and can easily invite flare and ghost. Hence, avoid to include a strong light source in or near your view.
• Again, since the front glass element of the WC-E80 is large, one can easily scratch the surface. Therefore, replace the front cap when the lens is not in use.
• Since the area covered by the flash sensor (and the internal flash) is blocked partially by this lens, both the internal flash and external flashes may not work properly. While the internal flash can fire, it may create a semi-circular shadow in the lower portion of the image.
• It is unlikely that you will zoom the on-camera lens to the telephoto end when WC-E80 is mounted. If you do, you have to be very careful when removing this lens from the camera because the on-camera lens penetrates into the chamber of the WC-E80.

The on-camera zoom lens is equivalent to a 35mm - 280mm zoom (35mm equivalent). Since this converter has a magnification of 0.8, mounting the converter on the camera effectively changes the zoom range to 28mm - 224mm (35mm equivalent). Since adding a converter on top of a lens always reduces some optical quality, normally only the combined focal length that is not available with the on-camera lens (i.e., 28mm-35mm) will be used. Therefore, we only use the WC-E80 to obtain the 28mm focal length.

Barrel Distortion

The WC-E80 has noticeable barrel distortion. This distortion gets worse near the borders of an image as shown in the images below. However, this is normal because virtually all wide angle converters for digital cameras have barrel distortion and because WC-E80 is no worse than the others. Barrel distortion can be corrected to a very high degree using various software programs.

Shooting in Wide Mode or Regular Mode

You can use the Wide Adaptor mode. See General Operations for the way of selecting a converter mode. Once this mode is selected, the on-camera lens is zoomed all the way out so that the combined focal length is 28mm (35mm equivalent) and the internal flash is disabled. However, you still can use an external flash and the on-camera lens can be zoomed to 27.3mm (107.37mm, 35mm equivalent). On the other hand, you do not have to enter a converter mode to use a converter lens. This means you still can use this wide angle converter in the Regular mode. In this way, you can use internal flash and zoom the lens freely,

Close-Up

Nikon indicate that the minimum focus distance in close-up mode with WC-E80 at 28mm is 23cm. Occasionally, the camera-subject distance may be close to 6cm. Whether the minimum focus distance is 23cm or 6cm, it does not matter because the barrel distortion and wider coverage of WC-E80 may simply discourage you from using it for close up photography.

Filter Issues

Since the WC-E80 has no filter thread, it is difficult or impossible to use filters.

Focus Distance

If you use the Infinity focus mode with the WC-E80, the distance scale does not reflect the actual distance. This will also happen when you use the Manual Focus mode. In other words, the use of WC-E80 will change the focus distance provided by the camera. Consequently, you should ignore this distance and use the LCD monitor to make sure your subjects are in focus.

Technical Data

The following technical information are taken from Nikon's manual. These information are for 5700, and should be different for other Nikon cameras. A manual in PDF format is available here.