So there I was at the shop, mulling over which zoom lens to buy. I have a camera with 10x optical zoom, so the 1.6x and 2.2x telephoto converters would, naturally and respectively, make my optical zoom 16x or 22x. You’d think I’d only naturally go with the 22x. However, there are other considerations.

Size and weight. The Raynox 2.2x lens is light, but it’s also huge. At five inches, it’s twice as long and maybe three times as bulky as the Canon lens. And bulk would be a big down point if I just wanted to hop out the door and jaunt on down to the park. While the Canon is also a bit bulky, at least I can still break it down into small enough pieces to fit into my jacket pockets. And though the Raynox feels lighter (larger items even of greater weight usually feel lighter), it’s almost double the Canon–275 grams to Canon’s 145.

Flexibility. Both lenses have the black outer silhouette when not zoomed in at all, but the Raynox’s silhouette is far more constricting. (See the image in yesterday’s post.) You have to zoom in almost to the full 10x before the black outer silhouette disappears; with the Canon, the smaller silhouette disappears at maybe halfway through the zoom. That allows for me to zoom out to get a wider angle photo without having to change lens assemblies. And, as a small point, the Raynox requires an additional adapter to match the adapter you need to latch on to the Canon S1-IS lens assembly. That means adding three extra pieces instead of two.

Price. This was actually closer than I expected: ¥15,000 for the Canon, ¥21,500 for the Raynox (that’s roughly $140 vs. $200). Less than 50% more money for effectively double the zoom magnification–though, as you can see from the image below, the 2.2x zoom doesn’t really seem as impressive, doesn’t seem like twice the extra magnification, when you look at the end result–though that is largely due to the fact that the extra zoom is seen only after the initial 10x zoom–so from 16 to 22 is not really double.

Effect on performance. This is one I hadn’t really thought through before, and had on of the strongest impacts on me. When I took the comparison shots, it became clear, even through the S1-IS’s tiny LCD display, that the 2.2x lens produced lower-quality images than the 1.6x Canon, and when I thought about it, the reasons made sense. After all, the whole reason Canon’s image stabilization is important is because you’ve got a big zoom lens, and that means that hand jiggle will translate more strongly. So it stands to reason that the more you increase that zoom, the more your hand shaking will overcome the image stabilization–which may be why Canon stopped at a 1.6x tele-converter instead of going for 2.0x or better. Despite the large size of the lens to gather more light, the 2.2x might wind up capturing less light, affecting exposures (though I don’t really know that one way or the other). But the bottom line is, the more zoom you get, the higher a price you pay in performance.

And then, there’s the overall impression:

Look at those two zoom fields. The 2.2x doesn’t really look like like it’s all that much more impressive. Yes, technically, you’re zooming in more. But it really doesn’t seem worth it–more specifically, it doesn’t feel worth the size, weight, extra cost and hit on performance. In the end, I just felt that I’d be too often disappointed and unhappy with the bigger lens–so of course, I wound up buying the Canon TC-DC52B 1.6x converter. And so here it is:

By the way, the black part of the lens assembly is not all the tele-converter. From the camera’s lens assembly to that first major seam in the black assembly is just the conversion adapter for the S1-IS.

Entry for the Dumb Ideas Department: having just bought the Canon lens, I was heading back to Shinjuku station, and in the back of my mind, I was thinking about the lens. My thoughts wandered to blogging about it (as I am now doing), and one consideration was how to get an image of the camera with the lens. Now, you see above that very photo, but at that point, I had not yet considered it, and hadn’t thought it through. I couldn’t take a straight-on photo of the camera in my mirror, I realized, because that would only show the lens head-on, the least interesting view.

So here’s where the dumb idea came in. Now, keep in mind that I was navigating my way through Shinjuku Station, and looking at people and storefronts along the way, so the front of my mind was otherwise occupied; this thought process I’m describing was only going on in the back of my mind. And apparently, the back of my mind isn’t very bright. Because the solution it hit upon was to set the camera’s timer to 2-second mode; I would then focus and click the shutter button while looking straight-on into the mirror–but before the 2 seconds elapsed and the camera took the picture, I would turn the camera so as to get a much better angle!

Once my hindbrain came up with this ingenious plan, it alerted my forebrain. At which time, my forebrain considered it for a split second, and then pointed at my hindbrain and laughed uproariously. It was good for merriment for much of the way home.

Not that my hindbrain stopped there. After a bit, my forebrain realized that the thing to do is to get out the old camera (which I haven’t used since last December) and take a photo of the new camera with that. “Good idea!” answered my hindbrain. “But won’t it be hard to hold both cameras while you’re taking the photo in the mirror?”