After spending a few weeks with the HF10 camera I realized rather quickly that I need a wide angle adapter. I will shoot a fair amount of scenes in smaller rooms and have probably a decent amount of footage with a subject being pretty close to the camera.

Canon recommends the WD-H37C (note the C) wide angle adapter and I've seen test footage (thanks Lucien) and read through forums and a great blog (thanks again Lucien) and apparently it causes pretty bad CA distortion when fully zoomed through.

There are just so many options... some cheap (in many ways), some expensive, some HUGE, some small, some HEAVY and some light.

After being confused and deciding that I didn't want to deal with step down rings and I didn't want to spend too much money... I narrowed my focus to 37mm options and found that NO one has tried the WD-H37 wide adapter with this camera.

As Lucien suggested after being disappointed with the WD-H37C, he ended up using a WD-H42 with a step down ring and he was pleased with the results.

That got me thinking... no one really was able to pin point the difference between the "C" and non "C" version except to say one looks a little larger than the other.

So I figured I'd try a non "C" version of this lens and after finding the WD-H37 on ebay (brand new in the box) for nearly half price of the WD-H37C I decided it was worth the money/risk to do some trial with it.

As a further note, all Cuts were quickly (and crudely) shot with a monopod (as I still don't have a tripod) and I sort of attempted to keep the camera as still as possible while fumbling with the lens. I shot these FXP at 30P with Auto WB the indoor shots and Cloudy WB for the outdoor shots.

First Cut is without and with the wide adapter (hand held to camera) twice, while indoors.

Second Cut is without and with the wide adapter (hand held to camera) twice, while outdoors.

Third Cut is with the wide adapter properly threaded into the camera and fully zoomed in to show CA distortion and resolution/sharpness.

Fourth Cut is without the wide adapter attached for comparison to the third cut

Fifth Cut is without the wide adapter and Fully zoomed out against a brick wall to show barrel distortion compared to Sixth Cut

Sixth Cut is with the wide adapter properly threaded to the camera, fully zoomed out and shot against a brick wall to show barrel distortion, then fully zoomed in to show CA and Sharpness

Seventh Cut is witout the wide adapter, fully zoomed in and shot against the brick wall for comparison with the Sixth Cut

Overall I'm pleased with the performance of this adapter, especially for the price. When fully zoomed in, the CA is not as bad as the tests I've seen for the "C" and some other "pro" adapters and the resolution/sharpness are acceptable.

When fully zoomed out, the extra coverage is nice and the resolution/sharpness are also very good. While the barrel distortion is more than I'd like to see it is acceptable if it means I gain extra coverage.

Regarding being fully zoomed in, it's not likely I'd use the camera at that zoom level very often and if I would I'd probably not be using the wide adapter in the first place, but it's nice to know it will preform well if I had to and didn't have time to remove the lens.

I hope this helps someone.