Nikon 0.63x Wide Angle Converter WC-E63

General Information

The Nikon 0.63x Wide Angle Converter WC-E63 package comes with the lens and front and rear caps. See the image below. It is supposed to replace the older WC-E24. Compared with the WC-E24, WC-E63 covers a slightly wider area than WC-E24 does (only 1mm), is a little sharper, has less barrel distortion, and is more convenient in terms of using lens hoods and filters. However, the WC-E62 is larger and heavier. Of course, it is not as portable as the WC-E24.

Here are some important notes:

• After mounting this converter, the camera becomes heavy (see figure below). As a result, handle it carefully with two hands if necessary; otherwise, it is easy to break the camera's middle joint. The use of the swivel lock is perhaps needed.
  Nikon 0.63x Wide Angle Converter Mounted on Coolpix 4500

• Since this bulky lens blocks the viewfinder, use the LCD monitor for composition.
• Since the area covered by the flash sensor (and the internal flash) is blocked by this lens, both the internal flash and external flashes may not work properly.

The on-camera zoom lens is equivalent to a 38mm - 152mm zoom (35mm equivalent). Since this converter has a magnification of 0.63, mounting the converter on the camera effectively changes the zoom to 24mm - 96mm (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., 24mm-38mm) will be used. In this range we have most of the popular wide angle focal lengths: 24mm, 28mm and 35mm. The relative positions on the zoom scale are shown in the table below:

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 24mm (35mm equivalent) and both internal and external flashes are disabled. However, you do not have to enter a converter mode to use a lens converter. This means you still can use this wide angle converter in the Regular mode.

Close-Up

The minimum camera-subject distance is about 9cm/3.51 in. If the distance is shorter than this, the camera fails to focus. Should this happen, you can use the Close-Up mode. However, the front end of the lens barrel almost touches the subject (i.e., near zero working distance)! The following shows an example when WC-E63 is used for close-up. The left image below was taken with the on-camera lens at the shortest camera-subject distance (i.e., about 2cm), the middle one used WC-E24, and the right one used WC-E63. As you can see, the magnification of the on-camera lens is higher than that of WC-E24, which, in turn, is higher than that of WC-E63.

On-camera lens, macro	WC-E24, macro	WC-E63, macro
Click on the image to see a larger one

Filter Issues

The filter thread size of the WC-E63 is 72mm. Vignetting may occur when a thick 72mm filter is mounted. Thus, test before you buy. And, if you can afford it, use a slim/thin polarizer to avoid vignetting.

Focus Distance

If you use Manual Focus or use Infinity focus mode (i.e., the mountain icon), the focus distance is different from the actual distance. Consequently, you should ignore this distance and use the LCD monitor to make sure your subjects are in focus.

Examples

Here are a number of sample images. Most of them were taken using the widest focal length (i.e., 24mm), and hence the typical wide angle effect (i.e., converging lines) is quite obvious.

Click on the image to see a larger one

Technical Data

The following technical information are taken from Nikon's manual. These information are for 950/990/995/4500 only, and should be different for other Nikon cameras.