I have been researching camcorders, and it looks as though the HV20 is an excellent choice for image quality. However, I am wondering if the 10x lens will be adequate for my usage. Besides family stuff, one of the main uses will be for wildlife photography. I have been doing wildlife photography for decades with 35mm cameras, using high quality lenses.

Can anyone tell me what the power range of the 10x lens on the camcorder would be in a 35mm camera equivalent?

Has anyone had experience with the digital zoom - what image quality does it produce, and does the OIS work in digital zoom?

I see that a screw on "telephoto" lens is available to increase the power. Has anyone had any experience with this accessory on the HV20 (or for that matter on other camcorders)? How does this effect the telephoto range, and image quality?

Thank you for any insights.

The 35mm equivalent on HV20 is 43.6mm-436mm I think.
Any telelens that's over 2x is likely to degrade image quality. You don't need to use digital zoom on these DVs because you can always do that after your capture in PC and set whatever zoom in NEL software. The OIS is pretty good in Canon.

Thank you GodobeHD for the info. I'm not familiar at this point with editing software for camcorders, so that will be something to play around with. I'm assuming by your comment that you mean the software will give better results for increasing image size, than to do that first in the camcorder using digital zoom?