iPhone Blog

Posted from Charlotte, Vermont, United States.

It is not every day you get to hang out with a product inventor from Oregon, and Philip Bloom from London. They both share a common interest, the Letus 35mm adapter.
One of the things that most fasciated me about Philip was his dry English humor and his smile. We all met on the floor at NAB at the Zacuto booth. Hien was waiting for Philip to return the Letus Ultimate, Hien said “he had left the country with my only prototype” but not to worry Philip returned with adapter in hand. “Cracking sharp” Philip repeated about the performance of the Letus Ultimate, while Hien said “we own the brokheh, no one can beat us, we loose only 1/2 stop, we have back focus” you know what? he is right. Hien Le is the king of adapters they own the adapter space. Quality and price the Ultimate is the ultimate to own.

I spent one day with Philip and Hien on the streets of Las Vegas watching Philip making a short, here are my observations.

Got the upgraded Nikon mount for the Letus EX. This has been my big issue for the makers of the adapters. They use cheap mounts. NOT good. The most important part of the adapter is the mounting of a lens, it should be solid and not subject to movement. The new Nikon mount does just that.

I did NOT have to do a back focus on the new mount. NOTE: This new mount does HAVE have a back focus adjustment, I wish the threads on the screw were fine threaded, as well as all the other screws on the Letus.

I will show a procedure to get the ground glass square and I even got better edge to edge sharpness with this method. I believe that this got out of alignment over time and travels.

While we are on the subject of quality, lets talk about paint. Please do NOT use it any more. The paint finnish on my Letus is not sticking, it is coming off. This means black specs of paint can find ways to get on your lens, and that translates to spots. I was glad to see the new Nikon mount was NOT painted in flat black. No paint to flake off, this is good. I have also taken the EX1 adapter ring and removed the flat black paint finnish so it does not flake off on the Sony XDCAM EX lens, see the pics at the bottom of the page. I want less work to keep my lens and adapters free of particles that cause dust. The shinny finish is good with me, do not try to be cool with flat black for the risk of a bad – cheap paint job! I have spent too much time trying to make this adapter better, and the other adapters are not exempt from issues as well. Just keep it simple.

Here is a short showing the nice lighting that the Zylight has. I used a exisiting Anton softbox on the light to soften the light. Which fit on just perfect. The ability to fine tune the light’s color balance was critical to get a proper color balance to the existing light in the room and the camera’s color balance. It preformed flawless on my last trip overseas.

You be the judge.

Just completed a test for DOF with the Letus EX and Sony EX1. Controlling DOF has always been a challenge when the subject is moving and using a 85mm lens, or longer @ wide open and at a medium framed shot. I figure you can have less than a inch to hold focus. So I wanted to establish guide lines as to how much you can stop down, without seeing issues with the Letus.

I completed the following test. I arranged some nails in a board spaced one inch apart on center. Focusing on nail # 3, marked as so. I started to stop down the lens in one stop increments, without regard to exposure. See the slate in the scene to see the F stops used. Here is the results of the test, (note no audio) so you can see how DOF is affected by stopping the lens down. But we knew that right? But that is not the end of this story keep reading.

One of the challenges of a DOF adapter is a vibrating ground glass type. If you stop down too much on the external lens to the Letus you will start to see the grain of the focus screen. This is apparent when shooting a sky or light background. The second test was just that, I have made audio comments as to the F stop and you can judge when the screen starts to appear, it looks like a molting look to the sky, uneven. I even stopped the Letus motor so you can see how radical this can look when you do not have the motor on. I suggest not to shut down more that F5.6 on sky pics on the lens on the Letus. If you need more depth of field, move back or use a wider angle lens, so you can avoid this issue rather than use the F stop to control DOF up to F5.6. It was raining as well when I pointed the camera out the door to do this, FYI. Spinner type DOF adapters do NOT have this issue. If you know the limitations with which you have to play with then you can overcome some of these situations.

The shots below were made with a Zeiss 85mm and the zoom was set @ Z-74 on the Sony XDCAM EX1. The focus was set on the nail labeled #3, the resultant changes in F stops are indicated on the slate. No adjustments were made for exposure.

Dolgin Engineering released a 4 position charger for the Sony XDCAM EX1.
TC400 Battery Charger for Sony EX1 BP-U30, BP-U60 batteries
Preliminary

Features:

* Fast, safe simultaneous charge; high capacity BP-U60 battery packs are ready in about 4 hours. As a battery being charged, charge status is displayed in Volts, mAh (as counted by the charger fuel gauge)
*
* Digital LCD display indicates the battery pack capacity, if fully discharged before insertion.
*
* Each of the 4 channels is fully independent of the others, batteries can be inserted/removed at any time
*
* Worldwide 100-240V AC
*
* Small lightweight package

http://www.dolgin.net/Battery_Charger_TC400-EX.htm

Call Toll Free (877) 863-1813

Here is a short, with the Letus. Took about 5 hrs and shot everything in view and quickly put this together. I used Magic Bullet. I found going back and forth from MB to FCP showed the applied grade different from the two applications on the laptop. It must be a graphics card thing. I will try to re-grade this as the contrast got lower on the mp4 file on the blog. Though the stills here do not look bad.

Overall I found shooting from the hip on location challenging with focus being the hardest. This is a big difference between studio vers location. One is a controlled situation and the latter being un-controlled and distractions galore.

My travels to Prague were for business to create a video on location for a sales meeting using the XDCAM EX1. The Letus was not for the meeting but for some scenic shots I wanted to take when I had a day off. The meeting was on a tight time schedule with a press conference that needed to be covered as well, it would of been impossible to have shot the meeting with the Letus, as I was my own crew.

I was on my own, to shoot, transfer the data and edit a small video for the meeting, did I mention stills as well. Yea, stills. Lots to do and little time. The camera, & Zylight performed very well and did a great job with the interviews. I will cover this in another blog, with sample footage with the light. Stay tuned.

Zylight short showing off this sexy light. Shot with the EX1 and macro Zeiss 50mm and Lens Babies 3G lens.

Today I received the new acromat that fixes the edge to edge softness with the Sony XDCAM EX1 when used with the Letus Extreme. I am happy to report that the results are excellent and there is no more edge to edge softness!

The test chart was a dollar bill. I did the test quickly but one can view the movie and determine the results are grand.

Phil Bloom will no doubt put it through another test and report, Phil? The great news that the fixed is available for purchase. Click here to visit Letus it is under “Shop” , “Accessories” at the bottom of the page you will see “Sony EX1 Kit The much anticipated optimization kit for the Sony PMW-EX1 XDCAM.”


I created a short movie below that shows the fix in action. Note I did not turn on the motor on the Letus until the end, I comment on that at the end of the video. Enjoy the fix.. GREAT JOB LETUS TEAM