Some things were never meant to be brought together. The PD150 and the MTO-1000AM mirror telephoto are perhaps two of them. However, as ther MTO has a Nikon mount and the AGUD35 has a Nikon mount ---

I have sent some .jpg images to Chris Hurd with my usual request for him to furthur overload the server.

The images are titled, agusmto1.jpg or similar and also two nv images for curiosity sake titled bandinv2.jpg and firecomp.jpg, which were originated on PD150 via a PYSER PNP-HG. The PNP-HG does not perform satisfactorily into a PD150 without replacement of the relay optics.

I read this tread some time ago (and made a prototype), so I don't know if the things I’m suggesting are already debated, because I didn't read the whole tread again.

Has anyone considered to take apart his LCD screen of the camera and turn the (transparent) thing upside-down and mirrored. This way you could see what you are filming the way it should be.


Now the thing I'm working on:
I'm making a new 35mm adapter only the projected image will be split in two and filmed by two (identical) cameras.
My first tests (just a still frame) gave a very sharp picture after stitching them together on the PC.

I'll try to do it with one mirror to split the screen and the cameras on their sides.
If anyone is interested, I'll post some more (maybe the test frame) Maybe start a new tread?
And if people have suggestions, please let me know.
Thanks for this forum anyway, it helped me allot,


Oscar

I've talked about this split image cameras...but i believe my idea was to serve a different function. I'd definatly be interested in what your trying to do, so maybe it might be a good idea to start a new thread. First off...how are you splitting the image? beam splitting prism?

The one thing I'd be worried about if you are compiling images like this is if your frame rates will properly synch up...if not your going to get something akin to very serious interlacing.

I post a new tread on this supject here:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?threadid=37675

For those who have the curiosity, the images agusmto1.jpg; agusmto3.jpg; agusmto4.jpg; agusmto8.jpg; bandinv2.jpg and firecomp.jpg have been posted at www.dvinfo.net/media/hart.

"agusmto8.jpg" is an image of the whole improbable appliance.

hey bob i sent you an email with some questions about the mini35 adapter.. did you get it??

Cody. Recieved your email. Am a bit busy sending some bushfire stuff to media. Will respond soon.

i know agus said somewhere that he has started using a 9volt battery for his mini35...

what are the pros and cons to using higher voltage batteries opposed to lower voltage ones???

Up. - Spins faster enabling higher camcorder shutter speeds - diminishes effect of quality error in groundglass finish.

Down. - Spins faster. - wears out motor faster, more vibation - more noise - battery connection is more prone to failure - hard to fit up in the dark - less common battery.

where is the link with the tutorials? I am lost in this million-dollar thread. I need shalower DOF now!

thanks

god bless the makers of selfmade adapters. I love you guys/girls..whatever.

I'll be sending out an email to everyone on the list in the next couple days.

Thanks!

<<<-- Originally posted by Jose di Cani : where is the link with the tutorials? I am lost in this million-dollar thread. I need shalower DOF now!

thanks

god bless the makers of selfmade adapters. I love you guys/girls..whatever. -->>>

ok heres all of the addresses i have saved so far for reference.

http://ideaspora.net/oldskool/

http://www.dvinfo.net/media/hart/

http://www.mediachance.com/dvdlab/dof/index.htm

http://www.gamecrafters.com/sillydaddy/Agus35_MarkIII.html

http://www.moorefilms.com/aldu35.htm

http://www.blindcat.de/index.php?page=dv35genglish&title=DV35g%20-%20A%2035m

http://www.de-interlaced.net/mini35/

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=30086

anybody know of local places you can buy fresnel lenses in dfw? or stores in general? like what aisle would they be on??

Cody, what kind of camera do you have?

well im looking for one for my mini35 since they are supposed to be cheap... im just looking for a cheap alternative to get rid of the "halo" bright spot on the GG.

You have a mini35? You don't have a camera? I can help you with the halo...

sorry, im using a panasonic pv-gs50... little consumer camera with 27mm thread size stepped up to 52mm

Cool.

my mini35 setup currently consists of, project box design with rotating GG. miranda mount for lenses. about 8 miranda lenses to choose from. plus a telephoto lens.

i was having a heck of a time getting the cd closer to the lens so the focus would be correct at infinity. i had my cd motor still mounted to the plastic thing that came out of the cd player...i found out my motor was already sandwiched against the wood i had it mounted to. cut a hole out and its just perfect.

i will post some pictures up when its totally finished. i still have to work on the GG, way to grainy. i have barely even tried though... that was a quick job to see if it works.

Bob Hart
 

After the debacle of my Agus which fell and broke the glass disk and prisms,
I needed a gg fairly quickly and decided to try a DVD+D disk. I have plenty
of failed burns so there's plently of disks. I found you can split them.

Once you get the edge joint started, they come apart fairly easily. One face has traces of the burn or guide tracks on it. This is the face you dress. The
plastic seems to be a better material and is quite tough and takes longer
than the glass to dress in a tumbler. It seems to yield a finer finish for
the same grade of grit than glass but the same problems of variable density
flicker found with the CD-R spacers is still there in certain lighting
conditions. In operation the split DVD+R seems to be thinner and lighter,
spins up and shuts down faster and despite being thin, does not seem to move off the focal plane in pans and tilts as one might expect it would.

When mounting the disk to the hub, do not use contact cement. As this stuff
dries, it shrinks and whilst the disk sits flat when the glue is fresh,
after a while it will tilt one way or another and no longer run true. The
best glue remains the water cleanup white silicone bathroom sealer.

The new images at www.dvinfo.net/media/hart are tests from this disk whilst
it was not spinning, plus the very last image off the glass oharadisk. The
filesnames are "cdstrer2.JPG" "cdstrer3.JPG" and "0038b.JPG"

The optical path remains the same as for the oharadisk in the prism version - SLR lens >> groundglass disk >> 2 x 40mm x 40mm x 56mm x 40mm common thickness rightangle prisms in 90 degree opposition >> 7+ Century Optics Achromatic diopter >> camcorder.

Bob Hart
 

Just a bit of an update on things AGUS. Recently I have been involved in a bit of aviation videography. I have been using the erecting prism version to enable attachment of my Nikon mount long lenses including 500mm and 1084mm mirrors. This was one of the objectives of building my AGUS35.

These are things the PD150 was never intended to see through, however provided your lenses are centred with the cam via the prisms you can get a good result.

I spent a few hours at the local airport today getting the method right.

A heavy fluid-head tripod like a Miller is essential once you start trying to aquire and pan in full frame, aircraft in flight or closer on the cabin windows or moving control surfaces.

A simple ringsight is also needed for aquisition, the right eye in the cam viewfinder, the left eye looking at the image au-natural, keeping your head level, getting the subject centred then it pops into the cam viewfinder and you track it from there.

My thinking on the AGUS is to perhaps use the smaller diameter disk in the larger housing and arrange the motor and disk in a swing-down arrangement so I can have 35mm emulation when I want it or shoot the aerial image when I want the telephotos, all in the one piece of sewer pipe.

Do you have any stills?

Bob Hart
 

Shawn.

I haven't taken any captures of my test footage but stills can be arranged in about 24 hours. There is a .jpg of a comparable image shot through the 500mm Nikon, the very last before the AGUS fell to earth and broke my glass disk. IT was through the groundglass. The direct aerial images improve a little in sharpness and much more in contrast because the 500mm mirror is a f8 only lens and the MTO 1084mm is a f11 only lens. These apertures are tighter than the no more than f5.6 recommended in the Mini35 operating instructions for minimising the effect of grain effects from the groundglass (my recollection of them??)

That image is titled "0038b.JPG" and there are some images from recollection titled "agusmto.JPG" or similar which were shot through the MTO also with the groundglass. Those images are softer because it was a warm day.

As well as my particular need right now of ability to get to aircraft performing at safe height, long lenses are a seriously practical option for sports videography, which can be a difficulty with the PD150 zoom cutting out at about 70mm. You can use zooms but there is no reliable means of establishing a notional backfocus for the zoom lens when using the aerial image, so the focus will creep when zooming and you have to chase the focus with the front lens.

However, the beauty is that once you have framed and focussed and are following the action, you can use the camcorder's own focus for fine adjustment on the run. Aufocus on the PD150 also works in this mode with one small caveat. The achromat (close-up, macro or relay lens) and the rear glass element in your front lens can have no speck of dust on them. Best practice is to manually focus the camcorder to sharpness with the front lens set to infinity focus, then work your front lens to focus on the subject, then use the camcorder focus for fine adjustment on the fly with occasional switching to auto but switching mostly to manual to stop any drift to extreme close up of the rear glass of the front lens.

You will find those .jpg images at www.dvinfo.net/media/hart

Bob Hart
 

Shawn.

I have emailed some images to Chris Hurd for his assistance in posting at www.dvinfo.net/media/hart

The images will have filenames something like "aerdem03.JPG" or similar.

The MTO 1084mm images are not as sharp as the 500mm but this is as much to do with heat shimmer, trying to pan and pull focus at the same time and a more critical depth of field as of any optical deficiency.

I am investigating the Sigma 50 - 500mm f4-6.3 zoom lens plus 1.4x converter as an option with this setup. Other than the reviews found on the web, does anyone here have experience with that lens.

Lurker participation
 

Well, after weeks of drooling and lurking on this forum, I finally had some time to put one of these DOF boxes together. It's all come around pretty easily, but now I'm of course dealing with the optics and ground glass issues... you can view my first attempt today at the link below:

DOF Test 1

It's not completely untouched (Ran it through avisynth), but it's dark qualities is pretty much what I was seeing before treating it. I have a frosted CD, which I initially used, but it doesn't seem to work right. I get a very pleasent/unpleasent bright circle in the middle, and it's really small (the size of the 35mm lens opening), while the outside is VERY dark... I'm guessing my frosted CD is too transparent.

So I've been experimenting with a half CD disc (a dvd split in half), that I've sanded down on one side with fine sand paper, and then smoothed with comet. So far with my limited resources (No car), this yeilds the best results, but as seen in the video is also unacceptably very dark.

I tried using a fresnel like the one here that I bought from OfficeMax today, but it didn't seem to do anything. I should be receiving a PCX lens soon from Anchor Optics that I'm hoping will help.

As per Jonathon, I'll probably also be buying some single-ply architectural blueprint mylar film for the ground glass... I'm hoping it will help.

Once I get this thing the way I like (I'm on my first prototype), I'll post some pictures of it... My current lens is a no-name f1.9 49mm. I'm hoping the Canon AE-1 50mm 1.4 lens I purchased on eBay this weekend will help.

Thanks for all the great discussion and suggestions (in particular Jonathon Wilson), hopefully some student films will be made with this stuff in the near future.

Heh - funny how these things go. I'm just starting in on my third adapter :) Best of luck, Matthew! The footage looks pretty good, especially for the first stuff! I'll bet you see a big difference with the Canon lens. I have that same 1.4 50mm and it just seems to do much better in terms of hotspot than other lenses I've tried.

Hey Jonathon, thanks for the encouragement... I've posted my second test just about 10 minutes ago using similar shots.

I received my macro lenses and bought some drafting film today. Both seem to help quite a bit, but it's still a little dark, and I've also noticed some barrel distortion in the leaves when they go out of focus. Will the condenser help with this? Currently I'm only running through the macro, so it's pretty much exactly what's seen on the disc.

Check it out:
DOF Test 2

P.S. For those of you with Macs (Like me), you'll have to wait for the 2mb file to load completely before it plays

Sweetness!
 

Just got my PCX lens today and it seems to be working perfectly. There might be some barrel distortion here and there (or it could be my imagination), but overal, the light quality and and vignetting is improved dramatically... I don't even need to use macro lenses now.

You guys can go to the same link again for the added videos. I did one on campus before I was able to install the condenser lens, and then did one more video after I got home... it follows the same shots as the previous two... enjoy

DOF Test videos

Looks good Matthew,
What camera did you use?

Thanks... on the first 2 DOF tests, I used a Panasonic GS120. Because I really wanted to be able to do widescreen, I upgraded to the GS150, which is the camera I used for the campus video, and the DOF test 3.

So far I'm really happy with the GS150. Both it and the GS120 seem to be excellent cameras, and for the price they're absolute steals!

In the next week I'm going to plan out a shooting session with a friend and use her as a guinea pig to really work this thing out (I'll post the results)... I want to get some practice with it before I do my first short. (^^)

Keep it up, you are doing good.

Mathew, I also had to deal with the barrel distortion that I found using different glass in front of the camera, most probably the PCX lens because it is concave. I found this especially annoying with poles and straight objects because they bend and make the image look rather fish-eyed. I am thinking that there is another way to get rid of this - maybe the photo-enlarger condenser lens?

BTW, good job, but I don't know what codec you used for the video and when I viewed it is was pixelated for the most part.

Thanks for the encouragement. You said you also had this problem with the barrel distortion... did you find a lens that fixed it? My PCX lens I think is too concave, and even though the distortion is minimal, it's very noticeable.

I'm not sure about the pixilation issue, but I think I'm going to switch codecs and start using the Sorenson codec for my later videos.

I have to switch to an achromat (ala Bob Hart's advice). I found a great one in a 100mm slide projector - broke it open and took it and it is nice - no barrel distortion at all.
I found a codec to walk the videos, they look great! The PCX is concave and that is why you are getting the barrel distortion - you need to find something else - try

www. surplusshed.com for achromats.

PCX = Plano Convex
 

A PCX lens is not concave. It is flat on one side and curves out on the other. http://www.anchoroptics.com/images/p...a_L_pcx_a1.jpg.

A PCV (Plano-Concave) lens is the opposite -- flat on one side and curves in on the other. http://www.anchoroptics.com/images/p.../a_L_pcv_a.jpg

Any concave lens will have the opposite effect that you want. You definitely want a lens with an outward curve for the proper correction.

If the focal length of the PCX lens is too short (bigger curve) it can certainly cause spherical distortion, at the expense of less correction to hotspot/corner darkening. The balance is difficult to find.

What was the F.L. and Diameter of the PCX lens you have, Matthew?

An achromat (a lens formed from two different types of glass, cemented together) will only solve chromatic abberation -- that's what they're designed for. The spherical distortion is only a factor of the focal length of the lens. (Which isn't saying you don't have chromatic distortion that an achromatic condensor would help. But generally, the condensor isn't that picky about achromats -- it's the macro, if you need one, where this is important).

Hey guys... ya, I'm definately using the lens that curves out on one side. It's DIA is 60mm, and FL is 83mm.

I've just posted my most recent video using it: Telegraph

It's hard to really see the distortion at low res, and I've also noticed there's still a little bit of vignetting, but it may have been my fault (not completely centered maybe). One possible issue I also discovered with the lens today is that it has some of the same cons of a static GG. If there is ANY dust on it whatsoever, it shows up... my lens also has a couple tiny bubles in it :'( , which show up in some of my shots sometimes. I'm going to attempt to get it replaced, but in the meantime, tell me what you guys think...

The two shots where the distortion seem to show most is just after the first cut in the out of focus tie die shirt past the tea pots, and the last shot before the fade out. Do you think I need to get a more curved, or less curved lens? Is the distortion different with different 35mm lenses (As in different brands, and also focal legnths)? Also, since the distortion is comming from the lens, and being projected onto the CD, can a correction after the projection even take place? I don't really undertsnad optics that well, but my first assumption was that the PCX would go between the CD and Lens, until I saw all the posts talking about it going between the GG and camera (which after more reading does make sense now)

Just FYI... my current setup looks like this:
Lens - GG - (| Condenser - +5 Macro - Camcroder

Thanks...

P.S. You may notice flickering in the video... the batteries for my CD motor were going dead :P

Hazaa!
 

Ok... it may be a little early to celebrate, but I think I fixed my distortion issues. I just received my Canon FD 50mm lens yesterday, and while messing around with my setup came across Mandy's thread about a homemade achromat lens. I played around with my macros, trying to see if I could get better results, and then starting playing around with my PCX lens... I turned it around so the curved portion faces the ground glass, and even though it looked REALLY distorted to my eyes, when I placed my camcorder in front of it, everything looked normal.

So far, I don't see any kind of distortion, so this may be what I've been needing to do from the beginning. Sorry Jonathon if I misunderstood your instructions.

Anyways, I've made another DOF test at this link (same as before) called DOF_Test_4.mov.

I'm hoping this solves my distortion issues... I'm going to go out and shoot some more with it in the next couple days, and will make an update on how it looks...

Thanks everyone!

Mathew, the image is gorgeous. No vigneting (that I could tell) and as crisp as possible (for the frame size ;...spider web in 720/480....? That is as good as it gets). I think I will make myself one!!! (I was planning anyway, but this time I got inspired) hehehe. You still have to do another one for that right corner spot, but that's nothing! The pic is good. Get the footage in a retail store and watch it on a lage screen, let us know how it looked.What is the frame size?

Bravo!!!

Thanks Dan,

So far I'm pretty happy with it... for those of you who can view H.264, I've posted a full resolution clip of the video there (720x405).

Can anyone tell me how to use Brett's chart with a 50mm lens? His instructions say to fill the screen with the 24mm x 18mm printout, but even with macro lenses I can't seem to get close enough. Should I print it larger?

Thanks

P.S. it seems heavy traffic knocks the link to my files down every so often... sorry. Anyone got space/bandwidth to spare?

Space
 

I do have space to share.
Drop me an e-mail at eric-ohmanATtelia.com and we continue from there...

AT = @

// eric