Homemade 35mm Adapter

Jamie Roberts · March 27th, 2006, 12:02 AM

Im afraid my motor is glued in well and truly with liquid nails!

One thing i am not 100% sure on and will check is whether the condenser is actually centred 100% to the slr lens and also whether the condenser is sitting on a slight angle to the gg. I dont know if the angle bit would matter much?

I have mounted the condenser in another cut back cdr housing top (like whats it mounted in now. I cut it right back so there is small lip and was able to push it in and upto the gg without interfering with the spinning etc. It actually a bit hard to check as when i push it in i can no longer see the gg except through the condenser. I know if ive pushed it in to far as the disc wont spin, so i pull it back to the disc spins fine and thats basicly my method. I will re fit it and pay closer attention to the whether the condenser is centred on the slr lens and whether there it is flush but offset from the gg.

Jamie

Bob Hart · March 27th, 2006, 12:15 AM

Dennis.

I've tried to upload a 50mb Quicktime H264 file to savefile.com but the machinery here sits and licks its tail without sending anything out. It has been a longstanding problem. Large .pdf files in which I wrote construction methods and which contained still images have the same problem.

I rang my provider who advised that my system (Windows Internet Explorer on W98SE will not handle such a large upload and that I need to use a FTP client?? The provider is not allowed to recommend any system over any other. Any recommendations or hints??

In the course of doing all this, I forgot to set the HDV to DV conversion to "on" in the camera menu but the footage captured anyway so I don't really know what is going on. The system is supposed to be "NOT" HDV capable.

Whatever? It writes a better DVD-Video disk because of it so something has been learned. The whatever it is takes heaps longer time to render or convert to mpeg4. You can also have it any way you like as long as it is stretched vertically so the file I have made was letterboxed so it presents correctly.

It might be easier to make some datadisks and send these by mail or camera tapes to people who have more knowing on computer things than I.

Bob Hart · March 27th, 2006, 12:40 AM

Jamie.

What you have there is yielding about 85% which should be adequate at a hobbyist level. I wouldn't mess with what you already have working for you as it may not come together quite as well next time. There are too many variables including the thin soft plastic case and there being no fine adjustments available.

For improvement into that 90% plus arena, I would favour a complete re-make so that you still get to enjoy the benefits of the original appliance.

I used PVC pipe caps and tube because the material is more robust and a tube enabled centres to be more accurately kept but the device remained nearly as simple as Agus's first.

Ben Gurvich has a project box version which works well. He is within a half-day drive of your patch but I will leave it to you to initiate contact to see if he is prepared to make his contact details available to you and advise if he actually has the device still with him. Ben visits this site so you should be able to get a blind email to him from here.

He is however quite busy in his fulltime work in commercial TV so may not be able to assist you.

His version I think was based on a design which I think was published by Jim Lafferty. It is robust and because it has flat surfaces everywhere is a lot easier to mark out and get centres for than a circular object. It is probably a better and more predictable project for a home-build from scratch than my own.

Bob Hart · March 27th, 2006, 05:59 AM

AGUS35 APVE TO SONY HDR-FX1 TESTS.

I was unable to get anything but small motion image files uploaded but there are four which are very truncated versions of originals and do not encompass a full lens range as the original longer clip did.

One of the clips No4 also includes aerial-image footage shot through a Sigma 50-500mm f4-f6.3 zoom.

The clips are all QUICKTIME H264, whatever magic that is. I faithfully followed advice and it worked, so thanks again Dennis for your input.

They won't play on my web computer but will play on the editing computer which I keep quarantined from this one.

Some of the shots were made before I re-centered the front lens mount so you will observe a fall-off to the left side in some shots. This is caused by the edge of frame being too close to the horizontal prism apex, a situation forced by the 28mm half-hypotenuse of the prisms I presently have fitted. I hope the larger prisms will fix this as I will have space to move the apex furthur to the left.

The web address which seems to work is :-

http://savefile.com/projects/338360

If anyone actually gets one of these downloads to play back I would appreciate the knowing.

Carl Jakobsson · March 27th, 2006, 12:56 PM

Thanks a lot for the interesting reading and viewing! The movies work fine on my Mac (Quicktime and VLC), haven't tried them on my pc though. But I suspect there's something wrong with the field order, it's most visible in the airplane and boat clips.

Bob Hart · March 27th, 2006, 08:15 PM

Carl.

Thank you for your feedback.

Field orders and compression settings, while I know of them, are a dark art I have yet to teach myself some competence in.

The original footage viewed on TV, copied over to a DVD video recorder or captured to computer, does not have those defects, so my mishandling of the computer will be the culprit.

Moises Crespo · March 27th, 2006, 09:34 PM

My35 I accually scratched the macro filter right in the middle but check out the footage.. http://media.putfile.com/Sequence-1_...bit_DSL_stream
Thanks,moe52

Jamie Roberts · March 27th, 2006, 10:05 PM

As i cant leave things well alone! I am in the middle of rebuilding my adapter with a few minor adjustments.

I noticed that the condenser was sitting a bit higher then the slr lens and therefore out of line so i have pulled the condenser and re-glued it into a better position in its support frame so lines up better with slr lens.

I also noticed that the mount that the camcorder lens goes into wasnt sitting flush with the adapter ie was on an angle so therefore the camcorder wasnt facing gg directly. I have pulled that off and reglued it so its square on to the housing.

The very thin plastic disc i was using is splitting from the centre out. too thin im afraid but I found another plastic disc that already has a fine slightly 'sandblasted' look on one side. I want to preserve that side as I think it may be effective so I am sanding the smooth side with 600 sandpaper. Anyway in the next couple of days I will get a chance to put it all back together again and see what happens! Hoping that it dazzles me so I can leave the bloody thing alone!

Jamie

Bob Hart · March 27th, 2006, 10:23 PM

Jamie.

If you've got a plastic disk which does not flicker, treat it like gold, as such are quite rare. If you have a small electric soldering iron for electronic work, fire that up and burn a small hole through the plastic where the crack comes to an end, then trim the rolled up edge of melted plastic off with scraper or old style ribbed razor blade. The crack should travel no more. The scrapers and blades can be had from hardware or ceramic top electric stove retailers.

If you don't have an electric soldering iron, a piece of thick wire cooked up over a gas flame will do.

Aligning the camcorder is a good move because it puts the best area of gg image centre in the camera's image. Though perhaps not quite as critical as getting the SLR lens and condenser centred and their common centre axis exactly at right-angle to the groundglass, getting the camcorder itself lined up places you furthur into that elusive 90% quality zone.

Jamie Roberts · March 28th, 2006, 05:17 AM

Well i have it up and running but only had time for a quick test. will do some more tests on the weekend and post a link to some footage

The disc i tried with the sandblasted look on one side and me sanding it on the other wasnt that great im afraid. I currently have put a normal gg disc back in which works fine but will take your idea about the one with the little cracks and use my soldering iron to stop them going any further, and try and use it again. its is a rare one as I havent seen one this thin before. i must start hassling all my cd/dvd burning friends to keep all their clear discs. the last pack of dvd's i bought last week didnt even have one! Just paper protectors.

seeya

Jamie

Bob Hart · March 28th, 2006, 08:53 AM

Jamie.

You can get them anytime by scrounging failed DVD burns from the bin. You split these disks along the purple layer. The purple dye sticks to both halves but the purple side on the clear half is the bit you sand off. You can use the other half but that white printable label stuff is a sort of a latex and is impossible to get off without injuring the clear finish underneath.

There may be solvents which will clean the latex or purple dye off without injuring the plastic. As these disks are not intended to be broken open, be mindful that the dye may be poisonous.

Use gloves and long sleeves and if you wet sand, make sure you ditch the water in a safe place and do not risk cross-contamination of foodstuffs or utensils by using the kitchen sink or the utensils themselves. If you dry-sand, wear a good dust mask and do the job away fromwhere your nearest and dearest might be exposed to the substances.

It is hard to get the split started but once it starts they peel apart easily.

You can try to prise them apart with a sharp point, or try to start the split by dropping them on edge onto a hard surface. It seems to help to boil them first.

IF ANYONE KNOWS IF THE DYE LAYER IS INDEED DANGEROUSLY TOXIC, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ADVISE.

Jamie Roberts · March 28th, 2006, 11:18 PM

Well i'll be buggered I didnt know that!!! thanks for that valuable bit of info Bob.

I have managed to shoot a little bit of video today outside to test the adapter and it ont eh cameras lcd screen it looked pretty good. will capture it tonight and post a link

Jamie

Carl Jakobsson · March 29th, 2006, 08:17 AM

I've only had flicker problems when the batteries or soldering was poor. When spinning with a portable cd-motor at 3V I get no flickering, even though the disc is far from perfectly sanded. On the other hand, the motor makes a lot of noise at 3V. I use external mics so that isn't really a problem.

Jamie Roberts · March 29th, 2006, 04:13 PM

Hi Carl

thats interesting.

I have found two kinds of clear discs. one being as thick as a normal CD, stays on the cd motor fine, but can start to flicker especially if batteries are down a bit (i use 2 x AA). the other disc i have found and used are very thin & flexible, need some blu tack or something similar to keep them on the motor but spin without flicker. I have also noticed that flicker appears to be more obvious in poor light situations (unless im imagining that!). In saying all this though, yesterday i shot a small piece of test footage using a normal thickness disc and there was no flicker at all.

Bob Hart · April 1st, 2006, 08:45 PM

AGUS35 APVE TO HDRFX1 - FURTHUR REAL WORLD TEST.

I got my greasy hands on the FX1 again for an afternoon. I took it and the Agus to a teenagers rock band competition at a local festival. I used it agile-portable as one could use the camera itself alone and found a few problems.

I found another camera-operator there doing an official recording of the event so extended the original intention of a few test shots into providing a bit of extra coverage, mainly close-ups and fingers working strings and frets etc..

The conditions were overcast and light under a canvas awning became a problem because of operator mismanagement. I did not use auto-exposure because of the overcast conditions which tend to aggravate burnout.

Despite some under-exposure which provoked some video noise, the camera hung onto the colours which remained rich. The video noise itself was of a finer texture than I have seen with the PD150, not unlike film grain. It is not necessarily a bad aesthetic but not one I would deliberately pursue. The correctly exposed shots held up well against some direct-to-camera footage I also shot.

The sound was not expected to be any good at all. The other camera operator had arranged for a sound recording off the mixer so it was not an issue. Surprisingly, the FX1 automatic audio performed remarkably well in conditions which occasionally drove the overload on my ears into the pain threshold.

Because the performers jump and move around a lot, following and framing with a fixed prime lens is a problem, especially if you are trying to stay out of another cameraman's field of view. A zoom would have been handy.

The loud amplified sound brought up an interesting defect with the combination of the glass disk, plastic housing and auto-focus. I use the autofocus for the relay as it seems to be just as effective as my own hand-eye skills.

However the autofocus which had been rock-steady, would drift when I was chasing focus with the manual lens and it took me quite a while to realise what was going on because it would spontaneously recover once I had hit the sharp spot with my manual focus. It initially just seemed it was taking me a long time to manually focus. It co-incided with times I was alongside the main speaker columns.

I suspect that loud sound is being conducted to the glass disk which may be vibrating just enough to set the autofocus off when the shot on the groundglass itself is soft right across the frame.

The gyro effect of the spinning glass disk showed its dark side during faster pans and tilts. There would commence a distinct vibration of about 5 Hz, which would transfer to the case/camcorder junction and shake the picture for a second or so after the pan or tilt was completed. My flexible disk-motor mount and the springs may be contributing to this.

The camera/Agus combination did not have any added bracing for sake of keeping the weight down. Added bracing to the camera baseplate would fix the problem.

I found the extra weight of the combination a problem for me after a while, especially when working with the camera held high overhead. Elbow joint and shoulder soreness set in fairly quickly and my shots with the 85mm lens handheld became unsteady and uncontrollable. This is probably more of an age and physical fitness issue.

I found myself tending to rest the back of the cam on my shoulder and using the LCD panel ENG camera style with close-up glasses. The panel was a little too close. An aftermarket eyepiece dioptre attachment for the FX1-ZI series might be a good move for some enterprising manufacturer, or an alternative eyepiece viewfinder working off the LCD circuit.

The other camera operator will be assembling a presentation using some of my footage where it is usable so it will be interesting to see how well the Agus images integrate.

March 27th, 2006, 12:56 PM	#1340
Carl Jakobsson Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Lund, Sweden Posts: 122	Thanks a lot for the interesting reading and viewing! The movies work fine on my Mac (Quicktime and VLC), haven't tried them on my pc though. But I suspect there's something wrong with the field order, it's most visible in the airplane and boat clips. __________________ http://www.nattvard.com

March 27th, 2006, 09:34 PM	#1342
Moises Crespo Regular Crew Join Date: Mar 2004 Location: Boynton Beach,FL Posts: 94	My35 My35 I accually scratched the macro filter right in the middle but check out the footage.. http://media.putfile.com/Sequence-1_...bit_DSL_stream Thanks,moe52

March 29th, 2006, 08:17 AM	#1348
Carl Jakobsson Regular Crew Join Date: Dec 2005 Location: Lund, Sweden Posts: 122	I've only had flicker problems when the batteries or soldering was poor. When spinning with a portable cd-motor at 3V I get no flickering, even though the disc is far from perfectly sanded. On the other hand, the motor makes a lot of noise at 3V. I use external mics so that isn't really a problem. __________________ http://www.nattvard.com

March 27th, 2006, 12:02 AM	#1336
Jamie Roberts Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: bendigo, australia Posts: 204	Im afraid my motor is glued in well and truly with liquid nails! One thing i am not 100% sure on and will check is whether the condenser is actually centred 100% to the slr lens and also whether the condenser is sitting on a slight angle to the gg. I dont know if the angle bit would matter much? I have mounted the condenser in another cut back cdr housing top (like whats it mounted in now. I cut it right back so there is small lip and was able to push it in and upto the gg without interfering with the spinning etc. It actually a bit hard to check as when i push it in i can no longer see the gg except through the condenser. I know if ive pushed it in to far as the disc wont spin, so i pull it back to the disc spins fine and thats basicly my method. I will re fit it and pay closer attention to the whether the condenser is centred on the slr lens and whether there it is flush but offset from the gg. Jamie

March 27th, 2006, 12:15 AM	#1337
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	Dennis. I've tried to upload a 50mb Quicktime H264 file to savefile.com but the machinery here sits and licks its tail without sending anything out. It has been a longstanding problem. Large .pdf files in which I wrote construction methods and which contained still images have the same problem. I rang my provider who advised that my system (Windows Internet Explorer on W98SE will not handle such a large upload and that I need to use a FTP client?? The provider is not allowed to recommend any system over any other. Any recommendations or hints?? In the course of doing all this, I forgot to set the HDV to DV conversion to "on" in the camera menu but the footage captured anyway so I don't really know what is going on. The system is supposed to be "NOT" HDV capable. Whatever? It writes a better DVD-Video disk because of it so something has been learned. The whatever it is takes heaps longer time to render or convert to mpeg4. You can also have it any way you like as long as it is stretched vertically so the file I have made was letterboxed so it presents correctly. It might be easier to make some datadisks and send these by mail or camera tapes to people who have more knowing on computer things than I.

March 27th, 2006, 12:40 AM	#1338
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	Jamie. What you have there is yielding about 85% which should be adequate at a hobbyist level. I wouldn't mess with what you already have working for you as it may not come together quite as well next time. There are too many variables including the thin soft plastic case and there being no fine adjustments available. For improvement into that 90% plus arena, I would favour a complete re-make so that you still get to enjoy the benefits of the original appliance. I used PVC pipe caps and tube because the material is more robust and a tube enabled centres to be more accurately kept but the device remained nearly as simple as Agus's first. Ben Gurvich has a project box version which works well. He is within a half-day drive of your patch but I will leave it to you to initiate contact to see if he is prepared to make his contact details available to you and advise if he actually has the device still with him. Ben visits this site so you should be able to get a blind email to him from here. He is however quite busy in his fulltime work in commercial TV so may not be able to assist you. His version I think was based on a design which I think was published by Jim Lafferty. It is robust and because it has flat surfaces everywhere is a lot easier to mark out and get centres for than a circular object. It is probably a better and more predictable project for a home-build from scratch than my own.

March 27th, 2006, 05:59 AM	#1339
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	AGUS35 APVE TO SONY HDR-FX1 TESTS. I was unable to get anything but small motion image files uploaded but there are four which are very truncated versions of originals and do not encompass a full lens range as the original longer clip did. One of the clips No4 also includes aerial-image footage shot through a Sigma 50-500mm f4-f6.3 zoom. The clips are all QUICKTIME H264, whatever magic that is. I faithfully followed advice and it worked, so thanks again Dennis for your input. They won't play on my web computer but will play on the editing computer which I keep quarantined from this one. Some of the shots were made before I re-centered the front lens mount so you will observe a fall-off to the left side in some shots. This is caused by the edge of frame being too close to the horizontal prism apex, a situation forced by the 28mm half-hypotenuse of the prisms I presently have fitted. I hope the larger prisms will fix this as I will have space to move the apex furthur to the left. The web address which seems to work is :- http://savefile.com/projects/338360 If anyone actually gets one of these downloads to play back I would appreciate the knowing.

March 27th, 2006, 08:15 PM	#1341
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	Carl. Thank you for your feedback. Field orders and compression settings, while I know of them, are a dark art I have yet to teach myself some competence in. The original footage viewed on TV, copied over to a DVD video recorder or captured to computer, does not have those defects, so my mishandling of the computer will be the culprit.

March 27th, 2006, 10:05 PM	#1343
Jamie Roberts Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: bendigo, australia Posts: 204	As i cant leave things well alone! I am in the middle of rebuilding my adapter with a few minor adjustments. I noticed that the condenser was sitting a bit higher then the slr lens and therefore out of line so i have pulled the condenser and re-glued it into a better position in its support frame so lines up better with slr lens. I also noticed that the mount that the camcorder lens goes into wasnt sitting flush with the adapter ie was on an angle so therefore the camcorder wasnt facing gg directly. I have pulled that off and reglued it so its square on to the housing. The very thin plastic disc i was using is splitting from the centre out. too thin im afraid but I found another plastic disc that already has a fine slightly 'sandblasted' look on one side. I want to preserve that side as I think it may be effective so I am sanding the smooth side with 600 sandpaper. Anyway in the next couple of days I will get a chance to put it all back together again and see what happens! Hoping that it dazzles me so I can leave the bloody thing alone! Jamie

March 27th, 2006, 10:23 PM	#1344
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	Jamie. If you've got a plastic disk which does not flicker, treat it like gold, as such are quite rare. If you have a small electric soldering iron for electronic work, fire that up and burn a small hole through the plastic where the crack comes to an end, then trim the rolled up edge of melted plastic off with scraper or old style ribbed razor blade. The crack should travel no more. The scrapers and blades can be had from hardware or ceramic top electric stove retailers. If you don't have an electric soldering iron, a piece of thick wire cooked up over a gas flame will do. Aligning the camcorder is a good move because it puts the best area of gg image centre in the camera's image. Though perhaps not quite as critical as getting the SLR lens and condenser centred and their common centre axis exactly at right-angle to the groundglass, getting the camcorder itself lined up places you furthur into that elusive 90% quality zone.

March 28th, 2006, 05:17 AM	#1345
Jamie Roberts Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: bendigo, australia Posts: 204	Well i have it up and running but only had time for a quick test. will do some more tests on the weekend and post a link to some footage The disc i tried with the sandblasted look on one side and me sanding it on the other wasnt that great im afraid. I currently have put a normal gg disc back in which works fine but will take your idea about the one with the little cracks and use my soldering iron to stop them going any further, and try and use it again. its is a rare one as I havent seen one this thin before. i must start hassling all my cd/dvd burning friends to keep all their clear discs. the last pack of dvd's i bought last week didnt even have one! Just paper protectors. seeya Jamie

March 28th, 2006, 08:53 AM	#1346
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	Jamie. You can get them anytime by scrounging failed DVD burns from the bin. You split these disks along the purple layer. The purple dye sticks to both halves but the purple side on the clear half is the bit you sand off. You can use the other half but that white printable label stuff is a sort of a latex and is impossible to get off without injuring the clear finish underneath. There may be solvents which will clean the latex or purple dye off without injuring the plastic. As these disks are not intended to be broken open, be mindful that the dye may be poisonous. Use gloves and long sleeves and if you wet sand, make sure you ditch the water in a safe place and do not risk cross-contamination of foodstuffs or utensils by using the kitchen sink or the utensils themselves. If you dry-sand, wear a good dust mask and do the job away fromwhere your nearest and dearest might be exposed to the substances. It is hard to get the split started but once it starts they peel apart easily. You can try to prise them apart with a sharp point, or try to start the split by dropping them on edge onto a hard surface. It seems to help to boil them first. IF ANYONE KNOWS IF THE DYE LAYER IS INDEED DANGEROUSLY TOXIC, PLEASE FEEL FREE TO ADVISE.

March 28th, 2006, 11:18 PM	#1347
Jamie Roberts Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: bendigo, australia Posts: 204	Well i'll be buggered I didnt know that!!! thanks for that valuable bit of info Bob. I have managed to shoot a little bit of video today outside to test the adapter and it ont eh cameras lcd screen it looked pretty good. will capture it tonight and post a link Jamie

March 29th, 2006, 04:13 PM	#1349
Jamie Roberts Major Player Join Date: Feb 2006 Location: bendigo, australia Posts: 204	Hi Carl thats interesting. I have found two kinds of clear discs. one being as thick as a normal CD, stays on the cd motor fine, but can start to flicker especially if batteries are down a bit (i use 2 x AA). the other disc i have found and used are very thin & flexible, need some blu tack or something similar to keep them on the motor but spin without flicker. I have also noticed that flicker appears to be more obvious in poor light situations (unless im imagining that!). In saying all this though, yesterday i shot a small piece of test footage using a normal thickness disc and there was no flicker at all.

April 1st, 2006, 08:45 PM	#1350
Bob Hart Inner Circle Join Date: Dec 2003 Location: PERTH. W.A. AUSTRALIA. Posts: 4,476	AGUS35 APVE TO HDRFX1 - FURTHUR REAL WORLD TEST. I got my greasy hands on the FX1 again for an afternoon. I took it and the Agus to a teenagers rock band competition at a local festival. I used it agile-portable as one could use the camera itself alone and found a few problems. I found another camera-operator there doing an official recording of the event so extended the original intention of a few test shots into providing a bit of extra coverage, mainly close-ups and fingers working strings and frets etc.. The conditions were overcast and light under a canvas awning became a problem because of operator mismanagement. I did not use auto-exposure because of the overcast conditions which tend to aggravate burnout. Despite some under-exposure which provoked some video noise, the camera hung onto the colours which remained rich. The video noise itself was of a finer texture than I have seen with the PD150, not unlike film grain. It is not necessarily a bad aesthetic but not one I would deliberately pursue. The correctly exposed shots held up well against some direct-to-camera footage I also shot. The sound was not expected to be any good at all. The other camera operator had arranged for a sound recording off the mixer so it was not an issue. Surprisingly, the FX1 automatic audio performed remarkably well in conditions which occasionally drove the overload on my ears into the pain threshold. Because the performers jump and move around a lot, following and framing with a fixed prime lens is a problem, especially if you are trying to stay out of another cameraman's field of view. A zoom would have been handy. The loud amplified sound brought up an interesting defect with the combination of the glass disk, plastic housing and auto-focus. I use the autofocus for the relay as it seems to be just as effective as my own hand-eye skills. However the autofocus which had been rock-steady, would drift when I was chasing focus with the manual lens and it took me quite a while to realise what was going on because it would spontaneously recover once I had hit the sharp spot with my manual focus. It initially just seemed it was taking me a long time to manually focus. It co-incided with times I was alongside the main speaker columns. I suspect that loud sound is being conducted to the glass disk which may be vibrating just enough to set the autofocus off when the shot on the groundglass itself is soft right across the frame. The gyro effect of the spinning glass disk showed its dark side during faster pans and tilts. There would commence a distinct vibration of about 5 Hz, which would transfer to the case/camcorder junction and shake the picture for a second or so after the pan or tilt was completed. My flexible disk-motor mount and the springs may be contributing to this. The camera/Agus combination did not have any added bracing for sake of keeping the weight down. Added bracing to the camera baseplate would fix the problem. I found the extra weight of the combination a problem for me after a while, especially when working with the camera held high overhead. Elbow joint and shoulder soreness set in fairly quickly and my shots with the 85mm lens handheld became unsteady and uncontrollable. This is probably more of an age and physical fitness issue. I found myself tending to rest the back of the cam on my shoulder and using the LCD panel ENG camera style with close-up glasses. The panel was a little too close. An aftermarket eyepiece dioptre attachment for the FX1-ZI series might be a good move for some enterprising manufacturer, or an alternative eyepiece viewfinder working off the LCD circuit. The other camera operator will be assembling a presentation using some of my footage where it is usable so it will be interesting to see how well the Agus images integrate.