JY-HD10u+Letus35A samples

[Erik Rangel]

Hello everyone,
I've shot some test footage with my HD10 and the letus35A and put it up here
http://www.inthemind.com/

There is a quick 20second clip and 3 full res stills. When I compressed the footage to quicktime the colors became a bit dull, but as you can see in the stills that the colors were really nice and bright. There is some vignetting and in the cameras Lcd the image looked like it was zoomed in close enough, but when I imported the video there were the edges of the GG still visable. I have yet to get outside on a sunny day to try this set up out, but that's on my to do list. Along with some indoor stuff with lights and gels.
If anyone has shot with this setup, please share. I'm looking for some pointers.
Thanks
E.

[Dan Diaconu]

Ahhhhh... finally somebody actually shoots something nice (a finished movie that is!) as opposed to cats and other.... "resolution charts". Nice work Erik, very nice. You did a good job. All in all nice!!!!!!

[Erik Rangel]

Thanks Dan...That was really NICE of you:)
It's just a couple shots strung together no color correction or any effects. The HD10 needs lots of light by itself... slap on the Letus and even more light is needed. So I guess I won't be shooting anything run and gun with low light.

[Madhav Yerella]

Hi Erik,
I had limited sucess with "AF Zoom-Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6D lens".
Is yours Nikon or Canon mount?
What SLR lens are you using?
Are you using more than one lens?

Thanks.

[Erik Rangel]

Madhav,
I just have one lens right now. It's a Nikon Nikkor MF 50mm 1.8. Got it off ebay for forty bucks. I wanted to make sure I could get the lenses to work with my camera before buying too many SLR lenses. I think I'll buy a couple more now.

[Wayne Kinney]

Nice footage. I think you need to zoom in a little more to get rid of the vibrating outer frame. This is hard to do on the cam's LCD as it crops the edges.

Wayne.

[Erik Rangel]

Yeah, I didn't notice the edges until I imported.
Does anyone have any suggestions as far as a 7" lcd that I could maybe connect from my component out from the camera? Or would that be the same as the lcd on the cam?

[Wayne Kinney]

Im guessing most display systems would crop the 'overscan' area, leaving you with the same problem as with the cam's LCD. Only the PC capture program gives you the true recording. Maybe connect your cam to your pc via fire wire 'live', and test out the zoom settings, getting a sence of the relation between the cam's LCD and what you see on the PC monitor, so that you can get the correct zoom setting from the cam's LCD whilst on set.

Just a thought.

Wayne.

[Madhav Yerella]

Hi Erik,
1)Cropping Issue:

I used GS400 Camcorder+LETUS35 with "AF Zoom-Nikkor 28-80mm f/3.5-5.6D lens". At wide angle I was seeing diagonal bars at 2 edges. So I zoomed in little more and got rid of the vignetting and my Camcorder's LCD has not shown any black bars,diagonal or horizontal. But When I imported using Vegas Editor, I saw the black bars(not diagonal bars, as I got rid of vignetting-but I saw horizontal and vertical bars). My assumption is since we captured a lesser area and by default the aspect ratio is maintained, the image is appearing cropped. So what I did is to import the footage while resampling it to fit the regular video dimensions and also by discarding the aspect ratio. I am not sure by doing this if I am sacrificing resolution?

2)Lens selection:

I can go for 2 lenses but not 3, due to budget.
So if I go with Nikkor 50mm f1.8-can it get me medium and closeup shots?
How about Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 for long shots?

3)Shadows movie:
Is this also shot with Letus and Nikkor 50mm 1.8 lens?
The movie had black vertical bars on left and right, this is what I had and I got rid of it by doing what I described in step1.

[Erik Rangel]

Wayne and Madhav
I think I'll try connecting to pc next time.
The lens I have is pretty good for the medium shots an clse ups, it just depends on how far you are from the subject.
The Shadows was shot without any adapter. If I try shooting anything this dark again I'm gonna need more lights(Sounds funny:)...for better exposure.
Thanks
E.

[Yasser Kassana]

Guys i would thoroughly recommend DVRACK. You can download the demo here. All you need a cheapy laptop.

http://www.seriousmagic.com/dvrack.cfm

It's an amazing piece of software that let's you see everything in realtime, colours everything. Camera LCDS are a no go after this software.

[Frank Ladner]

Regarding the visible vibration in frame:

#1:
I haven't tried yet, but I wanted to see if any of you guys have used diopters/macros in conjunction with the Letus 35. Seems like if you use a relatively small power (+4 or so) filter, in conjunction with the 2-element (on the Letus 35A, anyway) achromat, you'll get a bit closer and possibly eliminate the vibrating edges. Doesn't seem like you would have much of a chromatic aberration problem I will have to try this when I get home.

#2:
Another option: I don't think it would be too hard to remove the ground glass, cut a larger space, and insert a larger ground glass.

[Erik Rangel]

I used a +4,+2,+1 on the letus so I wouldn't have to zoom in too much.
Also the Letus is lends its self to tweaking like Frank suggests. I had to adjust the distance of the GG from the SLR in order to get the infinity focus to work. All it took was a hot glue gun and time.
E.

[Bill Porter]

RE: larger ground glass-

Beyond a certain point the GG size is irrelevant with SLR film camera lenses because the image circle is usually only a little over 44mm.