Film Shot with the Letus35 in Holland
 

I'm a filmmaker from New York City. I got a job to write and direct a short film in Holland. The time from when I got the job, wrote the script to final edit was less than three months.

I could do anything as long as I showed Holland in a good light. I decided to employ a 35mm adapter and settled on the Letus35. I'm not going to go into a review of the device here, but am glad to answer any questions.


The end result is "Tulips for Daisy". I hope you enjoy it.


The link below link is to a Quicktime file. It is around 88 megs and runs 11 minutes.

www.frankieboots.net/TFD_SMALL.mov

Wow, great stuff! I hope the moderators keep it here rather than in "DV For The Masses," as it shows the Letus in actual use.

Tell us all about it: the purpose of the film, what lens(es) you used, what camera you used, how much color correction, what other equipment, etc.


Terrific job, and keep up the good work!

Very good work, but the letus is performing very badly indeed. Vignetting, very soft like 8mm.

I get the impression it's partically incorrect focus on the subject and partially just an extremely shallow depth of field (maybe intentionally, maybe to increase the amount of light), since in some scenes the subject would pass through a very focused plane.

Ben Winter, for example, produced some videos with a much sharper image out of his Letus, as have many others with their test footage. So, it remains to be seen what caused it in this case.

Thanks.

I used a Nikon 50mm 1.4 lens. With the letus it seemed as wide as you can go. The grain of the ground glass becomes too prominent above 1.8 or 2.

The Focus is actually very very sharp, just very very shallow. I wanted the focus that way. If you look at it back you will see that I often rack focus from one subject to the next.

I also like the vignetting here. I think it lends itself to the look of the film. Having said that, I would not want vignetting in other circumstances. I could have zoomed in more. ALSO, you need to remember that that this vignetting is NOT in TV safe and cannot be seen on a TV. I also had to crop this file in order to get rid of the edge of the ground glass. These are only "internet" problems.

I shot on he PD150. We did do a pretty intense color correction in FCP. Using the built in filters as well as Magic Bullet editors in places. I de-interlaced using TMTS. I had a huge problem with Quicktime Bright?Con. It caused a flicker in many shots where the lighting was uneven.

You're very close of that if You going to answer all those thousend question appear here.

here are mine:
1. Did you plan use different lens but because of problems some of those were dropped? I mean here fisheyes in first place...
2. Did You use follow focus?
3. Was it letus35flip?
4. How much You had to zoom in?
5. How it worked with different iris sizes?
6. What You think, was it exactly same(as in real 35mm) FOV was it bigger or smaller?
7. How large was edge fall off by real 35mm image size?

Finally a footage of a PD150 + Letus35 which I can view lol! Your short has got great looks!

1. Did you plan use different lens but because of problems some of those were dropped? I mean here fisheyes in first place...

Yes. I wanted to use a 24mm, but at 2.8 the grain was to great.

2. Did You use follow focus?

I focused by hand.

3. Was it letus35flip?

NO!!! I bought the flip first and returned it. The flip is far from ready for proffessional use.

4. How much You had to zoom in?

Very little.

5. How it worked with different iris sizes?

Above f2 it was too grainy.

6. What You think, was it exactly same(as in real 35mm) FOV was it bigger or smaller?

Smaller.

7. How large was edge fall off by real 35mm image size?

I don't understand the question.

Interesting film. I know it sounds strange, but I think like the medium and long shots with deeper DOF the best, it has a nice soft film-like quality to them.

First, Michael, thank You very much answering my other questions.

I'll try to rephrase and split:
7. How big is target area(answer 6 tells actually it's smaller than 24x36)?

8. Did You zoom because of to get edge of GG behind the corner or did You zoom to get free some vingetting as well?

So, even though the Letus utilizes a vibrating GG it still has grain problems without a fast lens? I hadn't heard this before, but I haven't been paying close attention to the Letus for quite some time.

7. How big is target area(answer 6 tells actually it's smaller than 24x36)?

I don't know.

8. Did You zoom because of to get edge of GG behind the corner or did You zoom to get free some vingetting as well

Both

Yes, big time.

Funny to see a movie shot in my country by a "foreigner". Some good shots
in there! Liked some of the looks of the sea, tulips and the trams.

Did you guys have a good time here? Looked like you had some great weather
(especially for Holland)!

When were you here? A couple of weeks ago I was in the USA myself.

p.s. the two tips in the first part of the movie look very strange to us Dutchies... :)

Very nice film, very well done.

How many people were involved in the production?

Just me, the actors and the sound person.

Yeah, story is beautiful and very well narrated. Reminds me one of my friend who is in States right now. But gone in very similar reasons, i think.

NO!!!! It was freezing. The actors were so cold through out the filming. It rained every morning, but the sun always came out.

April 1-12


Thanks is was a lot of work.

Michael, nice work. Great use of color and landscape and excellent use of natural light. I'm curious for more info about your post work (if you don't mind sharing it). In particular, I'm most interested in image correction. Which filters and adjustments did you use? Thanks.

I loved the style of the film with the narration/music. Very good for engaging emotion and nostalgia.

That was ..... a beauty!!!. I am going out of the country too and I hope to shoot a short to use at Festivals. Having some of the best gears available (M2+Letus Flip+XL2), I must make this site proud for giving us the very best we all need to bring out such art and creativity.

Awesome story men!.

nostalgia?? damn I need to get back to my OXFORD Dictionary :)

It varied...

First, I had a tech do all the heavy lifting. I just guided him to achieve the look that I wanted. Having said that I know what was used, pretty much.

Through out the film we used the color safe filter and the "Too Much Too Soon" Smart De-Interlace filter. To adjust the color we primarily used the 3-way color corrector. For contrast I used a customized version of Magic Bullet's "Max Contrast" filter. I would have used the QuickTime Brightness/Contrast filter but in many instances it had a bug and caused a flicker. I still have yet to solve this problem. There were a couple of scenes, IE: the train and the Tulip field that we customized other Magic Bullet presets. Out of the box the MB stuff it way over the top, but when adjusted they render beautiful results.

OTHER STUFF: The Letus35 is very dusty. Anyone who is planning to use one should have PLENTY of compressed air and a place to open it up. I used the bathroom, as there is very little dust there.

Hey Michael,

Great stuff u got there! Do you have any issues with the grains at all? I mean I see lots of grain when i make any camera movement...they seem almost static. I had to do quite abit of work in post to minimize the grains. Just wondering if you have any experience like mine?

Derrick

I thought I'd see more grain, but what you see is what is there.

Having said that if I were to stop down then the grain would be very apparent. In order to use a product like the Letus you have to be willing to make compromises.

It's also important that you know what you are doing. The Letus can yield good results, but is limited in it's range. If you don't have a good command of it, the results can be awful.

so can you kindly share with us what are some of the things you took note of to maximise the potential of the adapter? I have a Letus myself but being not so technically inclined, i'd love to hear some advice!

Don't shoot above 1.8. Keep A LOT of dust off handy. Make sure you are good at manually focusing. Use a very good lens.

Great Film, good actors!
How many light did you use indoors ?

Thanks.

None.

It's all available light and a reflector when needed.

you tested both letus flipped and normal version - did you found the flipped version has more light loss ?

of course.

Two words.... VERY NICE