Letus35XL Arrived - Help Needed

[Dustin Cross]

Tucker,

The Mini35 doesn't perform any better than the Letus and it costs over $10,000.

The M2 is grainless, but doesn't flip the image or have a relay lens and it costs slightly more than the Letus.

The Letus is the least expensive, most capable 35mm lens adapter available.

If you are looking for a run and gun solution where you don't need lights, then I recommend you avoid ALL of the 35mm Lens adapters. All of these adapters require a little extra care.

You have a problem with using 3k worth of light to see stuff in a pitch black parking lot at night. In that situation you are going to need lots of light, no matter what lens you use. They use 5k and 10k lights durring the day on film sets to get the look they want all the time.

The most important thing with these adapters is the lens you put in front of them. With a fast Nikon manual lens I get great stuff.

I think you need to sell your Letus and stay away from 35mm adapters.

[Michael Maier]

Originally Posted by Dustin Cross

Here is an example of a short I shot at night with the FX1 and Letus35flip. We used three 1k lights and blasted everything we wanted to see.
http://www.scottleemason.com/movies/thecomb.mov

Althought pretty well done, I think your footage is underexposed and flat. It seems you would need more than just 3K worth of light to get good results with the set up.

[Michael Maier]

Originally Posted by Dustin Cross

Tucker,

The Mini35 doesn't perform any better than the Letus and it costs over $10,000.

Have you used the Mini35? Judging from your comment I don’t think so.

Originally Posted by Dustin Cross

The M2 is grainless, but doesn't flip the image or have a relay lens and it costs slightly more than the Letus.

Actually the M2 only costs less than the LetusXL.

Originally Posted by Dustin Cross

The Letus is the least expensive, most capable 35mm lens adapter available.

Least expensive would be Wayne’s adapter I guess. Most capable sounds like personal opinion.

Originally Posted by Dustin Cross

If you are looking for a run and gun solution where you don't need lights, then I recommend you avoid ALL of the 35mm Lens adapters. All of these adapters require a little extra care.

Very true.

[Dustin Cross]

Michael,

I have never used the Mini35 on a shoot, but I have played with it and was not impressed. Well I was impressed back before people started making things like the M2, Letus, G35, etc.

The adapter that impresses me is the M2. It is very sharp and grainless. I just prefer the convience of the flip on the Letus and with my HD100 I think having the relay lens will keep me from breaking my stock lens. No, I haven't done a shoot with the M2, but I have played with one for a while.

The M2 costs $550, the lens adapter cost $90, and the 72mm HD Achromatic Lens cost $395. That means the M2 cost $1035. Almost $200 more than the Letus with relay lens.

When I said the Letus was most capable I was refering to the flip and relay lens. The Mini35 is the only other adapter I know of that has those capabilities. I didn't mean the Letus had the best quality image.

Thanks for the compliment on that shoot. I would have liked to have had a lot more light. 3 1k lights is all we had. We had just recieved the the Letus35flip a couple days before and weren't planning to use it because we knew it was going to be a night shoot at an abandoned drive-in and we only had 3 1k lights. I didn't think we would be able to see anything with the Letus. The director liked what he saw, so we shot with the Letus. I am happy with the results. A few more and varing watt lights would have been nice.

[Michael Maier]

They have a special Achromatic lens for HD now? I didn't know that. Before I think it cost 650+75 for a Nikon mount and it came with the Achromatic. Now they charge $395 for an Achromatic lens? I wonder why, because the most expensive lens I ever saw was about 100 bucks. Talk about price inflation (meaning blowing prices up). I guess demand can do that.

[Andreas Rylander]

Dustin, just felt I needed to compliment you on that short! I am getting a bit tired of the concept of blackhaired women in white dresses who stand in weird ways and have all hair in front of their face, but I do love how you made the short. Very well made in my opinion =)

[Andrew Todd]

i watched that when you first posted it a ways back.. and i really enjoyed the footage as well


tucker, are you going to let us know what lights you are using? ive been doing alot of testing with a beta model without lights indoors and outdoors and am extremely pleased with it. i also just finished shooting my first short with this adapter and used very little lights (i think like 600 and 2x300w) and was even more pleased ith the results.. you cant expect any help with this problem unless you tell us under what coniditons you are shooting.

[Tony Tibbetts]

Yes , I am still very curious as to what your shooting conditions are.

Originally Posted by Tucker Wright

Dustin,
- blasting three 1k lights to see everything i want to see...is not the answer i'm looking for

What answer are you looking for? I've seen more than 3k worth of lights needed to shoot outdoor scenes in daylight.

Originally Posted by Tucker Wright

On Cine lenses I can shoot at f11 and f16. There is way too much light loss with this product.

The term "Cine lenses" is a very vague term. Technically speaking you are not using "Cine lenses" you are using SLR lenses to approximate 35mm film.

Originally Posted by Tucker Wright

I am a photographer and own 2 16mm Film cameras. I understand DOF.

DV is not 16mm film no matter how you slice it. You won't, nor will you ever get the same latitude or light sensitivity you get with film. For someone so versed in the knowledge of cameras and lenses "I understand DOF" you seem to be a little in the dark (no pun intended).

Adapters are meant to give a close approximation of 35mm film and lenses, it's not going to be exactly the same, the adapters will behave slightly different from actual 35mm film and lenses.

It seems to me that you want to be able to shoot in low light, but you didn't study up on the differences in adapters. You jumped the gun and bought something that didn't fit YOUR needs or YOUR expectations. That's YOUR fault and no one else's.

Still, I wait anxiously to hear what your lighting conditions were?

If you are having low light problems, have you even considered the gain function on the XL2? +3db is perfectlly acceptable. I shot a live show the other week with the 14x manual lens all the way open at f1.7 and +6db gain and the show looked great on my 46 inch Sony Widescreen TV.

Hey, Andrew I'd love to see the short you shot using the LetusXL!

[Andrew Todd]

im on my way out the door to make the weekly 4 hour drive back home to start editing. post the rough edit once its done

[Tony Tibbetts]

Here is some test footage I shot over at my friends house. Nothing terribly exciting. It's not exactly great footage, but it does show you what the letus can achieve with minimal lighting. The only source of light in this clip is daylight coming through a window. I used 24mm,35mm, 50mm and 80mm Canon FD lenses. Gain was set to zero. I have not altered the footage in anyway. Although it looks alot more flat and washed out on the computer monitor than it does on my JVC CRT monitor.

Here it is:
http://www.tonytibbetts.com/letusxl_int.mov

Please ignore the obvious lens flare in some scenes.

Also some outdoor footage:
http://www.tonytibbetts.com/letusxl_ext.mov

[Alex Anzalone]

Dustin

I really liked your flik..really scary..!!! I can´t wait to see the next part..!!!