I went out for 2 hours this afternoon to Richmond. where I live, to shoot some proper shots for the first time.

I used a Z1, shooting 1080i 50i, no external monitor. All calibrating was done the day before using a monitor and I trusted the settings. The Z1 lcd is pretty good, coupled with the focus zoom thing I seemed to get away with not having my Marshall with me. I was walking around a lot with the camera, bag of lenses and tripod, so I didn't want the added hassle of a monitor.

All in all I was very pleased with the end results. The bokeh is a bit ghost like in places wide open but everything is lovely and sharp. I used lenses from a fish eye 16mm to a 105mm. All fast lenses, nothing slower than f2.8

I usually use my JVC with my Brevis, I much prefer the image from it than the Z1 and of course it shoots progressive. PLEASE Letus brothers bring out a JVC Version with relay...PLEASE

I did a few night shots too and they came out pretty well too.

I have done minimal grading, there is also my usual little vignettes. I must stress there were NO optical vignettes. Everything was perfect with every lens I used!

http://web.mac.com/philip.bloom/Philip_Bloom/35mm_Letus_short.html

Phil,

Really beautiful cinematography and the soundtrack was so perfect. The evening/night shots were really pretty and the day shots with the people had a great atmosphere to it. Where was this shot?

I watched the Bourne Supremacy last night and saw all kinds of bokeh in sequences where there were many lenses used. Some had an octagonal rendering of highlights, some round, and yes, some diffused and ghost-like. I noticed some of the latter in your footage but who cares? It looks beautiful and it's only us stick-in-the-muds that are going to notice it anyway.

An artful piece. Thanks for sharing.

Appreciate it Steven.

I used some ND grads to even out the light too, forgot to mention that. I was also using a terrible tripod. As I was on my own with camera and bag and walking around for two hours I left my Vinten Vision 11 fibertec tripod in the car and used the rubbish manfrotto 501. But it's light and there was minimal panning. But, it felt so unstable.

It was shot in Richmond, Surrey. Near where I live.

Phil,

I'm looking to accomplish DOF using the Z1, did not realize that the Letus would work well with my camera. Any advice you'd give to someone with a good technical background looking to move from the more videolike look I have been going for with the Z1 typically, for adventure videography, to a more naturalistic look mainly for outdoors, scenery, and wildlife footage. I'd be aiming, in the long run, to try to get an adjustable mid to shallow DOF to combine some of the aspects of what people describe here as the film look, combined with the look you see on Discovery channel, Club 1080, etc type stuff.

My current setup is a Z1, and I am also looking into a workflow of 50i -> 25p -> 24p but I am not really satisfied that I will like the end result, and the painful workflow. All in all, I'd be happy with 60i and DOF/Good colors. I use Aspect/PPro2.0 for post.

I loved how this came out! I didn't notice any changes in focus in any of the shots, though. Would follow focus be something easy to accomplish with the Z1 and the Letus, in your opinion? Also, how much of the coloration is due to Magic Bullets in post? I really think you did an excellent job, either way.

Carl

Thanks Carl.

I didn't do any focus pulls as there was nothing that screamed out "Rack me!!". It's a common mistake for people shooting stuff with these adaptors to focus rack all the time. They rarely look good unless the glass is really high quality otherwise you get terrible breathing. i accomplish it on my big XDCAM HD easily using the macro, but if I use my Canon HD lens it breathes, something I hate.

The Z1 does work very well with all the adaptors out there. I would recommend the Letus as it is so bright and so well made. Would be great for what you need. Problem with wildlife photography with adaptors would be to get a close up of something from a long way off you would have to have the most ridiculous long lens to get equivalent to say a 14x or 16x on a video lens.

The colours were evened out in post due to the light changing all the time. The natural colours looked lovely actually! Here are two stills from the same scene. The crushed one is the Magic bullet looks (which is simply the easiest was to make something look cracking!)

So, if I want racks, I should plan on spending a *lot* of money on optics, but for DOFs with no movement, I should be alright with cheaper prosumer lenses?

Thanks for the screen grabs, it really showed me a lot of what I wanted to know... looking at that convinces me that the biggest improvement will be proper Z1 settings and use of the lenses, vs good grading tools in post. I should have known that's where the priorities lie. :)

Good stuff!

C

So, if I want racks, I should plan on spending a *lot* of money on optics, but for DOFs with no movement, I should be alright with cheaper prosumer lenses?

Thanks for the screen grabs, it really showed me a lot of what I wanted to know... looking at that convinces me that the biggest improvement will be proper Z1 settings and use of the lenses, vs good grading tools in post. I should have known that's where the priorities lie. :)

Good stuff!

C

Sort of...if you want focus racks with NO breathing we are talking PL mount lenses which cost a fortune. If I want racks with my 35mm adaptors some lenses are better than others, my 18mm Sigma is fine, so is my 105mm f2 DC nikon. The Zeiss oddly are probably the worst for breathing. You mustn't forget every single one of these lenses are made for stills cameras so the manufacturers are uninterested in things like breathing.

What we need is for 35mm adaptors to become so popular than someone makes high quality but still affordable Nikon or Canon mount lenses than don't breathe. Probably won't ever happen of course!

My advice re: grading, is shoot with as much detail available as possible and as neutral as possible. Don't crush the blacks too much, keep them stretched. I also tend to always underexpose by about half a stop if I am editing/ grading myself, gives me more flexablity. After all, once detail is gone it's gone. With a neutral image ANY look is possible! Two of the shots in this short were under by almost two stops as the lens I wanted for the shot wasn't that fast, but I brought them back up using Magic Bullet looks with no loss of image quality!

Still affordable? For video? Never! :D

As far as the Letus and the Z1, is it as simple as removing the matte box, screwing in in the same way you'd attach a filter? Or does it require any sort of disassembly of the Z? I had originally thought it only feasible for removable lenses... are there any other parts needed to get a working setup up and running?

C

screw it on but you should get rods as it's a heavy beast. it is SOOO easy to set up!

Awesome. :)

I suppose it's time to start frequenting the Letus boards.... And as always more tinkering with Picture Profiles to draw out those pretty colors. :D

Unfortunately the budget probably won't allow for this sort of expansion in the near future, but I'm definitely thinking down the line towards this. It also depends on if I get more adventure video contracts, or can gear more towards nature/ecology/documentary that I can take time to set up properly. I had trouble with this season of a show I was working on as to even having time to pull the Z from it's Pelican. Quite a bit of the show was filmed with a Sony A1U due to the fast paced production environment, and the crazy locations and angles required. I'm very happy with my Z1, generally speaking, and would love to be pulling the sorts of shots you were getting in the future. For now, I'll deal with the deep DOF... :)

C

Phil,

The sceneries look great in that clip.

Just to give you an idea in the iWeb to make your site easier to browse, you can have all of your movie page come up in the "album" by putting those movie pages in the album page. The album page will make automatic thumbnails.

cheers kaku

Phil:

Nice shots. The first scene seemed to have a bit of vignetting, but the rest show that not being a problem. Is it hard to find that sweet spot zooming the camera in to fill the frame with unvignetted image ?

Hi Chris


Thanks,

As mentioned in my initial post all vignettes were done in post. i like the look! No vignettes occurred optically.

Hi Chris


Thanks,

As mentioned in my initial post all vignettes were done in post. i like the look! No vignettes occurred optically.

Okay. Thanks.... got to remember how the posts started sometime. Again, thanks for posting that video.. I have the FX1 and an old Letus 35a.... This is all together another world !

Moved clip. Just go to my web site and click on 35mm Letus

Phil, I totally agree on the rack focusing. I think people get so excited about having shallow DOF that they over-do it pulling a rack focus every other scene. Your video is a great example of how to take advantage of DOF without screaming... "hey look! I just got a new 35mm adapter!"

Of course I say all of that knowing exactly what it is like to use a 35mm adapter for the first time. Sometimes you just can't help yourself with an over abundance of crazy rack action.

Anyway, awesome clip. Thanks for taking the time to shoot and share.

Hey Phil, nice work, great colors!

What f-stop were you using on the 35mm lens, looks like open but am hoping to see clips shot at f4-f5.6.

Cheers

New version...much better structure and some different shots. Different grade

http://web.mac.com/philip.bloom/Philip_Bloom/Autumn%3A_Letus_35mm.html