I tried vaseline, too! I felt so dumb I didn't post results but I'm glad I'm not alone.

Tonight I tried some better microwax (ordered through some place online that claimed 4 dollars a pound but after random fees it was about 20 bucks). It's amazing how much better my results are. The grain at f1.4 with beeswax (which was borderline unacceptable to be honest) now looks like the grain at f5.6 or f8. The light transmission is worse since I did a sloppy job but I'm still really happy with my results and I know I could do better if I didn't have insane time restraints from school.

Anyhow, Oscar was right about light grain. Microwax rules and it's easy to work with.

I think I smell another DIY guide brewing since my old one has some pretty inaccurate information. Once I get some free time....that could be Christmas, though, unfortunately.

Wow, microwax is awesome. The last shot is OOF, and the soft edges are soft and vignetted because of my cheap achromat and sloppy construction. You can stop down surprisingly far without grain--this stuff is great. Also, this was shot mid-day so issues with "ghosting" or light leakage are pretty much none.

And this is with a very, very rough, sloppily made wax screen, too.

http://home.comcast.net/~kittyluv/35mm1.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~kittyluv/35mm2.jpg
http://home.comcast.net/~kittyluv/35mm3.jpg

Matthew,
Is this still using capilary action?

Wayne.

Yes, but I've changed two things:

Instead of using white microwax, I'm now using amber wax. For some reason, the grain is much finer. It's still much lighter than the beeswax I was using before and the grain is better than both beeswax and white microwax.

I'm using a thicker layer of wax. Light transmission is worse, but the contrast is more pleasing and grain is reduced as well. I can stop down quite far...I'm not sure how much of this is attributed to the new amber microwax and how much is due to it being a thicker layer.

I'd do more experiments, but I'm at school and don't get to go home very often: maybe once every three weeks or a month, and only for the weekend. This was my first time back in a month and I built the new focusing screen and some dolly track. To be honest, this isn't even that great a focusing screen since I made it sloppily and very quickly. The thickness isn't perfectly even, there is one strange cooling artifact at the very edge but it's only noticeable in some shots.

This is more of a test than anything, but already it's looking quite good. My next goal is to improve light transmission and pick up a better achromat.

And, yes, I still believe in capillary action. This microwax seems to melt around 200º or lower, and with glass that's heated to about 300º, I bet it would work very well. Unfortunately, that would require two toaster ovens, and I only have one...

In the interest of keeping this thread on the move . . .
I finally got a good ground glass together, with only a few flaws. I've posted a movie (12 mb for a minute, requiring QT7 for full display of all its little flaws.) http://homepage.mac.com/filmic36/adapter/
It begins with an f/16 shot at the sky, stopping down to f/1.2 There's a close-up portrait, for studying sharpness on hair and shallow DOF, also.
Gonna stop sweating the wax for now, and work on getting an adapter that can at least line up the lens with the camera!
The PCX is a $4 lens I bought at surplushed, so lots of chromatic aberration, and such. I'm just not there yet.
Comments welcome, of course.
Glen

Good to see someone's keeping the embers burning. I'm eyeball deep in work and haven't had time to give my wax experiments their proper due. When some time opens up you can be sure I'll check in and report -- I have fresh supplies just waiting for such an occasion :)

http://home.comcast.net/~kittyluv/random.mov

Good to see you're still kicking, Jim.
Matthew, the color and contrast look great. I'm surprised there's not more excitement about the wax adaptors. Maybe it's the light-loss issues? When you say you're losing a couple stops with your adapter, is that just with the ground glass alone, or does that include the whole setup with lens?
Any color-correction on this? Shadows look great.
Glen

Glen, the light-loss is not an issue at all. 1 or 2 F-stops. With good condensers to spread the light (and capture the highlights that go through the wax), you can make the wax layer as thin as one strip of aluminum foil.

I don't know about "one or two stops." I mean, you have to zoom in pretty far and that coupled with the condenser means you lose at least a stop even before the glass comes into play.

I lose maybe 2.5-3 but the wax is quite thick. With thinner wax, I could see 2 stops of light loss, which is VERY reasonable.

I'd love to learn more from you guys who are using PCX lenses. I have two 100FL PCX lenses here that I picked up from surplussshed or somewhere on the cheap, and I need to know what (approx) distance from the GG they should be placed, and in what direction. I'm looking at my 3" long aluminum tubing here and I'm worried I haven't enough distance between the rear of the 35mm lense and the GG to properly make use of the PCX lens(es).

Matt, you have a point in terms of overall light loss but others are talking about the light loss through the adapter itself, not through the adapter plus subsequent loss induced by the camcorder's iris due to zooming.

Jim, for me the dual PCX GG sandwich is dead. It created lots of vignetting, and I didn't like that the PCX on the SLR side was making my SLR lens a wider lens than what I 'd put on -- not to mention it would be expanding my DOF, since it would actually be playing with the FOV (for a constant area). I mean, before these adaptors came along, people were attaching 35mm lenses to video cameras, adding glass to get the full image small enough to fit in a video frame, only to discover that they'd converted the 35mm lens into a standard video lens with video DOF.
So it's the single PCX on the video side for me. And there are two things I look for.
First, there is a sweet spot where the PCX distance from the GG has neither pin-cushioning or barrel distortion at the edge of the frame. This distance is no-where near the maximum magnification point, either, unfortunately. Because the second point is finding a PCX that will magnify the GG image sufficiently that you don't have to do a lot of zooming on the video camera in order to fill frame (and I hate the thought of having to buy another quality piece of glass so my video can macro through excessive zoom settings).
With my adapter, I'm looking at a little less than 100 mm FL, for now. I don't know if the shorter FL PCXs are more prone to distortion, or not. I guess I'll see. Hope this helps give one perspective, anyway.

Matt, do you have an incident meter? If so, can you put a small cylinder around the white dome, take a reading, and then cover the cylinder with your GG and take a second reading? That seems like a fair way to evaluate how much light is lost due to the diffusive nature of the wax. Your 2 to 3 stop loss sounds extreme for wax, unless you are layering it so thick as to avoid some grain issues. Your footage does have a nice contrast to it.

Glen

I guess my interest is in getting as close to or matching the G35 experience -- and they comment that they use "faster" lenses than stock Century Optics glass (like the +7 macro I'm using). Without having access to a "faster" macro, my interest is in using a PCX mounted in front of the GG to bring in extra light. My half hour or so of fooling around with my 100FL PCX in front of the GG proved not to make much of a noticable difference, though (no vignetting or pincushioning, either.)

So, I'm just trying to get some guidance here instead of making it pure guesswork -- which, while that can work for some parts of this project, I suspect will be more trouble than good when aligning glass.

what does "fast" mean?

i believe the word 'fast' is related to the light transmission of the lens or glass.

Wayne.

What experience is that? Not having to use PCX lenses? Getting the fastest adapter possible?
Right now, the fastest adapters would be the vibrating/rotating glass GG setups. If a wax gg loses a stop and a glass one loses about a third, no special macro glass in the world is going to make up for that difference.
As for talking about using faster glass, I just did some experiments with a spot meter on sticks, and found that my fastest glass was the $3 PCX I bought at surplushed. It also sucks for chromatic problems. It was losing less than 1/10th stop.
Next was an achromat I'd bought at the same place, losing about 1/10th. With this achromat, I don't need to use a macro.
Next was my +10 macro (ebay special DKE) at 1/4 of a stop loss. With 4 macros stuck together, I lost almost 1/2 a stop.
So, with 4 cheap macros stacked like pancakes, on a moving glass adapter, I could expect the same light loss as just using a wax GG alone.
Considering that most of us are going to lose 3 stops just by putting an f/2.8 lens on the front, their talk of "fast" glass seems much less important than issues such as resolution and chromatic aberration. 1/10th of a stop isn't going to change much of anything. Maybe they list it for distraction -- a fluff-filled red herring, so to speak ;)

Just my thoughts.
Glen

Jim, I can just tell you what I got. To begin with, I don't even have an 'official' condenser, but that's probably why they are so good. I took two very thin lenses (just big enough for a -35mm frame) from old camera's. One from the inside of a super8 camera, and one from a telephoto lens. I sandwich them together with the GG in between on the flat sides of the glass. It's a bit hard to find such big lenses though.
Glen says: <<expanding my DOF, since it would actually be playing with the FOV >>

But in my opinion, that exactly the effect that we see on the G35 and I like it. Glen, I would reconsider it, because it gives such a bright image. On my site you can see I don't lose any DOF effect, only on the highlights that pass the wax layer.

What experience is that? Not having to use PCX lenses? Getting the fastest adapter possible?

They repeatedly show some amazing looking footage. Despite their insistance that it's grainless, you can see it clearly in the highlights of some of the shots -- but at that it's far supressed compared to what I've been able to produce. They also seem to have very little light loss, no color aberrations. So, yes, I would guess it's the fastest *static* adapter out there, with the least amount of grain showing (aside from Frank's footage).

On their forums there's talk of what others are doing here as merely "the work of hobbyists," i.e. nothing of quality build. I wouldn't mind making them eat those words :D But getting it done is another story altogether.

- jim

Out of respect for G35 guys' work it's not true to say they insist their footage is totally grainless. If you look in Jonathan's last posts you'll see where he says there is some grain in some shots in one of their earlier-released vids.

I've fallen behind a bit on the adapter progress. We got some pretty bad weather down here. Glad to see people are still working on it!

Ben: Regarding Fast lenses - (as I understand it) the closer the ratio is to 1:1, the faster the lens. For example, 1:1.8 is faster than 1:2. You want fast lenses when using these types of adapters to lessen the appearance of grain.
Telephoto lenses are usually 'slow', having bigger numbers like 1:4 (and the numbers change - they are lower on the wide end and higher on the telephoto end)

To me the biggest problem is finding the right condenser or Achromat - Oscar is lucky he found a great set that worked. As I have asked before, it would be nice to get a list from Surplusshe or anchoroptics of achromats and condensers that work - period. Problem is when people find something that works great, they end up making 'another adapter' and keep the trade secrets.
I was lucky to find a condenser from a SLIDER FILM PROJECTOR (you know the ones from school when they played a tape recorder while the slide was showing). This worked amazingingly at getting rid of vignetting, but it is small - a bigger condenser will get a bigger image. Again, I can't stress this enough - smarter peopple than myself have made discoveries with the proper achromat that doesn't have colour abberhation or barrel distortions and smarter people than myself have found the perfect condenser or PCX lens - the unfortunate part is that they are keeping the info to themself and letting us fumble in the dark (I suppose like they had to). Oscar (and Quyen with his tutorial on the Letus35 adapter) are one of the few that actually comes out and tells how he does stuff - in detail, what they used and where they got it/. I wish more people were like him on this board...

This is not new and works as good as you can get:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/controller/home?O=productlist&A=details&Q=&sku=77546&is=REG&addedTroughType=search

less than that, you get wyp4. (no magic and no short cuts in optics) I wish I could help more, but when I thought I needed one, I bought the above (and I can't say I do not have any lenses laying around)

Of course, Dan is right. But like I said about my condensers, originally they are not condensers, but pieces of glass from old camera lenses. I think you have a better chance of finding a quality lens there (old telephotos or even binoculars or something) than get some cheap condenser or achromat from a surplus store.

I agree with you Oscar. Pretty much ALL lenses ARE chromatically corrected (even the older ones). Now... some have enough glass on the front elements to cover the "scene" some don't. Some have "air" between elements, some are glued together, etc. By the time you "bastardize" a lens just to use the front elements..... it may not be worth it (even if glass is fine, you will need some sturdy mounts to hold them together (at precise aligned distances and squared to each other and the rest...)
Try your luck in the 4/200mm (4/135 may be on the edge) Better yet, find some older optics books and read a bit, you'll gain a lifetime knowledge (nobody can take from you) and you might find yourself spending less on cheap (glass) and you will know why! Don’t mind me Leo for preaching, I mean well.

Ben: Regarding Fast lenses - (as I understand it) the closer the ratio is to 1:1, the faster the lens. For example, 1:1.8 is faster than 1:2. You want fast lenses when using these types of adapters to lessen the appearance of grain.
Telephoto lenses are usually 'slow', having bigger numbers like 1:4 (and the numbers change - they are lower on the wide end and higher on the telephoto end)

Actually it's not the closer the lens is to 1:1, it's the smaller the number, period. There are even lenses with an aperture of 0.95(!) It's all just simply a ratio of focal length to aperture diameter.

It's true we want fast lenses with these adapters is to lessen the appearance of grain but the other reason is of course just to make use of the adapter itself for the ol' shallow DOF thing.

An interesting thing about lenses is that if you compare the ratio of focal length and aperture to some common number such as a 50mm focal length lens, the depth of field is scalable. For example, a 100mm F4.0 lens has the same DOF as a 50mm F2.0 lens. This is why it's not so bad that we are "stuck" with so many slower telephoto lenses. And, the faster telephoto lenses have REALLY shallow DOF.

I personally, from experience, like to spend mroe and end up with a shorter lens with as big an aperture as possible. Anybody can do the "get far away and zoom in" approach and it's not that beautiful to me. The look is very distinct; the background looks enlarged and looming right behind the subject. What is more compelling is to move in close and shoot wide open with a 50mm F1.0 or a 24mm F1.4. You get the panoramic and non-enlarged background, with shallow DOF.

Want more? Remember the candlelit scenes in Kubricks 'Barry Lyndon'.

"The Zeiss 50mm f/0.7. The fastest lens of all time. Only three exist in the world, custom-made by Carl Zeiss Oberkochen for NASA to be used in the Apollo program. Kubrick, incredibly, found a way to acquire two of them, and then hired an engineer to find a way to adapt them to an old cinema camera they had chosen especially for its ability to be modified for unusual lenses. Reportedly, the rear element of the Zeiss was just 4 mm from the film plane, so to be able to focus it they had to do some extensive modifications to the camera body housing and the lens itself. On the second of the two lenses, they ingeniously fitted a reduction lens meant for projectors to get a wider angle of view, around 36.5 mm.

Apparently, even operating the lens was a scientifically precise endeavor. The f/0.7 aperture made it a full two stops faster than the previous limit of f/1.4, but it also made the depth of field impossibly thin. They made focusing adjustments mathematically, using a tape measure to aide in calculating the distance from the film plane to the actors, who had to hold very still during filming lest they move out of the razor-thin focus field. The camera they were using wasn't a reflex design, so they didn't know what they had until they got the film back. Also, the light from the candles was so dim that even at f/0.7 they had to push the film a full stop to 200 ISO."

source:
http://verba.chromogenic.net/archives/2004/12/kubricks_50mm_f.html

And further:

"He pushed developed the common 35mm color negative stock of the day, 5254 (100 ASA) by one stop, to 200 ASA. He had candles made with three wicks in them to triple the output of light.

So if you had 800 ASA film stock and an f/1.4 lens, plus the triple-wicked candles, you'd get the same exposures as Kubrick. Certainly it's possible to shoot that way in HD with a really fast lens (like a f/1.6 Zeiss Digi-Prime) and a +6 db boost to the gain. You might not even need to do that since the video will have more problems handling the flames than the shadow detail, so you could underexpose more and get away with it. But with digital, you won't hold the same detail around the bright candleflames as film negative can. You can try tricks like using an ND grad filter on the side of the frame with the candles though.

David Mullen, ASC "

source:
http://www.uemforums.com/2pop/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Number=8916&page=&view=&sb=5&o=&fpart=2&vc=1

I just love this stuff. Please, don't give all the credit to Mr. Kubrick. Give some of it to the engineers and John Alcott. Kubrick was incredibly well informed and he saw what was possible, but nobody can pull these things off on his own.

Hope I didn't go too far off topic.

Dan, not at all - you effort and knowledge in this is appreciated. It takes guts for someone to spend the money you have on R&D and turn around and say - yeah, well, it sucked because I am out a quite a few bucks, but at least it worked.

Kurt,

LOVE to read that stuff. If you ever find more stories this neat, do post!

Mandy,

If it works, it never sucks that we are out a few bucks. It only sucks when you are out a few bucks and it didn't work.

I just came to the conclusion that it couldn't have been just luck that I had no dust in my last three waxed glasses.
This is what I have done differently: in stead of melting the wax in 'some room' on a electric hot plate, I melted the wax on a frying pan on the stove in the kitchen.
That's the difference. I think the area around the stove is greasy and the dust in the air sticks to the walls. Also, usually there aren't allot of dusty things in a kitchen.

Hi Oscar, I wonder if you could post a MCW adapter set up guide in 10 easy steps for us all.

BTW. please include tips on how to grease the kithchen.

First of all, the best grease comes from sardines . . . ;)

Alexandre, is the first part also a joke? Because I already have made a guide into microwax
http://members.chello.nl/a.schultzevspierenburg/wax/wax2.htm

Note that everything that tastes good greases your kitchen. Don't turn on the cooker hood!

Thanks for the link Oscar. I will give it a try, but i will set up a tent made of thin plastic film(found in the kitchen!) and PVC tubes over the table to protect from dust. I will try set up a lab like box where you put your hands
with surgery gloves. BTW which one do you think produces the best results
the parafin or the MCW?

Microwax (MCW) is more than two times better when it comes to grain. Besides that, it's the same to work with (just like beeswax by the way).
On my site you can compare the two.

If I am not mistaken the movietube uses a mixture of 5 % beewax and MCW.
Is the patent with drawings thread still availuable ? Does any one Know how
much the movietube cost?

The movietube will be around 10 grand I think.

Some varieties of microwax are grainer than beeswax, some are FAR finer. The beeswax colored microwax is amazing. I can't get significant grain to show up on it at any aperture settings.

I checked movietube.com again and it got screenshots and clips. The patent page seem to be gone though. I never saw anything about beeswax and microwax mixed, only that the first patent text said a mixture of beeswax and Paraffin, which they apparently changed to microcrystalline (see the website)
Anyway, we can get the same results as the movietube. My glass is fine, but I am going to make e new one soon which will be bigger (the bigger the screen, the smaller the grain on DV)

10 grand is an awful lot of money. I planned to buy one for xmas, I imagined
movietube was considerably cheaper than ps thechnik as it doesn´t employ
moving parts.

The movietube will be around 10 grand I think.

What gave you that idea? It's a little under $7700. And as for "will be," they (Movietube) are now saying it's available.

$7700 is "around" 10 grand.

No, it's 3/4 of the way there. Let me guess, you are packing "around" 10 inches, right?

For you wax die-hards, I've made a few more changes to my adapter, which is now a bayonet-mounted system, less than 4" in length. I have pictures here http://homepage.mac.com/filmic36/adapter/index.html.
I'm losing around .7 stops of light through the adapter itself, and my DVX fills frame at Z64 (although my trip to the beach movie was shot at Z60).
So, I'm losing around 1/2 stop in the video camera, because of the needed zoom. Still got some vignetting going on . . . have to experiment more with that :(
Grain is still apparent on some shots, but I feel good about the progress. I've got some serious yellow glowing on my son's shirt at the beach. Am I correct in blaming the achromatic lens for this? It'll probably be the last thing I fix . . . I want to build a rail to support the 500 mm lens first :)

Glen

Glen

I believe the glowing in the yellow shirt is caused by the limited "latitude" that
is the capacity a camera has to deal with light and dark areas of a frame.
I also noticed a white glow in the white walls of some houses in the back ground. Your family video has encouraged me to give MCW a try.

No, it's 3/4 of the way there. Let me guess, you are packing "around" 10 inches, right?

More like 10 inches around.

(Kidding, but that was seriously uncalled for anyhow.)

Any way you look at it, $7,700 is a lot of money, and a whole lot more than the cheaper alternatives. (Although it's probably a better product, to be fair, and competitive with the mini35, which I feel is worth the price.)

It is a lot of money, but it's important to be accurate. There's already a lot of dogma presented as fact, for example, "We know that G35 uses microwax."

Don't feel bad, mine is only two and a half inches,



thick.

Do you guys agree that top noch off the shelf achromat and condenser
a well home built MCW and a CNC machined black anodized tube and rods
would cost around 1 grand ?

One grand.

In diameter!


Apparently the G35 has "$200" worth of optics (from the horse's mouth.) How much could the anodized tube cost? Maybe 100...the mount? another 20? The profit margin is insane, but I'll give the guys credit: they put a lot of effort into designing the thing. Although someone could probably make something similar and sell it for $300, there market isn't big enough to support a low margin venture like that. So while $1000 is way too expensive, if it works (which the M2 doesn't--ghosting) then I'll encourage their efforts all the way.

Double post

Hold on to your keyboard and/or mouse....here's what I spent so far: (mid. quality optics, wax, tube etc.)

€ 8,50

I know it's a bit of a joke, but if you are just making one or two adapters, you can find real quality parts for free or really cheap. And I didn't plan on doing this as cheap as possible, I just have everything lying around.

If you buy everything new that I put in my adapter, it'll be a couple of hundred dollars, like Matthew wrote.