I shot this 24min short with a 35mm GG adapter. The movie is a dark comedy called "Snafu" and is a basically-no-budget student film involving mostly students from Tufts University. The adapter uses an optosigma 50mm 1500grit GG and canon FD lenses, I'd post pictures of the adapter but it is somewhere in storage now since I just moved. I built the adapter in January and shot this movie spring semester on all school owned equipment including the GL2 camera. I posted a few times in other threads about the details of the adapter including some modularity I added in. I could repost but for now I'll let you search if you want.

http://ase.tufts.edu/turbo/noah/snafu_wm9_full.wmv
(the first 2.5 min long take(s) is all wide angle 28mm so fast forward if you want to see some shallow DOF)

I used mainly a 28mm f2.8 and 50mm f1.4 and occasionally a 100mm f2.8. All canon FD lenses I got on ebay.

I did the cinematography, VFX and some editing. Let me know what you think.

171 MB is a little steep... any way to compress it down some more, then maybe post some full screen shots too?

yea I know it is, if you want something easier there is also a 60MB one.

http://ase.tufts.edu/turbo/noah/snafu_wm9_small.wmv

Of course the smaller one is a choppy 15fps and lower res resulting in more apparent DOF and less detail, probably a lot harder to enjoy. I was gonna just stick with the big one till people complained since I prefer people seeing my work closer to its intended framerate and resolution :)

ok as requested a few stills.

the dvd cover
http://ase.tufts.edu/turbo/noah/snafu-dvd-cover.jpg

stills
http://ase.tufts.edu/turbo/noah/still1.jpg
http://ase.tufts.edu/turbo/noah/still2.jpg
http://ase.tufts.edu/turbo/noah/still3.jpg
http://ase.tufts.edu/turbo/noah/still4.jpg
http://ase.tufts.edu/turbo/noah/still5.jpg

if you want more about the project there are links to the blog, teaser and some press on my website http://noahyv.info

keep the responses coming!

Noah, congrats. You made a badass film. Great writing and pace. Muy bueno

Oh man that was awesome. You don't mind if I burn it to a DVD and show a few friends eh? Its almost like a Wes Anderson dark comedy. Both the cinematography and the animation (or maybe that's rotoscoping) are right on. The only thing I disliked was the wide shot in the kitchen where the two were masked/chroma key'd...but the concept of the scene and how they kept moving in and out of the flash back was awesome.

Some of that dialogue had me laughing outloud (which makes the other people in my house look at me funny because I'm wearing headphones). The priest seemed a little over the top acting wise, but I liked the way his character was written. Great work.

Noah,

Great job. I really liked the short. The look and feel was great, and your adapter works beautifully. The FX stuff was really cool too.

On the artistic side, the writing was what stood out to me. Very nice, properly convoluted and interesting. The direction was nice also. The acting was a bit thin at times, but mostly got the job done.

Anyway, nice job overall. Definitely one of the most entertaining things I've seen here.

You have some great shots, even in the darker areas - very nice adapter that can shoot in low light - congrats.

I can only assume you go to Tufts. Great school, and close to both Krispy Kreme and Anna's Taqueria. Yum. All my school is near to is the three worst Chinese restaurants known to mankind. I'm at work now so I can't check out the video but I definitely will when I get home since the stills look awesome. A good friend of mine is Production Director at the Daily, by the way.

I'm curious how you avoided a hot spot. Did you use a condenser or just shoot at open apertures? I live near Boston if you ever want to exchange notes on this stuff. Anyhow, nice work.

Yeah, I just graduated from Tufts a few months ago. I knew a few people who worked for the daily, but I suppose they all graduated this year, too. Actually for Trent's room in the movie we used the room of a good friend of ours who worked at the daily.

I used a $7 condenser I got on ebay to get rid of vignetting, although I found there was still some noticeable with longer lenses and with smaller apertures(possibly because my flange lens distance was slightly off?). I also found that at smaller apertures the static GG grain became very high contrast. The adapter design caused some loss of FOV for the lenses. All these factors in addition to light loss caused me to always shoot wide open and favor a 50mm f1.4 lens. However, since we often shot indoors in small spaces I was forced to use the 28mm f2.8 in quite a few situations. I now realize that I could probably have shot without the adapter for wide angle / deep DOF shots and still had it match with some help in post. I was concerned the GL2 lens by itself wouldnt match adapter footage because with the adapter, the canon FD lenses seemed to have certain qualities of softness and diffusion that I thoguht might not match the sharp GL2 lens. As a result only two very small greenscreen shots in the movie were shot without the adapter.

Nowadays I'm more interested in DIY uncompressed HD cameras. Although coming up with a simple oscillating GG adapter interests me as well.

After playing around with RAW mode on my new dSRL and seeing the new hacked DVX footage I'd probably agree that there's a future in home made hi-def cameras, but currently they seem to be a little more trouble than they're worth. (Although rockwell makes a 2/3'' CMOS sensor that resolves a full 1920X1080 for about $700, I think. Couple that with a c mount lens and it could be pretty sweet.) Hopefully a 10 bit aquisition format will be introduced in the not-too-distant-future which should solve the issues of dynamic range and posterization during color correction, but even high quality jpegs on my digital rebel seem to have squeezed more than 8 stops of dynamic range into an 8 bit camera, so a really good DSP and good color correction software could serve a similar purpose. Then again, I can't do exposure compensation at all outside of RAW mode (12 bit color) without image degredation, so what do I know?

Do you think this condenser would work, by the way: http://www.surplusshed.com/pages/item/l3136.html ?

Edit: Actually, this (52mm in size) is probably better:
http://www.anchoroptics.com/catalog/product.cfm?id=34

My knowledge regarding these things is next to nothing, but I'm going to try sticking it together with a 52mm glass filter and some microwax (there's actually a store in boston which sells microwax in bulk.) A small oscillating device would be great, though. How about the "rumble pack" from a Nintendo 64 controller as a starting point?

the canon FD lenses seemed to have certain qualities of softness and diffusion ...

I think diffusion is a feature of a static GG. I've experimented with a Beattie, an Optosigma and a wax glass. The Optosigma becomes very diffuse on out of focus areas, e.g. a bright window in the background will have a halo around it. I've noticed it in all the static Optosigma GG pictures I've seen. That feature did not seem to occur with the wax glass, not so sure about the Beattie (didn't properly test it). Anyway I don't like the effect, so I'm persevering with making a wax glass.

Regarding condensers, I got satisfactory results with two 50mm dia Optosigma PCX 120mm FL back to back between GG and cam (), image size >36x24mm, virtually zero distortion, a very small amount of aberration, a brighter image, and only very slight hotspot in certain light. 100mm FL might be better to get absolutely zero hotspot, but possibly worse on the distortion/aberration.

Great film by the way.

Cheers
Andy

oh yeah i realize it isnt the lenses but the GG

"with the adapter, the canon FD lenses seemed to have certain qualities of softness and diffusion"

There were things I did and didn't like about the diffusion, not my favorite look. It seemed to help a bit with futher lessening the harshness of highlights that would normally exist in a (high end) consumer camcorder like the GL-2, at least in out-of-focus areas. Wax/focusing screens do not have this, correct? What about coarser groundglass? The simplicity of static GG/wax seems great to me, the light loss from wax is very high (right?), and static GG doesnt seem appropriate for HD work due to grain. Anyone know if coarse gg (500 or even 300 grit) is brighter? is coarse GG with oscillation the best combo for a bright and grainless adapter?

regarding condensers, I havent seen much info about this, but are you saying a DCX or two PCX's is a better solution than one PCX? I always figured the plano-convex made sense in focusing a flat image, but what do i know about optics. Might a larger condenser have less aberration/distortion since those flaws tend to be most prevalent at the edge of the lens, since with a condenser larger than the image you wouldnt be using much near its edge?

Wax/focusing screens do not have this, correct? What about coarser groundglass? The simplicity of static GG/wax seems great to me, the light loss from wax is very high (right?)

regarding condensers, I havent seen much info about this, but are you saying a DCX or two PCX's is a better solution than one PCX?

With my test wax glass I didn't notice more light loss, and I believe Oscar's results show very little light loss with wax, hotspot might be more of a problem as you can get more transmission of light through the glass, which would show up a small back lens as a worse hotspot I believe (using a single foil thickness for the wax layer). My test wax glass had hideous grain, I'm going to try a different wax.

Condensers - I've experimented with a single 49mm FL aspheric, 1 or 2 80mm FL PCX, 1 or 2 120mm FL PCX, all 50mm dia as dictated by my adapter design. Longer focal length = less hotspot correction, less distortion/aberration. It's a trade off.

The 49mm FL had too much aberration. A single 80 or 120 wouldn't correct the hotspot. I found putting a 49 or 80 FL between the GG and lens caused edge blurring. Two condensers seem to cancel each other out in terms of distortion and further brighten the image at the same time. With the 80mm FL's this worked best - |)(. With the 120's |(). With the 120's this (|) had more distortion, but didn't notice edge blur (not able to check that with the test shots I took).

I think the best bet for 50mm dia is two 100 or 120 FL |(). Not sure what the influence of the diameter is though.

This is all great info -- solid numbers and simple explanations that even with my lack of math skills I can understand.

With my current setup -- Century Optics +7 macro --> GG --> 50mm Nikor lens -- I get very very little vignetting/hotspotting. Essentially the corners of my footage are "rounded" a little. I'm interested in getting rid of this, but til now the condensor idea seemed a bit over my head.

Where are you all getting your 50mm dia condensors? Knight Optical or ??

edit: OptoSigma, I see.

Thanks.

- jim

Andy,

Would the single PCX lenses from OptoSigma (http://www.optosigma.com/miva/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=OS&Product_Code=pg55-61&Category_Code=Spherical+Lenses) be a better choice than their cemented Achromatic Doublets (http://www.optosigma.com/miva/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=OS&Product_Code=pg49-52&Category_Code=Achromatic+Doublets)?

Seems like two 120s would be the sweet spot for no distortion and just a little hotspot correction (if that's all you need)?

How far do these need to be placed from the front of your achromat and how far from the GG? As it stand, I've got a shorter 2" anodized tube (which I use now), and a longer 3" tube -- will this be enough room?

And, lastly, did you purchase the AR coated lenses or the uncoated? (big price diff.)

Any chance we can see some side-by-sides with your two 120mm PCX's versus without?

Thanks again,

- jim

With versus without there is a massive difference. Without there is a huge hotspot (didn't see the point taking sample shots of that), with it's pretty much zero, you can only see it if you're really looking for it, I thought I had eliminated it altogether as I couldn't see it on a blue sky, I only noticed it on a bright beach shot, but it's still very subtle. The good thing about my set up is I have larger than 36 x 24mm image size, almost the maximum possible with a 50mm dia GG, so it minimises narrowing the FOV.

I've posted some samples on another site, which will get removed if I mention it by name :). Suffice to say I have a GS-400.... with my set up I have no achromat or macro lens. There was still a hotspot with two 120s until I moved the cam back and zoomed in to a bit more than 2x. Total adapter tube length = 100mm, lens is Takumar 1.4, so it's around 50mm from GG to step ring. My design is basically a 56mm dia 3mm thick PVC tube with 50mm dia spacers that fit tightly inside and can be slid up and down into position. Glued a 55-58 step ring on the end which allows things to slide out, then a 43-55 to cam. Glued 50mm pipe direct to the Takumar to slide it in the front of the tube. It's a lot better looking than any other homemade static I've seen. He said modestly.

Not sure the exact distance from GG to condnesers (), I had slight distortion so I moved them back a little, I think it's around 15mm or so from GG to () at the outside edge. They are uncoated, Optosigma part no. 011-3480. I put a single layer of tape around the outside edge to hold them together and make them fit more tightly in the tube, friction is sufficient to keep them in place.

Singles are cheaper than the cemented doublet and you can try this set up as well |)(. I think Anchor Optics might be good enough, they have 50mm dia 97mm FL for about half the price of Optosigma.

You need to be very careful handling the PCX lenses, any tiny chip will show up in the image, my 80s tapped together on the curved surface and are no good now.

This thread seems to hav gotten pretty technical, but people are still encouraged to comment on the video I posted that the thread is supposed to be about :)

Hi Noah,

I especially liked your natural wipes. I think they add production value to the film, and are not too obtrusive. Good work with the GL2, it hasn't looked better.

Along with you and others, I have been questing for a better 35mm adapter. Is it correct to say you used a static gg? Over at dvxuser.com, most are concerned with the motorized version. I have made headway with the static version, but can't get the grain fine enough. Are you using wax or a polished gg?

-andrew

thank you, and yes it is a static GG adapter based on the http://www.ideaspora.net/oldskool/ concept and using an optosigma 1500 grit 50mm ground glass. I found the grain almost unnoticeable at large apertures. But then this setup also created a lot of diffusion in the out of focus areas which has an unusual look to it, so wax or moving coarse gg might be better. I didnt even realize dvxuser.com had a lot of people discussing 35mm adapters, I'll have to start looking at the forums there.

Great stuff Noah,

Even in the darker scene, there is no noticeable vignetting and I couldn't see any artifacts when you panned on the shots. That looks amazing!

Noah,

Thank you for such gracious info.

You may have already found that dvxuser.com now has a "DIY" section where old adapter threads are available. We have developed pretty nice wax versions, static that is. I am concerned that a major pitfall of wax is temperature. In northern california it was 104 degrees far. today. My wax gg has shown promise in quality, but "sunk" in the heat. It caused the wax to become clumpy and blotchy.

Even though the wax has great properties, I am now interested in a non- wax option.

Keep tinkering,

andrew

Noah,
Which Mic did you use for the movie?

I'm not sure actually, it was whatever the school had. Why do you ask? I could ask the sound guy.

It just occurred to me that while I dont have the adapter to take pictures of, I do have production stills that show it. Here it is:

http://ase.tufts.edu/turbo/noah/adapter.jpg

As you can see my crappy paint job didnt take wear and tear well, I guess thats how you learn that spraypaint doesnt like to stick to pvc even with primer.

Anyway, you can sort of tell from the picture there are several pieces to the adapter, on the front there is a screw in piece that mounts the 35mm format lens. Then there is a big piece that houses the GG and condenser, which itself is made of two parts that screw together so the GG and condenser can be swapped out (useful if your GG gets way too dirty or splotchy (which happened) and you need to put in a new one and it makes the optics easier to take out and clean. And then at the other end there is another piece that screws into the rest of the adapter and connects it to the GL2 with the proper filter thread size. The two filter thread mount and the FD mount ends both screw onto the center part with a standard 2.5" PVC thread. I just really like the idea of having modular design so I could easily make a mounts to attach the adapter to any 35mm format lens (using different mounts) or any camcorder (with different filter thread sizes). In the end I never ended up using the adapter on anything but FD lenses and the GL2, but that was mainly because I find oscillating adapters to be more interesting lately. If I do make an oscillating adapter, I really want it to be easily dissasembleable (to replace or clean the GG/condensers) and capable of interchangeable lens and filter thread mounts.

Noah, how is your adapter with panned shots? Since it is static, that always seems to be the problem. Did you notice problems with yours?

What kind of problem do you mean? I havent found any problems with panning.

The grain sometimes 'bleeds' when panning quickly across shots - this happens with alot of early static adapters.