I've had my Letus35a for a few weeks now and I can't seem to find that sharp sweet spot. The L35a is attached to a Panasonic GS250(2.5" lcd screen), Canon FD f1.4 35mm lens, and camera focus is set to manual.

Do any of you Letus owners have the same issue with an overall blurry image ?

Here are a few video tests : http://www.probe3.com/3ccd/Letus35a/

Thanks!

This image is very sharp.

http://www.probe3.com/3ccd/Letus35a/index.php?id=2

??

I think that's just the nature of the beast. I don't know why you're calling those images blurry, because they're (especially the ones of the cars outside) pretty darn sharp. The adapter does naturally soften the image a bit, although most people like that look. I really don't think there's a way around it.

Mark:

This may be a bit more than you're asking for, but I'll include it for you and any others that are interested.

I have done some testing with the Letus 35A and Canon GL2 and what I often do is turn the sharpness on the camera DOWN. (Ok, the opposite of what you're looking for) The reason why is that it is sharpening a relatively low-rez (720x480) image, which lends itself to pixel aliasing that is readily-visible. Not to mention that any visible grain will be even more visible with sharpening.

So...I take the 'soft' footage and bring it into After Effects (you can use most any NLE also) into a comp. that is 1920 x 1080 (You can use any resolution your computer can handle, really - just keep the aspect ratio. You may have to letterbox.) I throw a solid color (usually 50% grey (( 128,128,128 )) ) layer over this and add some moving grain to this (not heavy - this isn't for the grain effect, but for the appearance of higher resolution ). Once the grain looks fine, I set the transfer mode (overlay, etc...). They I'll precomp this in a new layer and use the Unsharp Mask filter, adjust cuves/color, etc... and render. You can take it back out to 720x480 at this point if you want.

Ok, the theory is that you are introducing the sharpening at a 1920x1080 resolution instead of 720x480. Why can't you just blow the image up and sharpen it without adding grain? Think of enlarging the footage as making the pixels bigger (with standard algorithms, anyway). Sharpen filters work by checking the contrast between neighboring pixels. The contrast between, say, a red and green pixel is the same between a block of 4 red and block of 4 green pixels. The grain overlay adds variation to the enlarged pixels, giving the sharpen filter finer detail to bring out.

This may sound a bit wierd, but think about it and give it a try.

Hi Bill,

I didn't mean the photos of the unit, I meant the video footage, I took a few screenshots from the uploaded videos:
http://www.probe3.com/3ccd/Letus35a/index.php?id=2

These are the desired results screenshots:
http://www.probe3.com/3ccd/Letus35a/index.php?id=17


Thanks for the TIP Frank !, I'm trying your suggested technique right now :)

That's from macgregors footage isn't it. the G35.

That's from macgregors footage isn't it. the G35.


Yep, I love how it looks "Hyper-Real". I'm wondering if I can achieve similiar results if I use reflectors like he does, to light the object on both sides and not just a directional from the sunset. I think he uses that technique to allow the main subject to pop forward from the blurred background.

Have they announced a price for the G35 yet ?

I love Macgragor's stuff too, but he has an FX1, not a gs250.

I don't know if its fair to your gs250 to compare it to an FX-1. As far as cameras go that's a bit of an apples to oranges thing.

I have a gs150 with the Letus35a and I've gotten some great stuff from it. Here's some screenshots: http://www.soride.com/blog/letus35-tests-round-i/

But I'm not expecting DVX or FX-1 quality footage. It's just not a realistic expectation for this class of camera.

Frank, I'd love to see your method in action. It sounds like it would work pretty darn well. I'm itching to try it out, especially since I got my Letus back from Quyen and a 55mm 1.2 today, but it looks like it'll have to wait until late tomorrow afternoon. (uggh). Good luck.

frank, could you show us any examples of your sharpening technique? i'm intrigued...

I just shot all this great footage with my GL2, and I was all ready to try this out...to find that my computer doesn't recognize any firewire devices. AY IEEEEE! (1394)

Jamie Niebuhr: frank, could you show us any examples of your sharpening technique? i'm intrigued...

Ben Winter: Frank, I'd love to see your method in action.

I'll try and get some footage together today or tomorrow for you guys to check out.

Also, I'll try to throw in a couple before-and-after frames and some screengrabs.

I got my FireWire working now...Frank, could you give me some details as to the settings you're using in AE for noise? I'll play around some, but I'd like to know from soneone more experienced what ideal settings would be.

I'm looking at my footage and it's looking pretty darn sharp on my production monitor. I don't really know how much more this could be improved.

Ok I tried this lastnight. Here's what I did:

I used this footage: http://www.probe3.com/3ccd/Letus35a/L35A_beerZoomIn.zip

720x480, 16x9 ratio

1. Made a comp of 1920x1080 in AE 6.5 pro.
2. Upscaled my footage to that size
3. added 128,128,128 solid over it
4. added grain, intensity set at 15
5. set layer to overlay
6. PreComposed both layers then added Unsharp Mask,amount set to 20

Rendered the result as uncompressed AVI. It seemed like it would take 5 hours to process. So I killed the render and made the comp size to 1280 HDp res.

Then used the output avi in a new comp where I brought it back down to 720x480, 16:9.

I don't think I did the process correctly because the result was footage that had undesired visible sharpened noise.

Would love to see how you did this Frank ! :)

Hi Bill,

I didn't mean the photos of the unit, I meant the video footage

LOL, I know. I was going for a cheap laugh, or at least that someone would think I was an idiot. I will try harder next time.

P.S. the PAL-style mayonnaise is working out beautifully for me.

I tried the technique Frank suggested, and didn't get vastly better results than with just plain sharpening--but they were slightly better. I received some generation loss (weird, faint horizontal red and green lines) when I used the unsharp mask on just the raw footage. Taking the HD res noise (frank's) route and unsharping gave me better results without the degradation and were a little bit cleaner. The Letus GG wasn't shaking enough and left some ugly black grain in the footage, but I corrected the unit with a hands-on fixer-upper so hopefully future footage won't suffer. Here are the results:

Canon GL2
Letus35(quasi-A)
Canon FD 55mm 1.2 @ f2.8
ND filter ON
Camera: f1.8, shutter 1/60, 0dB

Original Footage (http://media.frozenphoenixproductions.com/car_original.mov) 1.36MB 15 seconds

Plain Unsharp Mask (http://media.frozenphoenixproductions.com/car_sharp.mov) 1.18MB 15 seconds

Frank's Technique (http://media.frozenphoenixproductions.com/car_noise.mov) 1.18MB 15 seconds

Ignore the contrast (a byproduct of the unsharp mask) and really look at the details, like the tire tread and the pinstriping on the car. On my screen the regularly sharpened footage was more blotchy. The noise-sharpened footage does have a louder ting of precision to it. Remember to look for sharpness only in the middle of the in-focus area ("that background ain't sharp at all!"--you know what I mean though, your eyes can wander) What do you all think?

Hey guys!


Just realized that above I said 1920x1080. When using 720x480 NTSC, you should use 1620x1080 (1920x1080 is wide / HD 16:9).

Ok, I have put some test images up on my site:

This is just showing what EE can do to a low-res 720x480 image:
http://www.frankladner.com/images/sharp_01.jpg


Original 720x480 frame:
http://www.frankladner.com/images/sharp_frame.jpg

Closeup with grain added (no sharpen filter yet)
http://www.frankladner.com/images/sharp_closeup.jpg

Original with closeup:
http://www.frankladner.com/images/sharp_original.jpg

Sharpened at 720x480 rez with closeup:
http://www.frankladner.com/images/sharp_720x480.jpg

Sharpened at 1620x1080 rez - grain added - with closeup:
http://www.frankladner.com/images/sharp_enlargedandgrain.jpg

I suggest opening the last three images in separate tabs/windows and flipping between them to see the difference.

For instance, flip between sharp_original and sharp_720x480, then between sharp_original and sharp_enlargedandgrain, while looking at the squirrel's eye. Flipping between the last two frames will reveal that the sharp_720x480 looks a bit more blotchy.


I took the original 720x480 footage, dropped it into a 1620x1080 composition, and scaled it up to match the composition size. ( 225% )

Comp 1 = Original Footage (720x480)
Comp 2 = Comp 1 scaled to 1620x480
Comp 3 = Comp 3 with grey solid layer (w/ Noise applied) on top with Overlay mode

The Unsharp Mask filter settings were identical for the original 720x480 frame, and the 1620x1080 grained frame.

Now, this is just dealing with a single frame. If you don't like the way AE's Noise looks in motion, there are other plugins that may work better, such as CineLook.

Also, as with other things, add Grain/Noise to taste. The main thing is not so much to get the grain effect, but to give the sharpen filter finer areas to work on, as opposed to "blocks" of identical-colored pixels.

I will say that for some, this may be more trouble that it's worth, and that just applying the Unsharp Mask to the original footage may be all that's needed. However, be careful when sharpening footage that was also sharpened/enhanced in-camera as that will bring out the fringing around contrasty areas.


I hope this makes sense. Please let me know if you guys want more clarification.

neato, the footage definitely looks sharper with your process...

Thanks for the feedback, Jamie!


I keep thinking about whether or not there's a better way to approach this than using random noise.

I mean...the point is to break up the 'blocks' and give the sharpen filter finer areas and higher resolution to chomp on.

...but there has to be a way, programatically, to "split" the blocks of pixels using some interpolation, as opposed to adding variances in color to the blocks. I'm thinking of a way to blow the image up, AND re-introduce detail based on the image, not on random noise pixels.

For instance, when sizing images down, for each destination pixel you take the neighboring pixels (8 neighbors around that pixel, for example) and get the average of their values. This gives you the new pixel to plot in the new, sized-down image.

NOW...how can that be reversed? Well, you've lost information that you can't accurately get back when enlarging the image. I imagine you can super-sample the areas around a pixel and for each joining pixel, add a pixel of new value between them based on the collected information about the surrounding pixels.

I am a simple-minded person and don't know much about how B-Spline, Lancoz(sp?) and other algorithms work with resizing images...but I have an idea of how this information can, theoretically, be "brought back" from the smaller image. Easier said than done, though.

Well, I'm just rambling on but I think there's a way to get sharp and high-rez looking footage from regular SD. (Given that care is taken while shooting it - such as avoiding sharpening too early.)

I tried the technique Frank suggested, and didn't get vastly better results than with just plain sharpening--but they were slightly better. I received some generation loss (weird, faint horizontal red and green lines) when I used the unsharp mask on just the raw footage. Taking the HD res noise (frank's) route and unsharping gave me better results without the degradation and were a little bit cleaner. The Letus GG wasn't shaking enough and left some ugly black grain in the footage, but I corrected the unit with a hands-on fixer-upper so hopefully future footage won't suffer. Here are the results:

Canon GL2
Letus35(quasi-A)
Canon FD 55mm 1.2 @ f2.8
ND filter ON
Camera: f1.8, shutter 1/60, 0dB

Original Footage (http://media.frozenphoenixproductions.com/car_original.mov) 1.36MB 15 seconds

Plain Unsharp Mask (http://media.frozenphoenixproductions.com/car_sharp.mov) 1.18MB 15 seconds

Frank's Technique (http://media.frozenphoenixproductions.com/car_noise.mov) 1.18MB 15 seconds

Ignore the contrast (a byproduct of the unsharp mask) and really look at the details, like the tire tread and the pinstriping on the car. On my screen the regularly sharpened footage was more blotchy. The noise-sharpened footage does have a louder ting of precision to it. Remember to look for sharpness only in the middle of the in-focus area ("that background ain't sharp at all!"--you know what I mean though, your eyes can wander) What do you all think?

What's the dark fixed pattern over the image? It’s in the original clip as well.
The out of focus background has lots of aberrations and they get worse with the artificial sharpening.
In my opinion it looks like sharpened video. Not sure I would use the process for a serious production, but thanks for taking the time to do it and for sharing.

That's the Letus ground glass not moving very far. I've since fixed it. Where's this aberration you speak of? I see none of it.

Ben: Nice footage! I see what you're saying about the Letus ground glass. It seems it doesn't produce any noticeable grain, but instead can sometimes make these dark, transparent spots (ghosts) from the grain moving in circles. I haven't really noticed it in my footage, but I can point the device at a bright light and can see the pattern (seem like my eyes have gotten trained to spot those kinds of things from all my messing around with microcrystalline wax).

This is what I did to fix it: I pulled out the little rubber stoppers that hold in the white plastic sticks a little (about a millimeter) which allow the sticks to move around a lot more. A millimeter makes a noticable difference and you can pull it out even more if you want. Then, I took a glue gun and heated up the glue that was keeping the other ends of the sticks on the GG "plate", if you will, and pushed the GG down about a millimeter to compensate for the change in distance.

I don't know if the issue is with a few units or with a lot of them, but it sure is a shame the Letus has this caveat out-of-the-box.

Thanks a lot for the tip, Ben!

I'm likely going to take my Letus35 apart for a good cleaning soon, and I'll try your adjustment.

Also, have you tried higher-powered batteries?

I do a lot of outdoor stuff with a high shutter speed, which could actually freeze the grain pattern in the footage. Maybe if I can get it to wobble a bit faster, that would do the trick.

HOWEVER, I don't know what these little motors are rated for.

mark it looks like the focus on your camcorder isnt set correctly or your letus35 flange focal length isnt correct or the GG is wobbling a bit. these are the most common problems that can occur.

I talked to Quyen a while back and he seemed to think 3 AA's weren't too much. So 4.5v is at least OK. I'm not sure if it would help things though--makes me think it would just keep the GG moving in a smaller circle (follow my logic here: if the weight in the motor swings in one direction while the momentum of the GG is still going in the other direction, they essentially are going to cancel each other out or at least make for a smaller movement on the next oscillation.) Therefore, there has to be a "sweet spot" vibration movement where the heave-to and heave-from of the motor perfectly align with the inertial tendency of the vibrating GG plate.

Think of it like swinging on a swingset; you always swing your legs forward when you're about to go forward, and backward when you're falling back to augment that motion. It doesn't make sense to swing your legs forward as you're going backward; that will only slow you down. I'm going to ask Quyen for the specifics of the motor so I can buy the proper potentiometer. I think being able to finely tweak the speed of the motor will be a very powerful tool in moving the GG the maximum distance. Thoughts?

EDIT: I also tried 3 AA's on the earlier model of the Letus, for anyone who's interested. It definately helped things, but the plastic sticks that hold the GG and allow it to move were much longer which meant a looser vibration and more movement. Shorter sticks mean it's going to be trickier.

Hey Ben and Frank, thanks for taking the time out testing this technique !

No problem, Mark! Sorry for the late reply!

Has anyone else tried the technique?

I wanted to add something else. When shooting with the GL2 and sharpness turned down, it is quite difficult to know for sure when something is in focus. So what I do is use the CP (Custom Preset) button to toggle on/off the sharpness setting. I do the focusing while sharpness is normal and before recording, switch it off.

(Also, I have the color saturation turned down a bit also.)

Great idea Frank! I like the footage without the grain though, the grain is a little too much for me.

Ben : remember when pulling out those little stoppers from the unit that Quyen uses a little device to measure the entire area of the plastic mount for the GG with - if you put a stopper in too far on one of the legs, the FL of the GG is going to be off on one side of the screen!

Anybody making gg rotational adjustments on one of the new flip models?

I'm having the same problem that it soudns like Ben is describing.

But the new flip model is much more heavliy contained. I hate to open it up.

I'm having a silmilar issue to this clip posted by Mark.
notice the grain patterns moving through the dark areas on the hood.

http://www.probe3.com/3ccd/Letus35a/L35A_wrx_side.mov

Does this have more to do with my focus, or with my gg range of motion?

if you put a stopper in too far on one of the legs, the FL of the GG is going to be off on one side of the screen!
I forgot to mention that I measure the GG distance with a ruler before I put it back in the unit.

here is a clip. it is a dv avi because I didn't want compression artifacts to show up. I've kept it short to keep the file size down.

Watch around the outline of the subjects head where light meets dark--especially when the camera moves.

Has anyone seen this?

Tonight, I am going to take the adapter apart again and gently rub a drop of water on the matte side of the GG, then dry it with a soft cloth (as Quyen has instructed me--via his almost instantaneous online tech support).

I'll let you know how it goes.

**edit** oops: Here's the link: www.stock20.com/media/letus/tony_in_chair.avi

Are you referring to that halo effect around his hair ? I noticed you are having the same issues as I am - you see this "static pattern" grain over your video. I'm not sure how to get rid of it.