Hi guys...

Just finished a video shot in HDV on a Sony FX1 with my own design 35mm adapter. Recently made some upgrades to the adapter, which you will see from the sharpness and quality of the image. I will post some HD images on my site soon.

http://www.pixelloft.com/music_videos.htm

Shot on HDV and spent in total about £2.5k of the budget to complete it.
Edited natively in FCP 5 on a G5
Color Graded (Extensively) in Combustion on a PC
Finished In FCP

We used 4x Redheads and 2xBlondes for lighting, and built the operating theater set, in a part of a warehouse.

Any feedback welcome. I hope you like it.

Thanks, Nick

Excellent lighting and composition. Very nicely framed and edited :)

I'm working on a video to be aired on MTVbase, and this gives some great inspiration.

Nick, excellent video, as always. Im glad the GG worked for you ;)

Wayne,

Did he use your SGpro or just your GG?

I'm pretty sure Nick is still using his awesome-adapter he made, just Wayne's GG.

I must say, that is a very, very noticable jump in sharpness. I'm glad you made the switch. The only thing that's ever bothered me about your work is the ground glass-esque softness to your flicks that just wasn't there in that last one. Fantastic work.

What was the shutter speed for those shots of him sitting in the hallway? It seemed a little slower than I'm used to...or maybe you were shooting PAL? for some reason PAL video seems more motion-blurry to me than NTSC.

As always, enjoyed your stuff.

Thanks for the positive feedback guys. Wayne has been very helpfull to me with my adapter, and we have both benifited greatly from sharing eachotheres experiances and knowledge in this area. He has an extensive knowledge in this area, which is evedent with the quality of his adapters.

I have totally rebuilt my adapter now and changed the design, and the incresed sharpness is due in no small part to a new achromat and lens configuration i am using.

I am really pleased with the results, and glad that you have noticed the improvement in the quality.

Thanks.

Nick

Of course PAL is more blurry, it uses 1/50 shutter when NTSC uses 1/60 (if not 24p.) Nic is shooting PAL.

I have always loved your work. Even tough I really don't like the music, I love the cinematography in your shorts and music videos. I have learned a much from your shorts (esp. from the Riddle) about the importance of good lightning and about the total evilness of edge enchantment.

Nice work, Nick!

Also how about sharing some pics and information on your adapter?

I was using fast shutter speeds the whole time, almost always well over 200. All of the narratve stuff has been slowed by 50% using joes filter for fcp, which converts fields into frames, so you effectively get 50p, and effectively only loose the same amount of detail as when deinterlacing anyway.

Worked a charm, i would highly reccomend joes filters for FCP.

I cant really share info on the adapter, becuase it shares some parts with waynes sgpro, although there are differences between our designs, i cant really give away too much. Sorry about that.

i will post some pics of the outside of the adapter though tomorrow. And some pics of the locations possibly.

Regards, Nick

I cant really share info on the adapter, becuase it shares some parts with waynes sgpro, although there are differences between our designs, i cant really give away too much.


Spoken like a true Hollywood type.

Hey Nick - looks great, as always! ;)
So would you at least elaborate on what kind of achromat you used? 72mm diameter? How much do you have to zoom in with your FX1?
Thanks! :)

Great Stuff Nick,

I am interested in your post workflow. Did you capture as HDV or uncompressed, and how did you achieve such a clean end result?

>>was using fast shutter speeds the whole time, almost always well over 200.<<
>>All of the narratve stuff has been slowed by 50% using joes filter for fcp, <<

So by using a fast shutter speed Slowed by 50%, hats how you arrived at such clean footage?


Cheers,
Ben

Nick that adapter of yours is sharp man! Sharper than G35 or M2. I'm impressed and love the vid. Well done.

I think the main element for Nicks clean footage is in good use of lighting on set.

Wayne.. of course.. but only to a certain degree. Even with the best lighting... if you don't focus correctly on the GG and/or the GG is grainy as hell and/or the achromat isn't of high quality or anything is off only the slightest bit.. you've got image problems that you can't fix with the most decent lighting on earth. ;)
That's why I'm curios about some of the technical aspects of his construction/adapter...

I would agree Soeren the lighting just adds to the quality of the film, you need a nice sharp image to start with.

Which means a great adapter and someone who knows how to use it, and Nick certanily has a great adapter and definatley knows how to use it.

Great work Nick, as usual.

Yes, Nick recently updated his adapter, and the sharpness increase comes from the new achromat and lens configuration he is using.

Hi guys, well here is a pic of my current setup externally, on the shoot.

http://www.pixelloft.com/images/fatal_shoot/fatal1.jpg
http://www.pixelloft.com/images/fatal_shoot/fatal2.jpg
http://www.pixelloft.com/images/fatal_shoot/fatal3.jpg

I have my gg 10cm away from the camera lens, and am using an achro with a fl of about 130. I also have a shroud, which is machined from aluminium, which stops the focus knob being knocked accidentally once it is setup. I check focus on the gg with the camera lcd, and using the expanded focus function before ever shot. I deinterlace everything in combustion, and used a fast shutter speed becuase i new a lot of it was going to be slowed down, so the minimum i could get away with would have been about double 60... i gues... 120. I also wanted to accentuate the movement in the performance parts, so went with a fast shutter for this too.

Color grading is perhaps one of the most creative, and challenging stages.... taking something from a rather bland (usually fairly orange) look, and making it come to life by drawing colors out, or tinting shadows and matching every shot in a sequence etc. HDV is a heavy compression, and you have to be very careful how you grade it if you dont want it to fall apart. You can grade something in 10 different ways to achieve much the same look, and often only one way will yeild the results without the hdv compression becoming a problem.

1 really good trick to use, if you are using hdv, and it is underexposed a little, and you have to push it a little further than you would like, maybe bumping the gama curve a little higher than normal. When you start to see the compression blocks, use a film grain filter. The grain filter will obliterate the mpeg noise, and make a much nicer more even filmic grain where the noise was. There were several shots i had to use this technique, and it works very well indeed. What would you prefer a nice film grain or mpeg noise. Also, this noise becuase it is much finer, will be much harder to distinguish than mpeg would on a tv.

Focussing is definatly a real art form, and something which i have still a lot to learn, especially when you have a moving camera on a dolly or jib for example. The sharper the rig, the easier it is to focus, and tell when something is in focus, and i have definatly noticed that with this last piece.

Fianlly, there are lost of things which i had the time to do with this piece that i havn't with previous. I did a lot of cleaning up, removing tripods from the corner of a shot, or removing unsightly birthmarks from a characters skin, or even straightening shots which were not perfect becuase of the constraints of the shoot. All this helps wih the highly polished look, and although subliminal is quite important.

Any more questions, feel free to ask.

Thanks again guys.

Nick

Looks good as usual Nick.

Great setup Nick, very professional.
It looks alot like the M2...am I wrong?

Hi David,

Thanks for the comments.

Someone asked this question on the Redrock forum recently, and the guys at redrock quickly took credit for my hard work, however fortunatly, a good friend of mine set them straight. I was using my first adapter, well before redrock had released theirs or indeed their guide. All of my designs have been very different. I started out using a static gg, the a gg (made from glass) which was being propelled by a motor in the center. This was a great design, but was too fragile. I then built a design based around a bearing, with a gg in the center. Worked really well and refined this design several times before realising its few limitations, and then went back to my original idea, which by now, wayne kinney had refined tremendously. He helped me with several of the mechanical and gg elements of my adapter, to which i owe him credit.

I would guess that the only similarity between my adapter and the m2, would be the fact that it has a gg with a motor propelling it from the center. The distances, lens configuration, and lens quality, and indeed the design and quality of all the other components are clearly very different, becuase when i built it and refined it over the last few years, i didn't have to worry about retail costs or margins etc. Allmost all of the components inside my adapter, and indeed the connecting tube and carry handle etc are machined specifically for this adapter from high quality aluminium, and the features such as shroud to protect the focusing ring from being knocked, are all really nice features, which just make it a very practical design. Also, it has been made to work specifically with my camera, the FX1, and i'm sure becuase it doesn't have to work with a wide envelope of different cameras, does benefit it greatly. This is the 5th generation of my adapter. A lot of blood sweat and tears have gone into getting it to this stage, so i dont like to draw similarities between my adapter and anyone elses, however it definatly bears more similarities to the SGPro then the M2.


I hope this answers your question. Thanks Again, Nick

Then it's time to sell it in quantities, Nick! :-D

No ok.. but it sound's a little like you're implying that the (new?) SGPro is of higher build quality / optical quality than the M2... just curious.

Unfortunatly Soeren, my adapter would not be commercially viable given the current market. Many of the components are too expensive to buy or have made, and it would therefore not be compettative with the other adapters.

Regarding the M2, although Redrock have clearly shown they are happy to make statements about my adapter design without knowledge of the facts, I couldn't possibly make such an assumption, becuase i have never actually used an M2. The clips on their website look good, and i'm sure it is a very high quality build.

I was only drawing a parellel between elements of my adapter and the sgpro, becuase wayne has provided me with insight and several components which now reside within my adapter.

Having said this, I can certainly vouch for the quality of the components used in the SGPro as i have worked with wayne in parelell regarding many of these parts. This is why you will probably see elements of my adapter design in the sgpro and vica versa.

Thanks, Nick

Unfortunatly Soeren, my adapter would not be commercially viable given the current market. Many of the components are too expensive to buy or have made, and it would therefore not be compettative with the other adapters.

Regarding the M2, although Redrock have clearly shown they are happy to make statements about my adapter design without knowledge of the facts, I couldn't possibly make such an assumption, becuase i have never actually used an M2. The clips on their website look good, and i'm sure it is a very high quality build.

I was only drawing a parellel between elements of my adapter and the sgpro, becuase wayne has provided me with insight and several components which now reside within my adapter.

Having said this, I can certainly vouch for the quality of the components used in the SGPro as i have worked with wayne in parelell regarding many of these parts. This is why you will probably see elements of my adapter design in the sgpro and vica versa.

Thanks, Nick

Hi Nic,

Is your image flipped during shooting or in post? I have to admit, the quality of the videos are excellent. Just a few questions and I hope you can answer them.

1. Are the vibrant colors a result of post production?
2. The clarity and sharpness of the videos are a result of your HDV camera or your GG? as I noticed alot of consumer camcorder do not get nearly the quality you got out of the video. I hardly see grains in your video.
3. How important is lighting in shooting shots like the one you did?

Thanks

Hi Alex,

The colors are certainly due to some careful color correction. Supressing colors in order to provide greater contrast is often as important as saturating a specific color, in giving a vibrant look.

The sharpness is down to HD and having very nice quality lenses both in the the adapter and on it.

The lighting is really key. If you have a badly lit shot.... of which i had 1 on this shoot, it is often very difficult if not impossible to lift it to a useable state let alone make it look good. There is nothing very clever about my lighting, its very simple 3 point variations usually. As im sure every DOP does, I have developed my own way of lighting which i like, and the more i shoot, the simpler it becomes to determin where lights should be positioned, and what output, or level of diffusion is required.

Nick

Hi Nic,

Thanks for the info. The color and lightling I can handle. But I definitely have to get the HDV camcorder. I really like the sharpness of the image. Which lens did you use for this setup?

Thanks

neat --

How are the horizontal flares achieved? I'vee heard some people using filters but I like the way yours look. The Punch Drunk Love style flares...

nice work Nick, I'm also curious how you do the lens flare.

also regarding 50% slomo, I do that a lot in Vegas which does interpolate deinterlace to make two fields into frames. Would you say Joe's filters produce better res than interpolation? Or basically the same?

I've been considering trying to make 50% slowmo using smart deinterlacer but I think it would look undercranked on areas without much movement since it would effectively be showing the same set of lines twice... Plus it just seems to introduce a load of artefacts when I've tried it in the past.

And I'm aware that in PDL the flares are somewhat the result of the film being shot anamorphic, and I suppose they can be done in Knoll light factory as well, but yours look like they may have been done in camera;do you or anyone else know how this is achieved?

Sorry about that.... took a while to get back on here to answer your questions.

Those arn't flares if you look at them, they are the result of using a 2 point star filter. The one i use is a 2 point cooke filter, glued onto a 4 x 4 black plastic insert, which i can slide into my matte box. You can get a 4x4 one from the london filter co, but they arn't cheap.

With regards to deinterlacing, and slowmotion, i have no comments or sugguestions really other than the new beta Fieldblender in Joes filters is a very good and simple way of producing the slowmotion without loosing much in the way of detail. It was also very good from a workflow point of view, becuase it didn't require any keyframes to be set.... just set up the filter perameters, and drop onto the clip. And contrary to many slowmo plugins, the clips in and out points could be adjusted without having to remove the filter or re-keyframe the clip.

As you can see, the slowmotion is really nice. Everything else was deinterlaced in combustion, because it seemed to produce the best results.

Hope this helps, Nick

Hi Nic,

I think I have seen your mini35 before. I think its the one where you have a roller bearing connected to a pulley system to a motor that turns the GG. I have a picture of it. I am just wondering if you wouldn't mind to share how you go about building it. Specifically the parts needed to build it. Can you direct me to where I can get these parts. Money is not an object at this point as I am still trying hard to build one I like in terms of picture quality. I have to say, your adaptor has been the best I have seen so far. I know some of the parts are custom made, you have any schematic on this? Thanks.

Alex

Hi Alex,

Thanks for the interest mate. As I mentioned before in this post, i can't explain the inner workings of my adapter, however I will say that i have scrapped the bearing design now. It does have potential, but needs a lot more investment then i can afford to perfect it.

I think as far as aesthetics go, i'd like to think that my work looks nice predominantly becuase of the work and effort i have put into it, rather then the design of my adapter. I do constantly strive for the best quality image, as we all do, but i think its important to eastablish a balance between studying filmaking, and constructing the equipment you can't afford to buy, but need to achieve the results you want.

I would certainly say that the majority of my time is spent studying cinematography and the other various skills needed to be a low budget filmaker theese days, rather than working on my adapter.

I dont think the adapter is the key, but just another tool (albeit an important one). The riddle for example, or the 3lflex video was shot with a cheap £10 macro off ebay, and without a condenser, justa spinning gg. Also, everything i shot before that, like the lynden david hall video for example, i didn't use an adapter at all, and i don't think it looked too bad.

I am not trying to negate the importance of my adapter to my work, they really do help tremendously with creating a high budget look, but i am always very concious of how obsessed I can allow myself to be with one element of fimmaking, becuase it will allways be to the detrement of the other countless aspects i have to learn to progress.

I am absolutely certain there are numerous adapters on the market which could and have been used to the same effect as mine, so im not sure i would worry too much about it. The work i completed prior to this last one was made with an adapter which i believe wasn't anywhere near as good as numerous current commercial products. The adapter was vignetting, blurring towards the edges and the chroma separation was pretty awfull.

Sorry I cant be of any more help, but i would reccomend, if you are concearned about your adapter, and the quality of the images it is producing, getting hold of Wayne Kinney, and buying one of his new SGPRO's. I have a feeling the next batch he is going to make will wipe the floor with numerous other products on the market in tearms of image quality, and sharpness etc..... Just a Hunch!

Thanks for the question,

Nick

Hi Nick,

Always love the video work that you've done.

Question, will you be trading in your FX1 for the new Cannon hdv camcorder coming out?

I hope you'll keep posting new videos when you have new ones done.

Hi John,

Thanks mate, i'm really glad you like the work i have done.

I do like the look of the xh g1, but untill an sdi lossless capture system comes out at an affordable price, i will stick with the fx1. That is of course unless the red or silicon cams start shipping, and i come accross a bit of money.

I really want to get into an uncompressed workflow, or at least a ciniform or dvcpro hd workflow, but i wont switch cams untill that is possible for me to do within budget.

I have a G5 with a Kona LH capture card, which i bought for greenscreen work, so i could capture dvcpro-hd. I was considering buying a touchscreen lcd, and a small generator for capturing on location, but i think it would slow things down, so i think ill have to just wait.

I just wish the wafian was $5k... then i'd buy one, along with everyone else in the world.


Nick

Yes...sadly...every time I think about the uncompressed capability of the CCDs and optics on the FX1...it sickens me to see those beasts leashed and tethered so tightly...

Hi Nic,

One questionregarding the spinning GG. What RPM is best suited to spinning a GG without the grain showwing up? I know the higher the better, but whats the minimum you would go for with a shutter speed of 1/200.

Thanks.

Hi Alex,

I have absolutely no idea i'm afraid. My motor has a speed regulator on it, and i just crank it up as high as i need to. There is no answer to that question, becuase it will depend on various variables, such as how well cut your disk is, what finish you have, i.e the grain size, and more importantly the evenness of the diffusion. Really, that is the sort of question you will have to answer with some trial and error, based on your design, and components.

Thanks, Nick

Looks great man, also the other films on your site.. I also like the 3-men-is-a-crew idea.. Do you always work with such a small crew or do i overlook something?

Don't take this the wrong way but I can't swallow that "I can't say" line about the workings of your adapter. You're not protecting Wayne's intellectual property, as he is making his development work completely publically available to anyone who wants to purchase it. Yet the bits of your adapter you built, you also won't divulge. And allegedly you feel you have nothing to hide since you say it's not your adapter, but rather your effort, that give you your look. Again, don't take this the wrong way but it seems as though you're worried disclosing information about your adapter would then give anybody else the ability to create footage like yours.

The most impressive people are those who show everything and say "here's what I used to make my masterpiece," because it's not about having a secret tool or withholding some advantageous knowledge from others. They don't need to keep anything secret because their skill is how they created their results.

I live near one of the top surfboard shapers on the planet and unlike many fairly talented people who aspire to be like him, he is very humble and very open. He says it's all just sanding foam. You can ask about tools or products or about various contours and curvatures, and he'll tell you. He's so confident in his abilities that he'll share everything he's learned yet still rest comfortably knowing that nothing more than his experience and talent are enough to create competitive results.

Again, don't take that the wrong way, just look at it as an outsider would, which is "he says he built it using a few parts from Wayne, yet he claims he can't talk about it at all."

The only reason I bring this up is, you've learned a tremendous amount from this forum and the spirit of the forum is to share information.

Hi Djee,

Yep, i always work with a small crew, becuase i like to make sure there arn't too many people knocking around without anything to do. I would like to find one or two more skilled people to work with, however it is always difficult on such a tight budget.

Hi Bill,

I can appreciate you are very frustrated, but let me just clear up a few simple points.

As you stated in your assult, wayne is offering to sell his development work to anyone who wants to buy it. I have neither the inclination or the right to sell his hard work to you and certainly not to disclose work which he has not yet implemented into his designs for free on this forum.

I am not afraid that someone else will steal my magic adapter, and start shooting incredible work, becuase that would only benifit me.
There are allready numerous commercial adapters on the market, which are being used by professionals to better effect then me. Putting waynes adapter aside, just visit the redrock website, and download some of the astonishing work on there.

http://www.redrockmicro.com/samples.html

So no, I am well aware that my adapter is not magic, and that I, along with many of the people on the above link, and people all over the world and on this forum for that matter are using commercial and home built adapters from the psteknic to the letus35 to the redrockmicro, to great effect, but that is only becuase of the skills they have aquired from learning about the art of film making, and sugguesting that this may not be the case is ridiculous, and insulting to those people who dedicate every moment of their lives to the art.

There have been times where i have considered a commercial version of my adapter and have therefore wanted to keep things quiet. I have in the past, when the design was entirely mine, posted photographs, as mentioned previously in this thread and descriptions of the inner workings of my adapter so that it may help anyone who wishes to know how it works. A design, which i am now convinced was inferiour to almost all the adapters on the market at that time.

Really, what do you wish me to discuss with you... what information do you need. The device is a spinning plastic disk, with a condenser lens and an achromat. I cant tell you what lenses i am using, becuase these are components which are likely to be used in the upcoming SGPRO's, but I hardly think this warrents becoming so hostile.

When you say:

"because it's not about having a secret tool or withholding some advantageous knowledge from others. They don't need to keep anything secret because their skill is how they created their results."

You are absolutely right, and I find it hard to believe that people do think i have a secret tool, but they really do, people like you. I feel very sad for people who have this point of view, becuase it can only ever hold them back. Its the the glass is half empty view. Why not look at what you have instead of attacking me for not providing you with information which I am not in a position to provide. You have now 10+ commercial adapters, all of differing prices and qualities. You have enough information on this forum, (provided by people without any invested interest) to build the best adapter in the world, but yet you still moan at me. Why dont you email redrockmicro and moan at them for not telling you where they buy their achromats from.

When i made my first adapters, there was only one or two people making adapters, and not one commercial version other then the psteknic, and my design was totally different. I was considering marketing it, but in the mean time provided an outline of how the design worked for other people to develop themselves. At this stage, i would have been over the moon if redrock had their product on the market, becuase it would have saved me a lot of time, and a hell of a lot of money.

When wayne kinney first contacted me, when he was considering making a commercial adapter, I was reluctant to provide him with all of my research, becuase I was still considering making a commercial version, however, i gradually shared with him my findings, research and parts suppliers, and we ended up sharing information regularly since, obviously under the assumption that i was not going to come on this forum, and blab about it to you.

I get countless emails from people, 90% of which are asking how i made such an incredible adapter which produces images which are so much better then any other adapter, yet I know this not to be the case.... it's very frustrating.

I have stated on so many occasions, that people shouldn't worry about the adapter so much. I have seen people spend the last 2 years dedicated to building the perfect adapter, people who have not once strayed beyond their back garden with it to do 'test shots', and I think to myself if they had spent that time and dedication reading about cinematography, they could be making some awsome stuff, with an adapter of half the quality.

Up untill recently my adapter was a bag of shyte, but i had no choice other than to try and push it and get the best from it. Hell the adapter i used for the riddle was so loud, i had to ADR the entire project, but that is how it goes, and as i mentioned before, if you want to know what lenses i was using prior to this last project, i was using a Macro off ebay 72mm, and a PCX from surpless shed.... forget the fl.

If you want an honest bit of advice about building an adapter ill give it to you. The key is in the achromat, and you will probably have to get something custom made or spend a lot of money.... A cheap achromat from surpless shed or anchor optics is unlikely to ever yield decent results, becuase the design is specifically for lazers and scientific experiments, not usually for optics, and this purpose. But that is probably not what you want to hear.... you want me to say go here and buy one of these for $20 right?

The achromat in my adapter cost hundreds of pounds, but wayne will be implementing something very similar into his adapters very shortly.

Thanks for the long and tiresome assult, I hope this answers your questions.

Nick

Hi Nick,

I'm quite impressed by your work. I went through your website the other day and ended up downloading every video you had there. You've managed to achieve a great look throughout all your work! The lighting, DOF from your adapter, colour correction, editing, and even the 3d animation. Just a couple of questions I'd like to ask.

Firstly, you've done a really great job with the colour grading in all the videos on your website. Can I ask what plugins or tools you use for that, and if it's done during the compositing stage or editing?

Also, you speak highly of an upcoming version of Wayne's SG Pro adapter. I was actually thinking of buying an SG Pro sometime soon. But after reading what you wrote about a superior future model, I'm wondering if I should just keep waiting until that's ready to go? If you're reading this Wayne, is there anything you can add about this next model you'll releasing? Time frame etc?

Glenn

Glenn,

The new model of the SGpro will mainly add support for more camcorders, like the JVC HD100, which does not currently work with the SGpro.

Nick,

Again... yet again. Beautiful work! Muy Combustion love. I wanted to throw out there, have you tried Synthetic Aperature for After Effects yet? I'm actually liking some of its grading capabilities more than whats available in Combustion.

If you have a chance, and have any available - can you post some photos of your lighting and stage setups? I'd like to see how you threw lighting on that scene in the waiting room (see exactly how much light you filled with) and also how you dropped lights in the operating room.

Wayne,

Cheers, yeah I didn't think it could really be improved on much at all, judging by the image quality of the latest clips I've downloaded from your website. I'll get in contact with you sometime soon as I have a few minor questions to ask aswell.

Nick,

Wow, I touched a nerve there (you took it as an assault) even though I was careful to say "Don't take this the wrong way."

I'm not frustrated and I don't think you have any particular secret. I just pointed out that you keep claiming your adapter is different than Wayne's, yet you won't even spill the beans on your own stuff. You say you decided not to go into business so there's no reason not to share what you've learned from this board. Giving back, it's called.

No attack here, nor was my previous post, if you re-read it without being so defensive.

As for my "long and tiresome assult" (assault?), mine wasn't half as long as yours, so I don't follow you there.

I'm not even having trouble with my adapter; mine works great. I was given a very expensive achromat by someone in the business of selling 35mm adapters, which will probably blow your mind.

What I'm getting at is not what lenses you're using. I just asked for some details on your adapter. What's different about yours than Wayne's?

Try to calm down before you answer this time. I'm not attacking you and it's a basic question we've all been asked.

I would certainly say that the majority of my time is spent studying cinematography and the other various skills needed to be a low budget filmaker theese days, rather than working on my adapter.

This brings up a good point. I found that building my own 35mm adapter and getting it right was soaking up a LOT of time. Time I'd rather spend working on my skills as a filmmaker.

I managed to get pretty far rather quickly, but could see the ole "the last 10% takes 90% of the time" adage coming into play.

-> http://207.200.5.12/jtp/35mm/pics.html

After two weekends of work and several trips to Fry's, I plunked down $370 for the Letus35a

-> http://letus35.com/

Money very well spent (I was shooting a short with it some two weeks later).

Hi Glen,
Thanks very much for the question. I have used combustion on the last piece, shake on the previous pieces, and after effects before that. I am really happy with combustion, and will continue to use it now, it is absolutely perfect for color grading. I dont really use any plugins for the grading side of things to be honest, becuase the software tends to allow enough control.

Hi Jeremy,
yep, I have tried synthetic apature, and it is a really good plugin, but i have never been that keen on after effects for grading. Just not keen on the interface, and i am not massively keen on the way the synthetic apature has its own separate interface which seems to load fairly slowly etc. But it does alow some excellent control. I downloaded the standalone copy trial for the mac, and really liked it, however becuase you can use layers etc, it has limited uses for me, so i cant warrent the expense.


Bill,
Well matey, you are just one of those rude people who preceeds an insult with "don't be offended".... If you are not going to be offensive, why would you say don't be offended... you funny chap. Having looked at some of your previous posts, you havn't made an exception just for me, which makes me feel better.... flaming people seems to be your forte. Anyway sorry mate, but im not really interested in talking to you. I'm on this forum to share information with decent people, who arn't quite so narrow minded, and who dont become offensive when they dont get what they want.

Hi Jim,
Absolutely, it is so easy to get sidetracked with anything very technical like this, and although it is very usefull, its important to find the right balance. If you want to be a filmmaker, fit the engineering in where you can.... between the real work wouldn't you say.

As a general point, given Bill's attack, and some of your questions, i am writing any information i can regarding my adapter. Can't imagine it will be of much interest, but i hope it helps someone.

I'm not sure if this is of any use to anyone here, but I can tell you guys that i have a 10cm gap between my gg and camera lens, i am using a motor speed regulator from rs components in the uk with a 4k potentiometer. The speed regulator was about £40 i believe ($80). The 12v battery pack i am using are also made my myself, and are rechargable, and to be honest there isnt much else to tell. My gg and motor mechanism is from the sgpro, as is the project box. The rest of my components are simple machined aluminium and brass.
My achromat is about a 130fl i believe.

Thanks guys

Nick

Bill, if Nick doesn't want to talk about his adapter, that's his right. Don't keep pressuring him to post what he doesn't want to share.

And Bill, I do remember asking him, a long time back, if he could send me plans for his adapter so I could build one. Never had a response. :)

It could be that some aspects of the design is similar to the sg35. Having collaborated with the company, obviously he might not wish to give away the design rights of which he is sharing with the company and vice versa.

If you still want something similar to Nick's, why not go any buy an sg35? I've brought a Letus 35 from Quyen and I love it, though I havn't used it yet...Need to start practicing my focus shots and all that.

Nick, thanks for sharing some portions of your design, although I'm more interested in the way you shoot video.

Hi John,

Thanks for the reply mate. Really sorry if i didn't reply to your email, but i do get lots of emails for design plans and requests for adapters, and although i try to get back to most of them, it is often difficult. To be honest, when i have a job on, i usually dont even have the time to get back to potential clients.... everything goes on the backburner. Dont let that put you off though. I am really crap with emails. If anyone wants to chat about anything, just add me to your msn list if you have it... And if im not in the middle of a big job, i'd love to chat.

I find msn a lot easier then tackeling my inbox.

(nicholasbartleet@hotmail.com)

I have tried to contribute as much as possible to these forums, and i am always willing to help anyone who contacts me with regards to any element of film making if i can.

Thanks, Nick

Hello Nick,

Thanks for the reply. You sound quite impressed with Combustion, so I downloaded the trial version to give it a try. Wow, it is quite good. You're just using the Discreet colour corrector? I've just had a play with that and can see how flexible it is. It's so much easier to get decent results with than say the colour corrector in Vegas, which I thought was good. The overall look is quite impressive too. Just wondering, do you colour correct full length clips before editing, or once you've worked on the edit and know what needs to be adjusted?

Just one other question. What kind of lens or lenses did you use on Fatal Beauty? Anything special? Sorry if this has already been asked.