A1 and the letus35A

[Ben Hayflick]

Rafael, by any chance was your footage shot with the Letus Flip Enhanced?

And would the Letus Flip Enhanced be the best Letus adapter to pair with the A1, given the camera's inability to flip the LCD image? Is there any image quality loss due to the flip this Letus performs?

[Rafael Lopes]

Hi Ben, I used the regular Letus35A. I cannot say for sure, but I read a couple of time that the letus flip looses more light and it's almost as big as the Sony FX1 (I'm quoting Mcgregor here), which limits your movements and forces you to work with a tripod or a heavy duty steadicam. I bought a steady stick and it handles the A1+Letus35A+heavy lens very well (it's able to handle 30 pounds).
As for quality loss I can say the image certainly gets softer than the original and I also notice a bit of barrel distortion on the edges. But other than that it works like a charm. It looses more light than the brevis35 and the M2, but hey, these 2 adapters are almost triple the letus's price.

[Ben Hayflick]

Thanks Rafael, good to know. So how do you plan on flipping the image?

Also, I have seen and held the Flip Enhanced. I'd say it's around 5-6 inches (13-15cm) thick without a lens, and doesn't weigh more than a pound or two (uh, I don't want to convert that to metric!). So unless I'm mistaken it's nowhere near FX1 size.

Do you still think it sounds like it'd be hard to use with the A1?

I think the image flip is done with a prism, and according to the website "light loss is about 1.5 stop plus SLR lens' light loss." Is this too much light loss, in your opinion?

[Rafael Lopes]

Originally Posted by Ben Hayflick

Thanks Rafael, good to know. So how do you plan on flipping the image?

Also, I have seen and held the Flip Enhanced. I'd say it's around 5-6 inches (13-15cm) thick without a lens, and doesn't weigh more than a pound or two (uh, I don't want to convert that to metric!). So unless I'm mistaken it's nowhere near FX1 size.

Do you still think it sounds like it'd be hard to use with the A1?

I think the image flip is done with a prism, and according to the website "light loss is about 1.5 stop plus SLR lens' light loss." Is this too much light loss, in your opinion?

On ebay you can find lots of really cheap portable monitor that flip the image you can hook up on the A1 (you can easily find one for 50$).

As for the letusflip, in my opinion is too big and heavy for hand held shots. It would put way too much stress on the camera's thread. And besides, if you ad f1.5 stops light loss to say a f1.8 lens we are already talking about more than f3 light loss. With the regular letus you minimize that to f2.5.

[Ben Hayflick]

Thanks again Rafael.

I am really hoping Canon will update the firmware to provide an LCD/CCD image flip. Coupled with a Letus 35A - wouldn't that be a winning combination.

[Rafael Lopes]

Originally Posted by Ben Hayflick

Thanks again Rafael.

I am really hoping Canon will update the firmware to provide an LCD/CCD image flip. Coupled with a Letus 35A - wouldn't that be a winning combination.

No problemo. I'm crossing my fingers for Canon to read all these posts all over the web about a flip lcd function. It would sure make a lot of people's lives easier. But I gotta tell you, THE one thing I really miss about my ex-FX1 is the huge ass LCD. That thing was amazing. The A1's feels like a toy lcd compared to the one the FX1's...but all the rest the other way around ;-)