Letus35XL 35mm - first impressions

[John Benton]

Quyen Le has made, and will continue to refine, a fantastic product !
It is a 35mm adapter with a relay lens for the XL series - this means it does not go on top of the lens, but replaces it.
This means that there is no light loss as far as my uninformed eyes can tell; and you don't have to worry about an insane size of an adapter on an already long camera.
Plus it has an image flip built in...beautiful.

Now,
This is the first 35mm adapter I have used (and my first day using it)
so you may take what I have to say with a grain of salt.
& there are some issues with my beta unit. But Quyen has been great about addressing these! It is at the beginning of it's very first production cycle and I am confident that he is trying to build the best and most affordable product he can and will only keep making this better!
These are my very first tests with it on the H1 and I will continue to post clips.
They are 1080 60i that I deinteraced and that's all.
They were shot with a Nikkor 50mm lens
http://reelshit.com/Letus35XL-H1/

~John

[Brian J. Harris]

Hey John,

Thanks for posting these! I'm downloading overnight.(the joys of dial-up)

Look forward to reading some more about your experiences with the product at a later time.

[Barlow Elton]

Thanks for posting those John! It's great to see some raw stuff even if there are focus issues.

What do you think so far? It looks promising, but like a lot of these devices, I'm wondering if the image can be acceptably sharp in 1080. I haven't yet seen anything go sharply into focus while the background is heavily blurred out. It also looks a little washed out and foggy. Any thoughts as to what's going on? Btw, after doing some very simple adjustments in QT player with contrast and color, it has a very interesting feel to it. Those guys with the red sweaters that walk by in the background of the Kat clip just POP with a little adjustment! This adapter and that lens add a very interesting colorimetry that is quite different from the 20x.

Again, thank you VERY much for posting! It's very generous of you to put that stuff up so quickly. That said, I'm still jonesin' for more!

One last request. PLEASE shoot some 24F and capture it via HDVxDV or DVHSCap. It would be SOOO cool to have some of this material with true film motion.

[Yasser Kassana]

I wonder what issues are. I always get the best sharpness when i focus on infinity on gg when zooming in. How much do you have zoom in, that is if you on the relay letus? Also, for sharpness use a tighter aperture on the zxlh1 itself, say for example like f4-5.6.

[John Benton]

Yes,
changing the aperture will do this.
There is an aperture control on his adapter as well to the lens !
When I mentioned this to Quyen he said he had thought to lock the ap at 4 (as he could have)
but chose not to, so we have an option for low light.

There is no ground glass to focus on (that has been established) There is the focus of the relay lens, which I didn't touch as it looked good out of the box,
This might be an issue I need to play with

I'm not sure why things look washed out. But I don't think its the adapter.
I will add more clips later and do more testing tomorrow
J

[Yasser Kassana]

Well the focus on the focus screen in the adapter to infinity. Then put on the 50mm nikon lense, might resolve some of the issue.

[John Benton]

Thanks Yasser - I'll try that later !
Actually, What am I talking of?
You cannot focus without the 35mm lens on.

I think a lot of the focus problems I was having were due to trying to focus in the viewfinder of the canon.
... thinking of an on Cam monitor - purely for the focussing nuances

[Jack Foley]

John, I am waiting for the final G35 and I just order a Marshall V-R70P-HDA (http://www.lcdracks.com/monitors/vr70phda.html) exactly because of the focusing issues I have with the standard viewfinder. It was brought to my attention that this is the best-for-bugs small HD monitor available. I haven't seen it yet so I cannot recommend it yet.

Jack

[Ron Pfister]

John: does the G35 allow for focus fine-adjustment between lens and ground glass and/or ground glass and sensor, or is everything fixed?

Jack: I'd be happy to hear your impressions of the Marshall unit once you receive it. I own a Marshall V-LCD12 and I'm underwhelmed to put it mildly.

[John Benton]

The G35, I think will, when it comes out.
But I am using Quyen Le's Letus35XL and there is no adjusting focus with the camera.
There is a relay lens that you can fine focus by screwing in/out further if nee be and I may try this.
Notice in my clips that the focus does seem to hit at times, mostly however, I am searching for the very thin focus plane.
I will try honing my skills before messing with the adapter.
J

[John Benton]

More tests from yesterday going up now:
http://www.reelshit.com/Letus35XL-H1/
same thing:
http://www.bentonjohn.com/Letus35XL-H1/

edit: have to wait again until I gets home

[Tony Tibbetts]

Keep the SLR lens wide open and stop down with the relay lens. This will make for a sharper picture. I figured that out after a few hours of shooting with the camera. Don't stop down any farther than f4 on the SLR lens.

[John Benton]

Yes this is very true...
Take the Lens wide open and close the aperture of the Relay
I dont love the light loss for a sharper picture, but, I can light and put on the gain if need be - I am uploading a file now that has No Presets and -3 Gain, I kept the adapter aperture at around 4 or 5 ...looks ok.
I am greatful to have the Flexibility though of opening the aperture all the way, though, so I can shoot in Darker scenes ...Though I loose focus on the edges alot and the whites bleed massively around the frame too,
Sometimes this is a very nice effect.

[John Benton]

my file transfer amount has been reached, so they closed off my site.
I am trying to up the amount of data transfer I am alloted, but we'll see how fast customerTech support reacts

Is it possible to have it at PC side, please?