Arri PL to XL1 Adapter

[Augustine Arredondo]

Has anyone seen or used this thing?
Someone calling himself Digital film Consortium sells it on Ebay and says it allows you to mount arri pl lenses to the xl-1.
Great!
But, does it retain DOF and is it still afflicted by the dreaded 7.2x factor?

Anyone out there have any info?

[Jeff Donald]

The Arri PL mount is used on both 16mm and 35mm lenses. The adapters are just mechanical adapters and 16mm lenses will have a 2.6X mag. factor and the 35mm will have a 7.2X mag. factor. If you want to preserve the inherent shallow DOF of the larger formats, the Mini35 is, at the present, the only way to adapt the larger format lenses.

[Augustine Arredondo]

Thanks, but I just found some contrary info.
I just read a write up - probably by the company who manufactures the thing, and it claims it does in fact retain DOF, although there is no mention of the &X factor.

Any more info out there? I am very interested in this adapter. If i have to I wouldn;t be averse to using 16mm lenses. a 2.6X really doesn't bother me. Although, the 7X is unacceptable.

[Jeff Donald]

Can you post a link to the write up I'd like to read it. Thanks.

[Bill Ravens]

The 16mm DOF will be approx. 1/3rd between the DOF for the 1/3 inch(8mm) format of the XL1 CCD and 35mm. Not sure this is worth the trouble. You can get the same by stopping down.

[Augustine Arredondo]

I don't know who's telling the truth. It says here the DOF is preserved.

http://www.virtualcybervision.com/xl1/

[Adrian Douglas]

I wouldn't be laying down cash until you've seen at least some stills using the adapter. One thing to remember that as this is only a mechanical adapter you will get a "no lens" indication blinking in the center of the viewfinder and you will not be able to use the digital effects such as the slow shutter speeds.

[Kai Leibrandt]

Hi there

technically the DOF _is_ preserved, but the angle of view is changed. Jeff Donald put up a really good article right here on this site (http://www.dvinfo.net/articles/optics/dofskinny.php), so have a read through that to see if it makes sense to you.

In any case, if there is no extra optical element in the adaptor (and on this one there isn't), then you will get the change in angle-of-view, even though DOF is unchanged...

HTH,

Kai.

[Kai Leibrandt]

Oops, forgot a bit;

http://www.virtualcybervision.com/xl1/PL%20Photos.htm has some samples.
However, i have no doubt that images of that quality or something aproaching it very closely in terms of DOF can be achieved with the Manual 16x, possibly even with the IS. The trick is to open up your iris as far as you can. Use ND's if you can't go further... The scene in the samples is relatively dark anyway (overcast day it looks like), so I'm confident I could do similar things with my manual 16x and an ND.

Kai.

[Zac Stein]

When using the adaptor with either 16MM or 35MM lenses, the (DOF) depth of field is preserved, and it effectively increases the focal length of the PL mounted lens by 2x. In essence, one gets a 2x extender and a PL mount for $550.00. However, since this is a new product, we have not, to date done extensive testing on a variety of lenses. We have not experienced any focus problems or vignetting. We have used the mount with our 35MM Super Speed Optar T1.4 lens and the results were cinematically beautiful.

That seems to note an only 2x magnification, if that is true, i am selling my pd150 asap.

Zac

[Jeff Donald]

I’ve been out of town, sorry to take so long in getting back to this thread. The link is to a mini 35, which does preserve the DOF of the attached lens. The PL adapter allows you to use Arri mount lenses. Other adapters are available, Canon FD, Nikon F etc. His statement that the PL-XL adapter preserves DOF is not correct if it is a mechanical adapter. The magnification from 16mm lenses is a little over 2X but the use of 35mm lenses will give a much greater magnification and DOF.