letus 35

[Nathan Pawluck]

Here is a promo for Sunnybrae Camp. Lots of the footage was shot with a letus 35.
http://www.virb.com/434568698334385/videos/36000
Tell me what you think?

[Nathan Pawluck]

It would be sweet if you guys could leave some constructive criticism about how to improve my vid's THANKS!!!!!!

[Bob Hart]

Nathan.


On zero responses.

"Bible Camp" may have sent a few people spooked by the revelation and the fires of hell scurrying for cover, however not everybody here is one of the godless lot. Just how many people here are of profound and committed faith may be informative, but that is really a question appropriate for another venue and discussion of religion and politics seems to bring out the worst in the best of us at times.

More likely is you have posted no info on how large the downloadable file is, filetype and what the viewing requirements are.

Broke and penniless tourists like me cannot afford excessive traffic in downloads, so if there is no info or the file is known to be huge we tend to avoid it.

If the website hangs for more than 15 to 20 seconds whilst a flash presentation finds its way back down the drain, the back-arrow gets pressed and such as I move on.

You may be better served by opening a YouTube account and posting a copy there and linking to it and to an optional higher res download from here.

[K.C. Luke]

Great Video promo and all the family's to have enjoy that special event day. Thanks

[Nathan Pawluck]

Thanks for the reply Bob. Yah maybe I'll have to update my post if I want any more replies. Peace

[Matthew Scott]

I liked it. Good editing. The DOF was very nice in a few shots - What lense where you using?

[Nathan Pawluck]

I was using a combination of two Nikon lenses. A 105mm 2.5f and a 50mm f1.8. The 105mm is my fav.

[Nathan Pawluck]

Here are some frame grabs from the video!

[Bob Hart]

Nathan.


It is good work.

Hopefully you will not interpret my following comments as being carping criticism by me. I offer them in the sense of assisting you to the excellence which your videography strongly suggests you aspire to.

The composition of your frame grabs is pleasing imagewise, lots of colour and contrasts. Darker backgrounds are preferable for groundglass work or if there is brightness in background, best if it is of relatively small contrast if the background is to be diffused.

I'm reasonably sure you will have already arrived at that conclusion when you edited your images.

The Letus Extreme groundglass now seems to be a little more transparent than the Mini35 but not by much. Very bright objects will pass through as sharply defined highlights surrounded by a softer outline, the artifact known as "ghosting".

It is really only an issue for people who are after "film" perfection, which in reality will not happen. Groundglass imaging should be treated as a creative aesthetic in its own right.

As has been suggested in previous posts and somewhat counter to my own previous and now doubtful intuitions and much earlier readings of other's posts, if you find some aerial image passthrough, try another ND filter stage on the camcorder and go wider with the camcorder iris.

F5.6 - f6.3 is a good median to start with and is said to be about best for optics feeding 1/3" imagers. A wider camcorder iris may tend to reduce the sharpness of any aerial image pass-through as the camcorder's own depth-of-field will become shallower.

If your SLR camera lens image remains too bright and you want to hang on to shallow DOF, then you will need to add more ND, preferably before the groundglass, so that internal lens flare, groundglass flare and reduced contrast are also addressed.

A quick and dirty test for passthough which may not be apparent in the viewfinder is to select autofocus on the camcorder when very bright background objects are in frame. If the autofocus takes off and tries to focus sharply through the groundglass onto the bright spots and softens the groundglass itself, then you need to make the camcorder iris and ND filter adjustments if you want to use that background in your shot and reduce the ghosting effect.

Obviously you will also need to go to manual focus and reset the camcorder focus correctly on the groundglass if it will not do so itself when you face the camera away from distant background bright spots.

You may have an axial alignment issue with your lens mount which is evident on your 50mm frames. This causes a lateral skew of the lens focal plane relative to your groundglass.

On those, you wll observe that distant objects are softer on the right hand of the image than on the left. This will become much more evident with wider lenses and barely noticeable on your 105mm.

Wide angle and ultra-wide angle lenses are very intolerant of not being exactly at the correct flange to focal plane distance.

The groundglass itself might be not quite at right-angles to the optical axis however there have been few reports posted here of this happening.

The more common cause is the lens mount and the optical axis of the lens it carries being angled slightly off the Letus optical axis by being fitted that way or the lens copping a bump in service.

It does not take any more than a soft bump with the older Letus35's but the metal bodied Extreme may take more of a hit before it allows the lens axis to skew because the mount seems to be retained by three compression screws instead of the one in older models.

It is not a big deal and easily fixed by adding shim washers behind the mount between the rear of the mount and the rim around the first internal glass you see inside behind the mount.

These need to be collectively thick enough to pack the front face of the lens mount out to the correct flange to focal plane distance when the mount is firmly located back aginst the shims.

With three screws and shims, the mount is less likely to move off axis, but should not now be considered impervious to future knocks.

These shims need be nothing more than carefully cut circles with wide holes in centre trimmed out of breakfast cereal packs.

Consider the opinions of others before working from anything I am suiggesting. My progress with adaptor construction and operating practices have fallen behind the frontline somewhat as people have been making improvements in both the hardware and operating methods.