Aspheron lens, how to attach?

[Nick Hope]

I've finally got some footage online that was shot with the Aspheron lens. See this thread for links and feedback.

[Tom Hardwick]

Great film Nick, and the colours! And the camouflage! I'd be scared to even look over the side of the boat. The movie played beautifully smoothly BTW.

The Aspheron does the biz in the UWH, even though I guess it loses quite a bit of its wideness by being air-to-water. Still, that means you don't vignette the extreme corners.

See my note on Flikr about the hood redesign for the Z7. A natty improvement.

tom.

[Nick Hope]

No no Tom, the link in my post, not the link in my signature. They are topside hotel shoots.

The underwater video on my homepage is shot mostly with an 80 degree wide angle port for the housing, not the Aspheron. Thanks for the kind words anyway.

[Glenn Baren]

using the Bolex wa w the Z1u....is that a zoom thru??

[Nick Hope]

Originally Posted by Glenn Baren

using the Bolex wa w the Z1u....is that a zoom thru??

No Glenn, far from it. I think I can zoom something like 50% before it loses focus.

[Tom Hardwick]

The Z1 has a very helpful 'zoom scale' shown in the viewfinder, going from 00 (full wide) to 99 (full tele). With the Aspheron in place you can go from 00 to 65, at which point the image goes suddenly and completely out of focus.

I sometimes use this to effect, filming at the 64 position and knowing that a very slight creep zoom will throw the image out. I can't replicate this softness in post as it does wonderful things to sunlight through leaves and so on.

It was good to visit this post again after so long. I've tried the Aspheron on the Z5 and it works even better than on the Z1 because the Z5 starts out wider than the Z1.

I sort of hanker after an EX1, but as the Aspheron won't work on that camera, I've crossed it off my shopping list. Not sure about the Z7 either, but think it's ok.

tom.

[Nick Hope]

Ah, so it's more than 50% (my camera is back at Sony service again at the moment so I couldn't test this). Nice idea Tom to throw the focus out like that. I'll have a go when my camera's fixed.

By the way I now keep my lens hood and Aspheron both locked in place with a loop of bungie elastic that attaches through the hole where the little thumbscrew in the hood used to be, and simply loops around the Z1's inbuilt microphone (both of them use the lens hood bayonet). It's as crude as it sounds but I can swap between the hood and the Aspheron extremely quickly and they hold nicely in place using the elastic. I don't care about the mic as I use an external most of the time anyway. I swap them all the time during shoots and I often dangle the hood or the Aspheron from one of the fingers of my right hand while I'm shooting with the other.

[Tom Hardwick]

Did I show you my Aspheron bayonet for the Z1? Cut out of the hard plastic lens cap using a scalpel and a bit-at-a-time. Works exceedingly well.

And what are Sony doing to your camera Nick?

[Nick Hope]

That looks good Tom. I might have done it that way if I'd thought of it at the time but my modified Z1 hood is still working well and gives a bit of protection/shade too.

My Lowepro camera bag took a tumble (careless minibus driver) and the Z1's lens unit suffered catastrophic internal damage. Sony replaced the whole lens unit for about GBP 400. I killed 2 birds with one stone because there was a speck of something trapped inside the lens which was showing up on wide blue-water footage. However the new lens unit will not focus on distant objects. I don't know if there's a manufacturing fault with this replacement lens or if it's not adjusted properly. Anyway it's still within the 3-month warranty so I'm sure Sony will fix it.

[Tim Davison]

Sorry to dredge this thread up again but I have the opportunity to purchase the Bolex Aspheron for £630 directly from Bolex but I have no idea how to make it fix my FX1 (despite all the very useful discussion above). I am not technically minded to make something myself and assume that there isn't anywhere I can purchase the requisite adaptor?

[Tom Hardwick]

£630 er, it's jumped in price somewhat since I bought mine and is a lot of money for a single element. But it's like a good microphone - it'll follow you from camera to camera (but not to the EX1).

It has an 85 mm attachment thread and you'll need to get an 85 mm to 72 mm special adapter made. Have a look at my quickie engineering drawing shown in post #5, or better yet cut the rear lens cap into the Z1 bayonet.

tom.

[Giroud Francois]

In this thread,

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/sony-xdca...schneider.html

We speak already about some other low cost adapter. I tested mine (the UWL IV) on the EX1 (since by chance the filter size is 77mm) and results are very good.

This adapter is still affordable (under 500$).

Frame grab with the EX1 with and without the adapter.
http://www.giroud.com/divers/avec.bmp
http://www.giroud.com/divers/sans.bmp

[Tom Hardwick]

Can we have jpegs Giroud? The bitmaps are taking a week to load this end.

[Giroud Francois]

Yes, no problem, it was just to avoid any problem cause by jpeg compression.

http://www.giroud.com/divers/avec.jpg
http://www.giroud.com/divers/sans.jpg

[Tom Hardwick]

I've superimposed on on 'tother Giroud, and it shows the dramatic increase in field of view obtainable by using the UWL on the EX1. I'm pleased to see that the slight barrel distortion shown by the EX1's lens is all but eliminated by fitting the UWL, which makes the fov of the combo something like 17 mm in 35 mm still camera terms.

Your UWL is uncoated though, isn't it? Have you managed to hood the element at all? I'm so pleased to see this works, as my (beautifully T* coated) Aspheron has too small an outside diameter to work on the EX1.

tom.