DV Info Net - Letus Extreme And Cp16r Film Camera

Okay stop laughing at me --- please ---- I'm being serious here. --- Orright, I'm gonna take my baseball home.

In setting up the Extreme to play on the SI2K, I have used the CP16R camera as a sort of test bed, no film shot though.

'Tis a pity the Mini35 and Extreme did not come upon the scene some 10 years ago. What could have been for Super16, maybe?

If I am lucky there should be some happy snaps below.

The view through the eyepiece dioptre is not all that special. However it does illustrate that the front-of-Letus and relay optics see the "A" and "F" blocks of the Lemac Chart. The groundglass motor was also not running in this test.

The moire pattern is due to the CP16R viewfinder groundglass being a sliver cut from a coherent fibre bundle and the pixel rows of the Z1 camcorder which I used for the grabs both interacting with the lines in the blocks.

Sorry about the stretchy images. I haven't worked out how to make the frame grabs play nice yet.

The CP16, like the SI2K offered the option of using Nikon lenses via a special lens adaptor, which is why it became the test bed. The purpose of this was that if the standard Angenieux zoom became damaged on a hazardous news assignment, chances were there would be one or more nearby stills-shooters with Nikons in hand.

Relay in this instance was a Nikon f1.4 50mm. The Extreme's EX1 achromatic dioptre remains in place.

This arrangement will not be optimal for 3xCCD 2/3" video cameras which require optics optimised for the separation prism in these cameras, a costly business. It should be sort-of okay for single 2/3" CMOS sensors like those the SI2K uses though a dedicated HD relay would be better.