Newbie here with a couple of q's
 

Hi to all

Been browsing through these forums the past few days and feel glad to have found this place. A wealth of information I never knew existed and I'm sure my stay on this forum will benefit me in the long run.

Just to briefly introduce myself, I'm 19 and studying in a film school in Singapore. Don't have anything proud to show as of yet lol but seeing many footages here, kinda gives me the inspiration and with the new semester coming around, I'll sure try to get something out.

I'm new to this whole thing about 35mm adapters. Having recently interned on a HD set utilising p+s tecknik's mini35, I've been searching the net for info on them. Found a few expensive ones, affordable homemade ones, ones that are still unreleased, questionable ones, etc...all that opened me up to a whole new outlook on digital filmmaking (forgive me if im slow to jump on the bandwagon lol).

So on to my questions:

You attach the adapter onto the camera and zoom in so that the image on the gg fills up the monitor and you focus. Lock them in place and you attach the 35mm lens. So you're ready for the first shot of the day and have all the lights in place.

- What's next? Adjust the aperture on the 35mm lens but keep the camera aperture fully open or adjust the camera's aperture but keep the 35mm fully open? Or I'm getting the procedure all wrong and have no idea what I'm talking about?

Some adapters have a flipped image and that goes on tape.

- While it's obvious to me that what's up is now at the bottom, what about horizontally? Will an actor's right hand on frame left end up at frame right?

- There are workarounds like using a magnet and mirror option. While that doesn't change what's going to tape, will it affect the signal going to the external monitor?

- In post, will there be a loss in resolution once the image is flipped correctly? (FCP, Avid, Adobe Premiere Pro, etc)

Lastly,

- I'll be using a pd170 most of the time. Where are footages of these 35mm adapters on the pd170s? LOL Most users here are using dvx/xl/hd....but pd170? Cmon, I'm sure there has to be someone! There's a thread on it but last I remember, still no footages.

Sorry for the awfully long post, bear with me and thanks for any information.

I'm only going to answer two of your questions because I owe Oscar an email and need to get to it.

1) as for PD170's, search Alternative Imaging Methods forum for "PD170" and "PD-170":

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/search.php?searchid=425748

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/search.php?searchid=425767


2) You set the 35mm lens' aperture or f-stop for the depth of field you want. Then set the camcorder's iris for whatever suits your needs.

In a 35mm adapter, the image is rotated 180 degrees. upside down. which means, top becomes bottom, and left becomes right.

in post, all you have to do is rotate the image 180 degrees to be upright, and you shouldnt lose resolution unless you have a bad software program or you decide to compress your footage.

and to get the most depth of feild out of your adapter, i would open the 35mm lens aperature all the way, and then adjust your camcorders iris to accomodate whether the image is overexposed, or underexposed. otherwise, youll be messing with the final dof when you stop down your SLR 35mm lens.

Actually you mean "to get the LEAST depth of field." !

I use adobe premier to rotate 180 degree and it degrade the image quality. Flip vertical and horizontal is worse. I wonder if any software that doesn't affect image quality at all after 180 degree rotating? Thanks.

Quyen

hmmm. I use adobe after effects 6.0 and i havent really noticed image degradtion. how can you see it. If figured all it does is move the pixels around. atleast, you would think thats what its doing in AE.

Quyen,

There was a test somewhere around here that showed a closeup of a section of a flipped frame, in AE and in FCP. The FCP flip showed zero effect on image quality. The AE flip did show some artifacting.

I believe someone did the same with Sony Vegas and it did not show any effect on image quality.

I do notice some picture degradation in Sony Vegas 5.0.

Here are two grabs taken at the exact same point on the timeline. One is as recorded by the adapter directly and the other is the same but flipped in Vegas.

Grab 1
Grab 2

If Vegas 6.0 can flip the image with no degradation, I’ll upgrade immediately.

Or it may that I am not doing it the right way...

Francois, is that from a render or Preview?

Also worth investigating is Adam's Flip for Vegas:

http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=61195

Bill, that was from Preview (grab from timeline). I also notice the same "blur" in the rendered flipped video with Track Motion.

I was not aware of Adam’s plug-in and I am checking it right now. Thanks for the tip!

I use the "Flop" effect in FCP 5.0 to flip the image vertically. This is nice because there is no rendering required. But- there seems to be some distortion of the very top row of pixels. Anyone else noticed this? Minor, and it can be cropped out, but pretty annoying.

by rotating image You will mess up Your fields(by interlaced footage) it's not loss but it is something You have to count. Any other loss there's not. And by reasonable algorithm it's not possible.

I wonder whether those tests I mentioned were progressive or interlaced. If progressive, that's interesting that quality goes down.

Thanks to all for answering the questions I've posted.

Also, thanks to Bill for sharing info on Adam's Flip Vegas plugin. Now, are there any other "flip" softwares (standalone or plugin) that is as good and as simple (without additional rendering and import/export) as what I've read about Adam's Flip? It's a pity for users of FCP, Premier Pro, etc who would not be able to take advantage of Adam's Flip plugin.

Sorry, another question:

Which lenses (Nikon or Canon) do you prefer? In terms of ease of availability, price and quality of images.

Also, I've read about "fitting issues" regarding Nikon AI lenses on the Letus35/A. I know there were solutions to fix this (eg. taping the mount to tighten it) but has the issue been solved in terms of design?

I'm getting excited each day because I'm that close to saving up and getting a Letus35A for use in school on several camera models but at the same time, I wanna be sure of what I'm getting myself into.

Thanks