35mm nikon old lense
 

After doing some research and talking to some camera guys, I am being told that you can use older nikon 35mm SLR camera lenses on an hv20 to give you a 35mm lense. When i look up anything nikon it always has some kinda clip system instead of a screw on. How exactly would a 35mm nikon lense fit with an HV20. I would really like to experiment using a 35mm setup but don't have the budget to get the higher prices brevis and letus adapters.

Kevin: First off, Letus has 35 Handyman deal for $375.00. You clean it up and you are off and running.

The key to a good 35mm adapter is optics, and any self built ones are successful only by extensive trial and error. You can spend three hundred easy getting there.

You just can't slap a 35mm lens on the front of the HV20. To shoot the 35mm lens, you have to project the image it makes onto a ground glass, and then your HV20 videos that image. 35mm adapters provide an achromat to help focus, as well as other internal lenses to enlarge the area of interest. There are several do it yourself projects available. But satisfactory results will come with the commercial units.

Kevin, they're talking about 35mm DOF adapters. There are many DIY ways to build them. If you go to Alternative Imaging forum here at DVInfo you'll see many threads on it. The easiest to build is a static adapter (look for Aldu35, Home Depot 35). The next easiest is a spinner with a frosted cd ... or you can get one from Redrock as part of their M2 do-it-yourself instructions. Good luck and have fun.

Looks like I have a lot to learn before attempting something like that as I didn't know all the extra class and such had to be used, I thought it was just a lense you could attach. The quest goes on!

The principle isn't too complicated if you just want to get started. Hold your 35mm Nikon at full wide in front of the camera. You'll notice that your eyes can make out an image but the camera cannot. Now find a translucent sheet like tracing paper or a very thin white plastic bag, set it behind the 35mm lens. You'll find that the lens is projecting a picture on the sheet/plastic bag albeit inverted --and gets sharp to fuzzy depending on how far you hold it. Now see if you can get the camera to see that projected image. You can probably get it to see some of it (but not zoom all the way through -- at least with the HV20). But this illustrates the principle nicely.

Chris' choice of the Letus35a is the cheapest pre-built option you can go with. If you already have 35mm lenses its not a bad way to go. But if you like to experiment there's a lot of material out there to try.

and so it goes--when introduced, these adaptors were considered shockingly LOW priced (understand that the cream of the crop, the Mini35, is a $10,000 system). Interesting.