The Arriflex PL-XL1 Lens Adaptor ?
 

I'm wondering if anyone has had a chance to use or buy an Arriflex PL-XL1 Lens Adaptor?

I see an auction on Ebay selling one for $399. The auction # is 2933879129. I am curious how it compares to the image obtained with the Mini 35. The images in the auction look pretty good.. i.e. shallow depth of field!

Thanks,

Andy

Here's a link. I'll let someone who knows something about this business comment on it. Interesting.

http://www.virtualcybervision.com/xl1/ADAPTERS.htm

But it doesn't spin the glass eh?

No, it doesn't appear as though it spins the glass. Thanks for the link... funny thing though. The Ebay ad contains the same copy in the link you posted. Either it's the same guy or he lifted it for his auction. At $399 it might be worth picking it up to play with. Beats spending 6-8k on the Mini 35 just to play and experiment with.


Andy

It looks like it would work nicely. Sure the material probably isn't worth all that much, but the time he spent machining it does. Thats what costs the most on a lot of things, labor. If you tried to machine something out so percisely before, and own the stuff to do it, then you know why 90% of the price is labor.

Andy

The website and Ebay auctions are from the same person, his name is Barrett Bilotta, you can trust him. Tell him I said hello,

Chris,

Thank you for the response. Like I said in my previous post it definitely looks like it's worth a few hundreds bucks to play with and because you know him I feel even more comfortable buying it. Thanks again! If I get it and play with it I'll post some samples of my work.

Andy

Look forward to seeing your work with it. That's the only sure way of selling something like that, to tell you the truth.

You have to keep in mind that just putting a 35mm type lens on an XL1 will NOT give you the DOF characteristics of that lens. You are talking about a 7.2 increase in angle of view.

What?

Apparently from what I read, is it creates a focal length multiplier of 2x. Which means if you put a 18mm lens on there, it will be 36mm, but that is good in a way, because your using the best part of the lens, the center.

hmmm.... that doesn't really make sense.

Hold up a 35mm slice of film up to your XL1 CCD. That is the difference I believe you're going to get. It is less magnification than the EOS lens converter, but I don't know by how much.

I do agree that you're using the most effective part of the glass, but you are not going to decrease your DOF.

The pictures on the ebay post are deceiving. You can tell that they are using a "longer" lens (also being a part of the mangification). This in itself will decrease the DOF. You can tell that it's a long lens because the person pointing out almost to the camera's hand does not foreshorten as you'd expect with a shorter lens.

In addition you can't tell how far the background is in comparison to the subjects. I would like to see more empirical shots (in comparison to DOF and AOV) with a subjects placed at various distances from the lens as well as a tape measure.

These are all tests I am working on that will compare Ziess HD Primes with 35mm lenses on HD cameras. I'm not saying the adapter is of bad quality, but I do know that you can't maintain the DOF properties of a 35mm lens without optics. Otherwise, I would have built a mount a this a long time ago. It's not that hard.