Real 35mm DOF with a Cheap sony TRV18
 

Hello there folks... well.. first of all view a sample before putting anything...

http://www.altoque.tv/jaguar35mmtest.wmv

Now... what i did is to grab a SLR 35mm minolta photo Camera.. and i put the sony video camera in the viewfinder...

the image was clear.. but you will see it with a lot of grain, cause i shoot it in the midnight with really low light...

the DOF is the one from the Photo camera..

I cannot open an readapt the photo camera..(its not mine :) ) but i could buy an old one and perfect the system.. anyone know how i could remove the focusing tool in the photo camera ?

Hi,

The "focusing tool" you see is embeded in the ground glass. If you realy want to go that way, see if you can find a replacement ground glass with no marks and no "focusing tool" (I'll go with "focusing tool" because I don't remember its name also! :-) )on it.
The mini35 adapter works like you've experimented, but the ground glass rotates (or oscilates - in the new version) to blur the grain on the ground glass.

It's called a focusing screen and the circle in the center is the focusing aid. Focusing screens are referred to as a ground glass in large format photography.

This is very intersting. The Mini35, a little gadget that does the same thing, costs several thousand US$. I wonder why nobody has made a cheap version yet. We would ALL buy something in the sub US$200 that could let us use 35mm photo lenses. Anybody here up to it? I'll be a very happy beta tester <grin>

I am up for it... now i am hunting a cheap old SLR camera that doesnt work.. so i can try up more about this experiment... i really didnt have too much grain... but even if the grain is there... remember that i have a cheap Dv camera... even if the image isnt that great.. for really no money at all i will have a 35mm focusing tool,. and the image quality level that i have now will be really awesome compared to before...

Clickable..

That's an interesting idea Agus! Let us know your progress.

Great ideas! We all know the 'industry' is not kind to our $hobby$ and with this kind of resoursefulness I get really excited!

Here is another test... now

http://altoque.tv/luchis35mm.jpg

Nice. The vignetting is quite significant though or is it on purpose?

Remember that i am capturingthis image from the photo camera's viewfinder... so the vigneting is from the black pastic... also the grain comes up since there was low light and i edited teh curves and levels in the post.

If anyone knows how to build the box where i can mount the SLR lens, and i can get the image in a homemade ground glass... post a link or here..

I really know nothing about this kind of thing, but I guess an adapter, any kind with the right bayonet, could be the basis for a home-made mini35-like trick. You would need to build some kind of barrel and add a semitransparent surface like what we call 'diamond paper' here, and then the right mount for the camera, possibly with a bellows so as to be able to control the distance... hmmm perhaps a macro lens would come in handy...

... in my dreams, there is a photo store where you can buy all the stuff required and assemble it yourself for less than US$300 <grin>

Ok.. here is an update,

Now that i test the system. i started to make my own box...

I use a 50mm lens, witch it is calibrated to a homemade ground glass (which i will improve now) from there i was getting the image ... but the light coming from the lens was forming a big circle of bright light that ruin the image projected in the ground glass...

to correct this i noticed that the ground glass from the camera is not quite flat, so it acts like a magnifying glass, that makes the ground circle to disappear.. so i took a wide conversion lens that i had (x0.6) and disarm it, i found that the last piece of the lens acted like the magnifying glass that i needed in the ground glass...

All armed it looks pretty cool, now i am having too much grain from the homemade ground glass, so i will make the ground glass to vibrate... now...

What do you think, if it vibrates could work, or i have to rotate it to give me better results ?

there was an old topic... maybe you've already seen it:
http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?s=&threadid=10532&highlight=mini35

Well, the real Mini35 rotates the ground glass. I think vibrating it might make still shots difficult.