New Letus Ultimate Footage
 

Here is a combination of shots, some with natural light, some with a reflector with the setting sun acting as a strong light source. It's a mish mosh of wide, medium and closeups to demonstrate how the Ultimate can handle all of these situations.

Camera is Canon XHA1

The Quicktime file has rendered everything brighter than the original so keep that in mind when you are looking at the not so deep blacks.

I used a combination of the following Nikon lenses:
24mm f2.8
35mm f1.4
50mm f1.8
55mm f2.8 macro
100mm f2.8
200mm f4.0

The first sky shot (clouds) was shot at f11 and the second blue sky rotating into the tree is shot at f8.

http://exposureroom.com/members/disj...611e9188b4560/

WOW.

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING.

This is the XHA1? Phenomenal, the Ultimate makes a sub 5K camera look so good. I must comment on my favorite moments:

1:27 - when she breaks into a smile. Great expression! It's such an honest moment, truth captured in film.

1:37 - great lighting, love the composition.

2:13 - that's amazing, simply amazing. So beautifully composed.

I love your work - I'm off to checking your website.

By the way, who's the freckled girl? She's got such a natural expression, everything looks good when she's in the frame. Also, did you light these shots? If not, did you shoot everything in golden light?

Thanks for the comments. That freckled girl is my lovely daughter who has an incredible screen presence...I'm trying to encourage her to get into drama more.

The golden light shots you are referring to were shot at sunset using the setting sun as a kicker and I also used a silver reflector to act as a front fill.

Stephen:

More beautiful stuff.

Question: From your viewpoint, what features are on the Ultimate that take it pass the capabilities of the Extreme ? In other words what benefit do I get for laying out the extra cash ?

Chris, the benefits are many:

1. Spinning adapter lets you shoot virtually grainless with fast shutter speeds and small apertures....this really shows up when you are shooting a sky and moving the camera...with the Ultimate, the picture remains pristine. You can control this further with the variable speed motor.

2. Backfocus adjustment. This is just awesome. Now I can trust my lenses when I turn it to infinity. This is huge to me, maybe a small deal to others. Obviously it's great for ACs also for accurate measurements.

3. Sharpness. This is also dramatic...edge to edge sharp...I don't care what the charts say, to my eye, it easily matches the native lens.

4. Bokeh. It's the best bokeh I've seen on a Letus...gone are the foggy circles in out of focus specular highlights.

The overall image also feels incredibly clean and grainless. This truly feels like I just slapped movie lenses on my camera, bypassing the traditional adapters completely. I can't give this adapter a higher endorsement.

Absolutely beautiful images.

I would think you could make a killing just holding workshops in the park. I know if it would help me capture images a little closer to yours... I would be probably fly up for it.

Thank you for sharing that.

I'm assuming you didn't do any color-correction in post since I've read that that isn't your thing. So, does this mean that you adjust the camera's color settings for each and every single shot you take? I'm asking because you are the only man on this forum who delivers consistently beautiful-looking footage. I am not a fan of VIVIDRGB and I didn't detect its use in this footage. I would love to be able to get such color-real and natural shades as you do-- could you please explain what your process is? Is it because you use great compression? Hah... anyhoo... clueless over here... once again: you are a god of the XH-A1. Keep it coming.

I'll have to check out design. I hadn't followed this latest version (pricey) and I didn't realize they had gone full circle back to spinning gg like the original adapters. Thanks for the review !!

The Letus was never a spinning adapter...always vibrating up to this point.

Yes, understood. Seems like industry in general went spinner, then vibrating, and now is going back to spinner.

Yeah, just wanted it clear you were not just talking about Letus.

Hey Stephen,

How much light is lost in the Ultimate? Can't seem to find that info anywhere...

1/2 stop...measured with no attached lenses.

From there, you have to calculate the loss based on the speed of your attached lenses.

Steven,

Outstanding work, as always. When I grow up, I want to be just like you! :-)

What is the music? My girlfriend thinks it's from the Batman Begins soundtrack.

Yes, kudos to your girlfriend for recognizing the music.

When I grow up I want a cool name like yours :)

As always, I enjoy and learn from your posted footage. After taking my LetusExtreme off my XH-A1 for a couple weeks just to make myself do some "no attachments" 60i shooting, it is now attached once again and ready to do some serious work. I've gone through at least a dozen tapes of test footage just trying to see how the thing will react to different conditions, etc.

I was impressed that you were able to shut down the aperture to f8 and even f11 for those sky shots. That's something you just can't do with the vibrating gg without risking gg grain in your shot.

One thing I find myself wondering about is your current workflow. I know you've talked about it in the past, but I seem to perceive that it is an evolving thing with you. What is your typical 24f workflow at this point?

Julian, not sure where you read that I don't do color correction, I sure do but it's not a lot because the original image is pretty solid. I also don't like stylizing the look of my footage so that's maybe where that came from.

Basically, at this point, I am using my Panalook 2 settings. I quit using the VIVIDRGB because it was too red. The Panalook 2 preset is way better and more neutral. It also keeps the saturation way down so I can play with it more in post.

I push the saturation in post by about 20% and also crush the blacks, using a levels adjustment, just to the point where I am about to lose detail in the shadows. After getting a good even white balance across the timeline, I then nest that timeline into a new timeline and apply a color curves adjustment reducing the blue a little to warm the overall tone of the scenes up. That's my basic process.

In case you are not familiar with the Panalook2 preset, here are the parameters:
Gamma: Cine2
Color Matrix: Cine2
Color Gain: -4
CPH: 0
Knee: Low
Black: Stretch
Master Ped: -7
Setup Level: -1
HDF: Mid
DHV: 0
Sharpness: -2
NR1: Off
NR2: Off
Coring: 0
RGN: 8
GGN: 11
BGN: 12
RGM: 0
RBM: 0
GRM: 0
GBM: 0
BRM: 0
BGM: 0

steven,

that rocks. there isn't anything that says "adapter" in that footage. Like you said, it's as though you slapped some $$$ film cam primes on the canon. definitely a contender with it's higher priced counterparts. I can see this becoming the next P+S

cheno

Steven, your daughter is beautiful, a very open face.

This adapter is also a winner: 4500 bucks, but you're getting your money's worth.

One thing you might want to experiment with -- when she's backlit by the sun, try raising your bounce so the light is coming down onto her face, rather than up from below. Might be more pleasing to fill from a higher angle. Just a thought. All looks terrific.

LOL, the reason I didn't raise the reflector was because I didn't have a stand at hand and when I saw the light coming through the window, I yelled out "Tara, get in here!"...I agree higher placement would have been better.

Wow...
 

Steven,
First off, I will say that the Letus Ultimate is an absolutely incredible piece of equipment. I have recently recieved my Letus Extreme and love it. But what I'm really here to say is that I am always truely amazed by your films. You always capture the true and simple beauty in life. I don't know how you do it, so simple but so beautiful. I have been using your VIVIDRGB preset and love it. I have just recently found your Panalook2 preset and can't wait to try it. Thanks for you inpiration to a newbie and all other inpiring filmmakers... Heres to great fun and filmmaking...



Jeremy