etcetera...
 

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"At the moment we are not able to quote the exact price for the MOVIEtube PRO and the MOVIEtube LT"
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------

hmmmmm.....

Just saw the Movietube site, looks and sounds slightly expensive, i'm going to take a guess at around $1000-$1500 for the LT version and probably around $2k+ for the Pro (just based on how the prototype looks)... but still, probably much less than the $8-16k for the P+S Technick mini35 package. Unfortuatly it's not compatable with the XL1s, which is ideal for light sensitive imagery-infact it looks like the XL1 bodystyle in general. Still pound for pound the Agus35 (not Argus) seems to be a winner in the cost department.

Contrary to some opinions, lot's of advancements have been made to the Agus35 since the inception of this thread. almost 850 responses, and almost 50k views and helped to spawn the "static35" thread... btw, I'm not entirely sure how a static glass will work, you'd need a air/dust/hair tight enclosure and a vibrating one might be a bit strange with the noise and probably good not to have too much vibration. hmm... i'm not exacly sure what it is but that microcrystaline glass sounds a bit like a fancy work for ground glass...

Anyone finished with an XL1 version? i've almost got mine to completion. stay tuned...

Glass Disks
 

Mcmaster.com

dia. price US part #

4 1/2" 12.84 8477K39
5" 18.88 8477K49
5 1/2" 16.91 8477K69
6" 23.84 8477K79

Borosilicate glass circles

thickness 1/8 inch +/- 0.031"
OD 5" +/- 0.015"

no center circular hole but I'm going to try to epoxy the center portion of a CD on motherboard standoffs.

Dino the static concept people are working on includes no moving/vibrating parts. That's what's so tricky about it. :)

Agus, can you post pictures of the most current "agus35" and maybe describe what components this newest version includes?

There are no new pictures or the adapter, is the same configuration of before, just to show that if you keep it simple it will work jsut fine... Also i replace the 2AA with a 9V batteries so the cd will spin faster.

I'll be sending shortly to Chris, two .pdf files of a rough and ready how-to for a pattern adaptor for Century Optics 16:9 anamorphic to 52mm SLR filter thread lens, specifically the Micro Nikkor 55mm. The fitting illustrated does not accept the Sony PD150 lens hood but a bit more filing and cutting of the adaptor fixes that.

There will also be a .jpg of the Australian Plumbers Version (complete with blue hammertone paint to make it go faster.) and a late evening sunset.

Will hopefully be doing a test/live music video tomorrow. Unfortunately it will be hostile lighting conditions, late afternoon-early evening, sun behind building - shadows and columns, outdoor gazebo and supplementry lighting needed (haven't got any gels), minimal audience hasslement by presence of camera.

Did some furthur tests on the Century Optics - Micro Nikkor combination. From about 6 feet out to infinity images with 16:9 are little different in sharpess in a practical sense from 4:3.

The test pattern tells another story with about a 100 horizontal TV line loss of resolution with test pattern in full frame vertically, which brings it closer to the lens than the 6 feet.

James.

You could be on a hiding to nowhere using motherboard standoffs if my imagining of what you will be doing is where you will take it.

I assume you will use three standoffs as pillars, screwed onto the CD at 120degree centres and tacked with epoxy onto the groundglass disk. Without a centre hole as a reference, getting the thing to balance and run true will be difficult. You would need to build an extremely accurate centering jig to hold the groundglass disk. Eyematching won't be good enough.

There will be three joints on two planes where error can occur. The hub to CD disk face (CD to hub, stand-offs to CD) Glass disk to stand-offs.

Worse, with the glass disk well outboard of the plane of the CD and its hub, the out-of-balance condition will impose loads on the motor shaft and the plastic hub itself which may not fail but may flex and aggravate the out-of-balance.

You may be better served by slipping the spindle hub along the motor shaft towards the end and trimming the hub centre down until it centers the CD disk but does not contact the glass disk. Don't use the standoffs but epoxy the glass disk direct to the CD.

This won't fix the outboard out-of-balance condition relative to the motor but will reduce stresses on the hub itself. The glass disk will tend to gyroscopically self-align but any out-of-balance will shake the motor and throw the alignment off. To fix that you might be able to use a felt tip spirit pen to mark the glass disk as it spins and attempt to balance it with blobs of epoxy placed 180degrees opposite the ink marks and carefully sanded down until balance is achieved.

My practice when mounting the sanded CD disks is to position the motor upright, use water-cleanup silicone bathroom sealer sparingly on the face, place the CD disk on it, turn the CD disk against the hub to evenly spread the sealer, then immediately start the motor and run the assembly until the sealer has stabilised after about 10 to 15 minutes. This nearly fixes any run-out caused by mounting with an ordinary CD but of course doesn't fix a CD which is imperfect. I don't think this method will work when mounting your CD/glass disk combination onto the spindle hub because the glass will still be slightly outboard of the CD-to-spindle centre contact surfaces.

If this is not your intended method, ignore it totally. Posted in the hope of avoiding you some frustration is all.

here's my attempt at one. i got everything working and put it on the camera and i can't seem to focus onto anything, unless it's very far away. is there a way i can fix that? is that what the macroring is for? take a look at the pics and see if there is anything wrong.


http://turborocco.com/homemade35/homemade351.JPG
http://turborocco.com/homemade35/homemade352.JPG
http://turborocco.com/homemade35/homemade353.JPG
http://turborocco.com/homemade35/homemade354.JPG
http://turborocco.com/homemade35/homemade355.JPG

what type of projection am i looking for when i spin the motor? if i put my hand behind it, am i suppose to see the image on my hand? if so i'm not seeing that right now.

Thanks agus!

Static GG is the the way to go
 

I am new to this post and as somebody say, I thought that I was
the only one that have try to do this.
I have work on this and found that the only way to do it is to have really good GG.

So I did one my self and to have the good result ,I can say you have to be really patient.

The result are amazing.
No ratation or vibrating device, I can shot in very low ligt whit my Vx 2000.

I whill try to post some image very soon.

but I haven't see yet where I can post this here.

Wing.

Looking at your camcorder side view it is probably too close to the CD disk. I don't know how good the macro on that camera is but it is probably not going to work close coupled like that unless you have another lens on front of it.

Try making a target on a piece of paper. If you want it to be 35mm movie widescreen size gate, draw a rectangle about 21mm wide by 11mm high. If you want the larger gate of the SLR camera the lens came off just copy the size of the gate inside the back of your SLR camera.

Use your zoom and focus to get the camcorder to frame sharply on the paper target. If you can get it all inside your camcorder's own image frame then the distance from the front of your camera to the paper is how far you will have to place the CD from your camera.

You may find you need a close-up lens (macro lens) to fit on front of your camcorder before you can get close enough. For the PD150 between 7x and 10x seems okay. With 7x the camera front to CD distance is about 5.5 inches. Your camcorder may behave differently.

The groundglass you have made looks a bit rough but will work for the time being. You will get a better groundglass if you rub it face down on a clean sheet of scrap glass using some 600 fine grit mixed in some water. You may be able to use something like Jif or Ajax creme cleaner but the abrasives in that stuff while fine are not as well graded so there may be some big bits in it.

Don't press hard on the disk. You'll just have to be patient and wait for the raised outer edge and centre to wear down before the image area will begin to frost over. You can speed things up by sanding the surface on the outer edge and any raised centre down, taking care not to touch the image area.

If you have a look at www.dvinfo.net/media/hart and click on agus1.jpg,, this image will give you an idea of what should be happening on your groundglass CD. (The pressing method of frosting groundglass gave a better result than sanding the disk but was not as good as polishing the disk face-down on a sheet of glass.)

Here is some image I have juste shot.

http://www.kheops-tech.com/~ad3d/film test.wmv

and here is the engine

http://www.kheops-tech.com/~ad3d/IMG_2110.jpg

Ok Alain I'll bite, What did you use for a GG? The footage looks great! Good DOF

john

Alain, this looks very interesting. Can you identify the parts you've used to make your 'engine'? Is that a slide viewer in there?

Wow, i am amazed, seens like there is almost no grain...

So, tell us the big secret.. how did you built it ??

Amazing Alain...very excited about the process of your device..
My problem is I have a DVX and it lens is 72mm so a rig like this might be a problem to get to work...or not.

wow nice going alan
 

Very slick and simple setup. It looks, possibly, like a close-up lens attached to the camera lens with a round GG [i venture to say a real piece of glass which would account of the almost perfect shot] of somekind sandwiched between another piece of tubing connected to the master lens.

sweet!
D

A bit of practical advice when using the Agus. Make a white card to take with you, plain on one side for setting white-balance, with a circular target on the other and inside that, a safe frame, which you have determined will give you a full frame on an underscanned image.

Practice - Prior to your shot, go wide angle to bring in the vignette. Frame the vignette on the circular target, then zoom in until the "safe frame" fills your viewfinder frame. I found out the hard way.

A stills cameraman for one of the newspapers wandered across to look at the Agus whilst I shot the R & B performance yesterday. I took the thing apart for him and fitted it back - wrong move. I forgot to reset the safe frame on the camcorder in my haste to get the piece I was waiting for which came up sooner than I thought.

alain35
 

alain the shots were great It looks just like film .
I have made the "agus35" could you tell us how to make
the "alain35"

@Alain, your shot is really amazing, tell us more about your setup.


I found this manual how to make your own groundglass, just have a look at http://www.phototechmag.com/previous-articles/2003/mj-dokas/dokas.html

I would like to share some of my links with everyone. While some will help you solve some of the problems out there others may only serve as a steping stone to a final solution.


GROUND GLASS and ALTERNATVES

(Bosscreens Grainless Glass)
http://www.bromwellmarketing.com/boards.htm

(Prices for Bosscreens)
http://www.bromwellmarketing.com/prices/lenses.htm

(Ground Glass Substitutes)
http://lists.kjsl.com/pipermail/acg/2003-October/000639.html

(Bosscreens)
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=de&u=http://www.schoon.de/bosscreen/bosscreen.htm&prev=/search%3Fq%3DBosscreen%26hl%3Den%26lr%3D%26ie%3DUTF-8%26oe%3DUTF-8%26sa%3DG

(Edmunds Optics - Different Types of Ground Glass)
http://www.edmundoptics.com/IOD/Browse.cfm?catid=453





DIAOPTERS, MACROS, ACHROMATS and APOCHROMATS

(Tech Spec™ Achromatic Lenses)
http://www.edmundoptics.com/IOD/DisplayProduct.cfm?productid=1749

(Tech Spec™ Diffraction Limited Large Achromats)
http://www.edmundoptics.com/IOD/DisplayProduct.cfm?productid=1501

(Commercial Quality Positive Achromatic Lenses)
http://www.edmundoptics.com/IOD/DisplayProduct.cfm?productid=2401

(Century Optics Diopters)
http://www.centuryoptics.com/products/broadcast/achromatic_diopters/

(OptoSigma Percision Optics and Hardware)
http://www.optosigma.com/miva/merchant.mv

(Cheap/Professional Grade Achromat, doublet, triplet, prisms, etc.)
http://www.surplusshed.com/search.cfm





PRISMS and IMAGE FLIPABLE LCD's

(Tech Spec™ Schmidt Prisms)
http://www.edmundoptics.com/IOD/DisplayProduct.cfm?Productid=2430

(Technically Explaination of Different Types of Prisms)
http://www.tecplusplus.de/ManualLu/prisms.htm

(Technically Explaination of Different Types of Prisms - Website 2)
http://topcontechnotes.home.att.net/viewingsystem/page8.html

(OptoSigma Percision Optics and Hardware)
http://www.optosigma.com/miva/merchant.mv

(Dove Prism)
http://www.doveprism.com/

(Cheap/Professional Grade Achromat, doublet, triplet, prisms, etc.)
http://www.surplusshed.com/search.cfm






OTHER

(Flange Focal Distance Table)
http://www.gregssandbox.com/gtech/filmfacts/flange.htm

(C-Mount Fine Thread Focus Tube)
http://www.edmundoptics.com/IOD/DisplayProduct.cfm?productid=1678

(MovieTube - Commercial contender to P+S Technik Mini35)
http://www.movietube.com/

(Mesmerizier - Rear lens mounted anamorphic optical system)
http://www.kishoptics.com/mesmerizer-mini.html

(Relay Lens Manuel Iris)
http://www.edmundoptics.com/IOD/DisplayProduct.cfm?productid=1966

(Aspherically Contoured Fresnel Lenses)
http://www.edmundoptics.com/IOD/DisplayProduct.cfm?Productid=2039



Brett Erskine
Director of Photography
Premiere Visions
1761 W. La Palma Ave., Suite #302
Anaheim, CA 92801
www.CinematographerReels.com
BErskine@CinematographerReels.com

Set up
 

The very first thing that I have try are a piece of Roscolux filter
and thid thing are close, but not perfect.

Then I try to find the perfect GG.I found some ,very very expensive and not good enought.Then I talk to a guy's at a telescope store and he tell me how to make a GG for $12 but lot of patience, in fact it's about 5 to 7 hour of grinding ;-(

As you can see on the photo there is 3 grade of alluminium oxyde
120,300,500 the bigger the number the smaller the grain,the smaller one are like flour. The goal is to have a gain that is smaller than the ccd can see.

The fist lens are from a optex 7X magnifier,there is 2 lens in there ,I use only 1 that I have glue on a uv filter ring,so I have my adaptor.

For the GG I have buy some uv filter (used one $2 whit scratch) so I have the good shape to start and for the same price the adaptor. Unmount the glass and grind it ,and grind ,and gind.................................................................................
then put it back in the ring and that's it

for the prototipe I use glue gun so I can unmount easily.

One thing that is really important is ,if you are grinding whit grade 300 then never never drop one grain of 120 grain ,otherwise your gone have to come back and start over again.

and by the way I prefer Aldu35 :-)

here is the photo

http://www.kheops-tech.com/~ad3d/parts.jpg

http://www.kheops-tech.com/~ad3d/parts2.jpg

Hope it's clear, fell free for any question.
Alain

Aldu35
 

Alain -

Thank you so much for your complete instructions on how to build this wonderful device. As soon as I get home from work this evening, I'll begin work on the "Aldu35". I like "Aldu35" better anyway.

GG
 

Another thing is when buying uv filter to make the gg ,there is someof those that are more difficult to unmount maybe impossile, they look like they are are mold whit the ring.The one I use are whit a thin metal ring, that keep the glass in place.

just kind of (i hope) nice joke:

aldu35 = I'll do35 :)


filip

Here is a place to order some 600 grit Aluminum Oxide for 10.50 / bottle (4 OZ).

http://www.sisweb.com/ms/sis/alumoxid.htm


Indeed, achieving a fine grain on a UV filter seems like the way to go, as there is no need for constant motion, and the thing already fits into place. Excellent, Alain!

Alain.

A cheap and unprofessional trick you can use when dressing your groundglass with the aluminium oxide 500. Don't throw out the used powder which is becoming a bit blunt, but wear it down more with a piece of scrap glass. - as you mentioned, keep everything absolutely free of other larger bits of grit.

When the oxide pwoder is worn down, try another clean piece of glass on it. Keep the pressure light and do a lot of rubbing. You'll get an even finer texture. Microscope slides are a satisfactory glass if you dont mind rectangular.

Using that UV filter was a clever idea.

Clear round glass disks (not the plastic ones) from welding suppliers for oxy goggle replacements might also be good for making small groundglasses.

Wow !! pretty amazing...

Could you perform, more test, to see if there is actually any grain ? So if you built a Agus35 with a glass cd, gritted with alluminiun oxide, and the discs spins a little there will be no trouble at all.

Can someone please describe this 5-7 hour grinding process in detail? Also what kind of store would carry various grades of aluminum oxide? or is the only place to order it online?

Noah, I'm in the same boat. (Ha ha!)

I have been calling local stores here such as hardware suppliers, hobby shops, and camera stores and nobody has the stuff. The closest thing was some 200 something grit at a hardware store.

It looks as though online is my only option.

As far as the process, you can do a search at Google and find all sorts of results. The average process is this:

- Lay down a large piece of glass.
- Mix a spoonfull of aluminum oxide with a bit of water
(enough to give a paste-like consistency)
- Take your smaller glass-to-be-ground and cover one side with
masking tape (for protection and better grip)
- Now rub the smaller glass over the paste, which is spread on
the bigger glass.
- The rubbing is done in circular motions, adding water as it
gets tougher to rub.


That seems to be about it. I've never done this, but I offer this summary of all the pages I have looked at over these last two days.

Hope this helps.

,Frank

Agus


Here is another shot.

http://www.kheops-tech.com/~ad3d/test2.wmv

There is no grain. I don't see a reason why to spin the glass.
And the design is pretty easy.
The only thing here is that the image are compress and a bit wash out ,What come out of my Video camera is better.

But if you have any specific test that I can do just ask me and I will try it.

Alain

Noah

I found the alluminium oxyde in a Telescope store, People use this to make mirror.

Alain

Alain -- great work. I've got server space to offer for images and footage, if you need either.

email me here: jim@ideaspora.net

You may attach the images as you like.

- jim

Resolution
 

Alain: How many lines are you resolving compared to footage without the adapter? ie. Is the resolution acceptable?

I would really like to look at an uncompressed still frame. Do you have any resolution test charts you could shoot?

The footage is looking good!


Thanks!

Alain, if I read this right... and I might not be... you are using the ring from a UV filter to connect this to your camera?

Sorry but I've tried to read back and my brain just can't hold it all in... :)

an explanation of how it connects and even a pic of it connected would be great.

Thanks and great work. I'm stunned at the level of work and genius in these threads.

Wow alain static sure is the way to go. Couple things in this picture http://www.kheops-tech.com/~ad3d/IMG_2110.jpg
it looks like your uv filter is connected to some other irregular shaped box can you tell us what that is? Also in this photo http://www.kheops-tech.com/~ad3d/parts2.jpg what is the piece you are holding at the bottom left? Last thing i heard a lot of people use fresnel lenses to concentrate the incoming light on the gg do you use that too? Wow whoaw Agus, Alain and everyone else thanks a lot.

I think we could open a new thread for this static solution, which is now really working... !

maybe new thread?
 

<<<-- Originally posted by Agus Casse : I think we could open a new thread for this static solution, which is now really working... ! -->>>

let's give the privilege to alain to open the new thread - "alain's static solution... or aldu35..." or whatever he thinks is ok.

what do you think?

filip

YES... I'll second that new thread which will give it a specific place and if there are any other versions to pursue they can remain in here or start their own thread when ready.

do you think this could work with a 16mm Angenieux lens? like this...

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...category=30077

35mm Adapter Static Aldu35
 

Lot of pressure on me now. Maybe I should run away.

Ok I will read all this now and try to answer all.

As you probably understand already I am french Canadien
so I sometime need a dictionnary and it take long for me to answer. :-)

Ps: Now what we should do is to start a thread against War and misery around the world and try to find a solution all togeter :-)


Alain Dumais