I actually did a quick calculation gauging how many hours are on my mini35.

~384 hours since the late July over the course of 48 shooting days.

43 of those days I was shooting straight without any off days.

I can't believe it. I'm getting tired just thinking about it.

Hi Jim,
thats a long answer...I realy like this forum!

<<< ... some compromises that have to be made to get this quality of image with the XL and P&S vs 16mm or 35mm cost. I honestly tend to do the same in practice..that is keep everything open to 1.2/1.4 or a stop down. ...>>>

I'm also agree that we have to accept and deal with compromises...and I LOVE the picures I saw till now!!! My only conceren is that I prefer for CUs longer lenses, and with F2.0 or F2.8 on a 85mm the actors can move on a 6' distance only 2 inches...which can become very frustrating.

<... I would suggest that stopping down the prime lens with NDs may solve some of Istvan's issues with the need to shoot with more dof. I say this because my tests so far show that stopping the prime induces grain much more so than stopping down the relay iris with an open prime. I'll bet that ND's will give more flexibility still in terms of opening up dof without grain...>

Maybe I'm missing something, but does the ND filter have effect on the DoF? I know the discussion on DoF is happening somewhere else, and maybe I will put there also the question as I start to become confused, so my question at this point is: if an ND6 forces me to open up the iris from F4.0 to F2.0, will I then have a DoF refered as T4.0 or T2.0??? I think that it is T2.0, so it would not help me.

I sounds very interesting what you wrote about putting some solution on the oil...I would also not do it myself, but it shows that there are improvments on the way.

Btw, I read somewhere that the new Pro35 has an excentrical spinning glass...
Thanks to everybody
Istvan

an ND filter will help you to further opening the lens and thus
shortening the DoF. So yes your DoF is smaller at T2 then it is
at T4. And you are correct to state T2.0...