Using the EF Adapter instead !!
 

Dear All,

I was wondering if using the EF Adapter with EOS 35mm lenses and other set of lenses, will this get us the same results when using the mini35 adapter !!!

Regards,
Amr Toukhy

No, the problem is that it multiplies the focal length of the EOS lens by 7.2x wich means you have to get some VERY specific lenses to get anywhere near what you could get with true 35mm focal plane systems.

For instance, to get a standard 50mm lens shot, you'd need a ~7mm lens attached to the adapter.

Even then, I don't believe the DOF would be the same.

Ok i see,

but shooting video with the EOS lenses is OK !!
take a look at this LOOK :)

http://www.usa.canon.com/eflenses/lineup/index.html

will i get this on VIDEO format, or just stills on the XL1s !!!

Regards,
Amr Toukhy

You can use the EF adapter to shoot video. But as Eric said the increase in magnification make most lenses super telephotos. It's not very practical for shooting most subjects, the magnification is too much.

Ciao Amr,

it seems to me, that the principal idea behind the adpater was not understood. So here it is:
Imagine you go to the cinema and take your miniDV along (no...don´t do it or you´ll get in trouble). You frame the screen and tape it. On your miniDV-tape you will record a 35mm movie. The mini35 does exactly the same. Just that you have removed the video-lens (in the case of xl-1s) and film the picture from the ground glass. This is essential to understand, because we are not just adapting a 35mm-lens to a miniDV camera. We adapt the projection of a 35mm lens to it.
So if you are searching for an alternative system, be sure to avoid pure lens-adaptions. They will change your focal lenght and you´ll loose the depth of field you desire.

cheers, Marcos

Thank you all for your AMAZING informative replies :)

Now i really understand the Angle of view issue and the DOP too:)

What i dont seem to get is, if i use wide angle EF lens and zoom out to full in lens and in camera, wouldn't i get the same angle of view of the EOS still camera... please see image of the motor cycle

http://www.usa.canon.com/eflenses/li...ide/index.html

Another issue and excuse my ignorance !!
what happens when i zoom in the camera... will the lens zoom like the standerd XL1s lens !!

And what is the issue with the f stops when i play with the iris!!

I hope this is not too much ...

Regards,
Amr Toukhy

No, my 15mm EOS lens becomes a 108mm lens with the EF adapter on the XL1. The small (1/3 inch) chip of the XL1 sees much less of the image circle projected by the lens. The lenses on the EF adapter need to be manually zoomed with your hand. The lenses do not contain a servo to zoom with the XL1 controls.

Thanks people for the informative replies,

My comment now is what is the purpose of the EF adapter then if you can't get to match the lens specs. if you are getting a 15 or 100 and in the end you get another rate !!!!

How do people use them on XL1s and for what purposes ?

Thanks,
Amr Toukhy


p.s. any demo videos or images !!

you can use the EF adapter if you are looking for a manual zoom for example (the 16x lens has some issues there) also it's nice to have the option to put some terrific lenses in front of your xl1. The links you're sourcing seem to be images from the lenses on still bodies. They will be different on the XL1. Look at 28 days later. It was shot with Canon lenses and on an XL1 - not on a mini35. Looked great but different.
I have a mini35 and love the fact that my editor's comment is that it looks more like 35 than 16...

Dear All,

'am about the buy lenses for the XL1s, and i have three ways to go:
1) Stick wide / fish / zoom lenses over the standard XL1s lens
2) Buy EF adapter and get still photography lenses
3) Buy the mini35 digital adapter.

i am really in favor of the second option because i can make use of the same lens for still and video......

i wonder if anyone who has the EF adapter can post sample pictures of putting the EF EOS still lens on his camra then take a photograph the stick the same lens on his XL1 then take the same photograph, so i can see the difference !!!

Regards,
Amr

You could get the mini35 and also use all your Canon EF lenses with it. That might give you the best of both worlds: shallow DOF plus the ability to use your lenses. P+S Technik makes a Canon EF lens mount for the mini35.

Amr, what will you be shooting with your XL1? I have the adapter and the still lenses, yet the only thing I use the EF adapter for are the wildlife documentary work I do. Too much magnification for anything else.

I wonder why Canon has not made a mini-35 like adapter. They could make a lot of money from it. Or perhaps it would just make more sense to make a video camera with a giant sensor. Imagine all the light that could be captured by a sensor the size of a 35mm photo frame. At SD resolution, such a sensor would see so much in near darkness that IR vision would be obsolete. With HD resolution, it would be less, but still awesome. Much better than reading the image off a ground glass and probably less expensive too.

The Canon 1Ds has a 35mm size sensor. The CMOS sensor produce 11Mp images but hardly shoots 24fps, let alone 30fps. The retail is about $7,000 USD and no lens

Yes. But we don't need it to be 11Mp, 3Mp is enough for HD. And we don't need it to be 60fps, 30 would be ok and surely 24 or 25 would be cool. It doen't even need to be 3CCD, just one CMOS, with a surface area roughly equivalent to that of the three CCD panels in the PD170. Sure thay can do it for US$3k. They just don't want to becasue they know for now we are willing to pay that for smaller sensors.

The pixels would be too large or the space between the pixels would be too large, if you had a 24mm x 36mm sensor and only 3+MP.

> The pixels would be too large or the space between
> the pixels would be too large, if you had a 24mm x
> 36mm sensor and only 3+MP.

Nope. The pixel density would be just 30% less than that of current 2/3" SD video sensors. And that would be for monochrome. Since we are talking about a single large sensor for the three primary colors in a Bayer pattern, the density of picture sensors is actually quite similar.

Because the fill factor of CMOS sensors is lower then the fill factor for CCD sensors, the latter actually HAVE to be bigger to get equivalent resolution and sensitivity.

Just to make it even more interesting, I'll tell you CMOS sensors are less expensive to make, can include digital image processing on the same chip as the sensor itself and guess who's the expert on CMOS sensors... that's right, Canon.

Jeff, am gonna be using the lenses to shoot a documentary, all are wide shoots the concept is "infinity focuse" -am alway crazy about DOP but in this film it is only clarity and openness... -the feel.

so when i checked www.centuaryoptics.com the have great wide angle lenses but they seem to cause distortion and rotation on the edges of the film... while the still photography lenses are ultra straight and wide... and this is where the idea came from...

back again to your comment. if i get the mini35 and stick an EOS wide lens on it will i get what i would get if i stick the lens directly or the EOS camera or i'll get a magnificated image.

can you post images. 'am soooo amazed with the quality wildlife images you have on you gallery, man :) great work.

my e-mail is: toukhys@link.net.jo

thanks in advance,
Amr Toukhy

The size of a 2/3 inch chip is 8.8mm x 6.5mm The size of a full frame 35mm chip is 24mm x 36mm. The 2/3 inch chip is approximately 4 and 1/2 times smaller, not 30% There is a big difference in pixel density between the 6MP CMOS sensor used in the 10D and the 11MP used in the 1Ds and the size difference is only 1.7x.


Amr, The extreme focal length the EOS lenses have on the XL! really only makes them suited for wildlife documentaries. If you need to shoot CU of birds etc., then it is an ideal choice. But the working distances are huge if you attempt normal scenes Imagine that that instead of the camera being 3 meters from the subject, it is 21 meters to get the same framing. Interior shots become almost impossible unless you are in a gym.

Hey Jeff,

Could you perhaps answer a question about the magnification issue... could you use the EF adapter and mount a lens of, say, 85mm/90mm on your XL1, and note the field of view... and then put on the 16x lens, zoom all the way in (to about 85mm or 90mm, whatever matches the still-camera lens) and note the field of view.

They should be identical. But I don't have an XL1, so I can't check it.

It'd just be very interesting to know.

You will get a somewhat magnified image, but not very much. The mini35 uses a frame size of 24 x 18mm, where the EOS uses a frame size of 36 x 24mm. So yes it'll be magnified, but not anywhere near what it would be like on the XL1/EF adapter.

I've done this and it is very difficult to compare because of differences in format (3:2 vs. 4:3), differences in viewfinder magnification etc. But the field of view is near identical, except for variations in the lens focal length (the lens says 90mm but actually measures 88.5 for example).

This principle is easy to demonstrate in a darkroom. It is very easy to switch film formats (sizes film) and use the enlarging lens. Guess what, the angle of view is the same, only the image size changes.

Hey Jeff,

I just ordered the following items for the project am working on:

VS-06WA-XL2 0.6X Wide Angle Adapter
VS-FEWA-XL Fisheye Adapter
Tiffen 72mm Close-up Kit (+1,+2,+4) Lens
B+W 72mm Skylight KR-1.5 Glass Filter
B+W 72mm Circular Polarizer Glass Filter

But i think 'am gonna be getting the mini35 adapter soon, spicially the the guys from P+S Technik assured me that this adapter will be compatable with the canon next camera.

But i still wish if i can see any EF EOS lenses samples on the XL1s, and the same image from the EOS camera. kind of comparison, you know...

Regards,
Amr Toukhy

The new Dalsa camera uses a 35mm-film-sized sensor for (I believe) up to 60p framerates. Also - if my optics memory serves, a larger film plane actually means less light for the sensor. As the same volume of light spreads out over a larger area, there's less to go around... making a small sensor much more efficient in low-light than a large one.

I've never shot that type of example or test before. If I have the time, over the next couple of weeks I may try that for you.

<<<-- Originally posted by Jeff Donald : I've done this and it is very difficult to compare because of differences in format (3:2 vs. 4:3), differences in viewfinder magnification etc. -->>>

That's not what I meant. I meant using only the XL1. First put the 16x lens on, zoom to 88mm, and record a few frames. Then take off the 16x lens, put on the EF adapter and an 85-90mm Canon EOS lens, and record a few frames.

Theoretically they should look basically identical. The factors of frame size, viewfinder etc. will all be negated because you're using the same camera. I'm just saying that a 90mm EOS lens should deliver the same fov, etc. on an XL1 as a 90mm (or thereabouts) XL1 lens...

It's exactly the same the same, given the variations in the focal length noted above. A millimeter is a millimeter.

That's what I thought. I was just wondering if the optical element in the EF adapter had any effect on focal length magnification.

So, in effect, the adapter is doing *no* magnification, and a 50mm Canon EOS lens is going to give you the same FOV as the XL1 zoom when it's set at 50mm.

That makes perfect sense, just wanted to make sure there wasn't something I was missing.

Why not just get the 3x lens from Canon I think that is a great lens to use.

I used a century optix wide lens once... nice but no dop.... that's the whole enchilada with the mini35... you still have to add color/grain/deinterlace/etc... for that whole film look

Sample stills of ef adaptor
 

Amr,
Check out these impresive shots taken last year by Michael Dalton. He used the EF adaptor and the Canon 35-350 zoom lens.
http://www.digitalcrossing.ca/ef-1.htm

not to mention it makes the camera look freakin cool... post that pick at the photo of you rig thread in the xl1 section...

Bernard,

it seems there is something wrong with the address !!
maybe from my end, i dont know,
but thanks man for the link anyways :)

Regards,
Amr

Hey Amr.
I thinks the problem is from your end because I checked it and it works.
Try it on another computer.
Regards.

<<They will be different on the XL1. Look at 28 days later. It was shot with Canon lenses and on an XL1 - not on a mini35. Looked great but different.>>

That's not exactly an accurate comparison. 28 Days Later was shot with Canon EJ and FJ cine lenses, not the EF still lenses. The quality of the EJ lenses is many, many times better than EF lenses. And they did have a mini35 adaptor, just not the P+S one because the movie was shot before it was released (it was filmed in the Fall of 2000). Instead, they spent a ton of money haveing Optex custom build a mini35 adaptor that would do the same thing the P+S one does. Those are the kinds of things you can do when you have a ton of money (the budget on that movie was, I believe, about $15 mil. US).

Personally, I don't know why Optex never released their adaptor to compete with Technik one. Maybe there was a rights issue with the producers of 28 Days Later since they paid for it. I don't know.

i just found this site for an ef adapter by xl1solutions. it claims to have a magnification of only 2X to 4X using their adapter and an ef lens. has anyone tried this adapter out? it seems like it would a better solution than canons ef adapter if it truly is only 2 to 4X.

they also have other mounts if you guys are interested. i am only interested in the ef adapter at this time but want to hear from others who may have more experience with adapters. it seems to add only a small amount of distance (maybe less than canon's) to the lens plane so it might in fact work as stated. would love to know for sure!!!!

thanks....
hope it helps others....

marc

might help if i included the address!

http://www.xl1solutions.com/

Marc, Please take a look to this thread http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthrea...t=xl1solutions for infos on this specific subject. Basicly, the XL1solution adapter is a mechanical adapter, and like any mechanical adapter, you will have a manification factor based on the CCD size and the type of lens used. With an 1/3 CCD, the magnification factor is about 7x if you use 35mm still lens, about 4x if you use 35 mm cine lens, or 2x if you use 16 mm cine lens.

Hope this help.

No, read the explanation again. A mm is a mm. The use of different lenses will not produce different results. A 5mm lens is a 5mm lens. The magnification factor changes as the size of the format changes, not as the type lens changes. The XL1 Solution Adapter is no solution. It does exactly what the EF adapter does, no more, no less.

jean,
thanks! this helps alot. i understand now why the adaptors work the way they do! i think my best option at this time would be a 3x wide angle lens (until i can afford a mini 35 set up!)

also, jean (off topic) have you started your stabilizer rig? im buying the parts this week!

thanks again!

Yes Jeff, sure, a mm is a mm, perhaps that I could have been clearer. What I mean is that if you point a still 35 camera with a 50 mm lens on it on an object, and after that you take the same lens on an XL1, assuming the distance between the object and the two cameras remain the same, this object will be 7x bigger on the XL1. That is how I understand the magnification between formats. Correct me if I am wrong.