I've fallen behind a bit on the adapter progress. We got some pretty bad weather down here. Glad to see people are still working on it!

Ben: Regarding Fast lenses - (as I understand it) the closer the ratio is to 1:1, the faster the lens. For example, 1:1.8 is faster than 1:2. You want fast lenses when using these types of adapters to lessen the appearance of grain.
Telephoto lenses are usually 'slow', having bigger numbers like 1:4 (and the numbers change - they are lower on the wide end and higher on the telephoto end)

To me the biggest problem is finding the right condenser or Achromat - Oscar is lucky he found a great set that worked. As I have asked before, it would be nice to get a list from Surplusshe or anchoroptics of achromats and condensers that work - period. Problem is when people find something that works great, they end up making 'another adapter' and keep the trade secrets.
I was lucky to find a condenser from a SLIDER FILM PROJECTOR (you know the ones from school when they played a tape recorder while the slide was showing). This worked amazingingly at getting rid of vignetting, but it is small - a bigger condenser will get a bigger image. Again, I can't stress this enough - smarter peopple than myself have made discoveries with the proper achromat that doesn't have colour abberhation or barrel distortions and smarter people than myself have found the perfect condenser or PCX lens - the unfortunate part is that they are keeping the info to themself and letting us fumble in the dark (I suppose like they had to). Oscar (and Quyen with his tutorial on the Letus35 adapter) are one of the few that actually comes out and tells how he does stuff - in detail, what they used and where they got it/. I wish more people were like him on this board...

This is not new and works as good as you can get:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/bnh/cont...ughType=search

less than that, you get wyp4. (no magic and no short cuts in optics) I wish I could help more, but when I thought I needed one, I bought the above (and I can't say I do not have any lenses laying around)

Of course, Dan is right. But like I said about my condensers, originally they are not condensers, but pieces of glass from old camera lenses. I think you have a better chance of finding a quality lens there (old telephotos or even binoculars or something) than get some cheap condenser or achromat from a surplus store.

I agree with you Oscar. Pretty much ALL lenses ARE chromatically corrected (even the older ones). Now... some have enough glass on the front elements to cover the "scene" some don't. Some have "air" between elements, some are glued together, etc. By the time you "bastardize" a lens just to use the front elements..... it may not be worth it (even if glass is fine, you will need some sturdy mounts to hold them together (at precise aligned distances and squared to each other and the rest...)
Try your luck in the 4/200mm (4/135 may be on the edge) Better yet, find some older optics books and read a bit, you'll gain a lifetime knowledge (nobody can take from you) and you might find yourself spending less on cheap (glass) and you will know why! Don’t mind me Leo for preaching, I mean well.

Actually it's not the closer the lens is to 1:1, it's the smaller the number, period. There are even lenses with an aperture of 0.95(!) It's all just simply a ratio of focal length to aperture diameter.

It's true we want fast lenses with these adapters is to lessen the appearance of grain but the other reason is of course just to make use of the adapter itself for the ol' shallow DOF thing.

An interesting thing about lenses is that if you compare the ratio of focal length and aperture to some common number such as a 50mm focal length lens, the depth of field is scalable. For example, a 100mm F4.0 lens has the same DOF as a 50mm F2.0 lens. This is why it's not so bad that we are "stuck" with so many slower telephoto lenses. And, the faster telephoto lenses have REALLY shallow DOF.

I personally, from experience, like to spend mroe and end up with a shorter lens with as big an aperture as possible. Anybody can do the "get far away and zoom in" approach and it's not that beautiful to me. The look is very distinct; the background looks enlarged and looming right behind the subject. What is more compelling is to move in close and shoot wide open with a 50mm F1.0 or a 24mm F1.4. You get the panoramic and non-enlarged background, with shallow DOF.

Amen to that!
 

Want more? Remember the candlelit scenes in Kubricks 'Barry Lyndon'.

"The Zeiss 50mm f/0.7. The fastest lens of all time. Only three exist in the world, custom-made by Carl Zeiss Oberkochen for NASA to be used in the Apollo program. Kubrick, incredibly, found a way to acquire two of them, and then hired an engineer to find a way to adapt them to an old cinema camera they had chosen especially for its ability to be modified for unusual lenses. Reportedly, the rear element of the Zeiss was just 4 mm from the film plane, so to be able to focus it they had to do some extensive modifications to the camera body housing and the lens itself. On the second of the two lenses, they ingeniously fitted a reduction lens meant for projectors to get a wider angle of view, around 36.5 mm.

Apparently, even operating the lens was a scientifically precise endeavor. The f/0.7 aperture made it a full two stops faster than the previous limit of f/1.4, but it also made the depth of field impossibly thin. They made focusing adjustments mathematically, using a tape measure to aide in calculating the distance from the film plane to the actors, who had to hold very still during filming lest they move out of the razor-thin focus field. The camera they were using wasn't a reflex design, so they didn't know what they had until they got the film back. Also, the light from the candles was so dim that even at f/0.7 they had to push the film a full stop to 200 ISO."

source:
http://verba.chromogenic.net/archive...ks_50mm_f.html

And further:

"He pushed developed the common 35mm color negative stock of the day, 5254 (100 ASA) by one stop, to 200 ASA. He had candles made with three wicks in them to triple the output of light.

So if you had 800 ASA film stock and an f/1.4 lens, plus the triple-wicked candles, you'd get the same exposures as Kubrick. Certainly it's possible to shoot that way in HD with a really fast lens (like a f/1.6 Zeiss Digi-Prime) and a +6 db boost to the gain. You might not even need to do that since the video will have more problems handling the flames than the shadow detail, so you could underexpose more and get away with it. But with digital, you won't hold the same detail around the bright candleflames as film negative can. You can try tricks like using an ND grad filter on the side of the frame with the candles though.

David Mullen, ASC "

source:
http://www.uemforums.com/2pop/ubbthr...=&fpart=2&vc=1

I just love this stuff. Please, don't give all the credit to Mr. Kubrick. Give some of it to the engineers and John Alcott. Kubrick was incredibly well informed and he saw what was possible, but nobody can pull these things off on his own.

Hope I didn't go too far off topic.

Dan, not at all - you effort and knowledge in this is appreciated. It takes guts for someone to spend the money you have on R&D and turn around and say - yeah, well, it sucked because I am out a quite a few bucks, but at least it worked.

Kurt,

LOVE to read that stuff. If you ever find more stories this neat, do post!

Mandy,

If it works, it never sucks that we are out a few bucks. It only sucks when you are out a few bucks and it didn't work.

I just came to the conclusion that it couldn't have been just luck that I had no dust in my last three waxed glasses.
This is what I have done differently: in stead of melting the wax in 'some room' on a electric hot plate, I melted the wax on a frying pan on the stove in the kitchen.
That's the difference. I think the area around the stove is greasy and the dust in the air sticks to the walls. Also, usually there aren't allot of dusty things in a kitchen.

10 easy steps
 

Hi Oscar, I wonder if you could post a MCW adapter set up guide in 10 easy steps for us all.

BTW. please include tips on how to grease the kithchen.

First of all, the best grease comes from sardines . . . ;)

Alexandre, is the first part also a joke? Because I already have made a guide into microwax
http://members.chello.nl/a.schultzev...g/wax/wax2.htm

Note that everything that tastes good greases your kitchen. Don't turn on the cooker hood!

tent
 

Thanks for the link Oscar. I will give it a try, but i will set up a tent made of thin plastic film(found in the kitchen!) and PVC tubes over the table to protect from dust. I will try set up a lab like box where you put your hands
with surgery gloves. BTW which one do you think produces the best results
the parafin or the MCW?

Microwax (MCW) is more than two times better when it comes to grain. Besides that, it's the same to work with (just like beeswax by the way).
On my site you can compare the two.

wax mixture
 

If I am not mistaken the movietube uses a mixture of 5 % beewax and MCW.
Is the patent with drawings thread still availuable ? Does any one Know how
much the movietube cost?

The movietube will be around 10 grand I think.

Some varieties of microwax are grainer than beeswax, some are FAR finer. The beeswax colored microwax is amazing. I can't get significant grain to show up on it at any aperture settings.

I checked movietube.com again and it got screenshots and clips. The patent page seem to be gone though. I never saw anything about beeswax and microwax mixed, only that the first patent text said a mixture of beeswax and Paraffin, which they apparently changed to microcrystalline (see the website)
Anyway, we can get the same results as the movietube. My glass is fine, but I am going to make e new one soon which will be bigger (the bigger the screen, the smaller the grain on DV)

Jesus Christ
 

10 grand is an awful lot of money. I planned to buy one for xmas, I imagined
movietube was considerably cheaper than ps thechnik as it doesn´t employ
moving parts.

What gave you that idea? It's a little under $7700. And as for "will be," they (Movietube) are now saying it's available.

$7700 is "around" 10 grand.

No, it's 3/4 of the way there. Let me guess, you are packing "around" 10 inches, right?

Back to wax ;)
 

For you wax die-hards, I've made a few more changes to my adapter, which is now a bayonet-mounted system, less than 4" in length. I have pictures here http://homepage.mac.com/filmic36/adapter/index.html.
I'm losing around .7 stops of light through the adapter itself, and my DVX fills frame at Z64 (although my trip to the beach movie was shot at Z60).
So, I'm losing around 1/2 stop in the video camera, because of the needed zoom. Still got some vignetting going on . . . have to experiment more with that :(
Grain is still apparent on some shots, but I feel good about the progress. I've got some serious yellow glowing on my son's shirt at the beach. Am I correct in blaming the achromatic lens for this? It'll probably be the last thing I fix . . . I want to build a rail to support the 500 mm lens first :)

Glen

Yellow glowing
 

Glen

I believe the glowing in the yellow shirt is caused by the limited "latitude" that
is the capacity a camera has to deal with light and dark areas of a frame.
I also noticed a white glow in the white walls of some houses in the back ground. Your family video has encouraged me to give MCW a try.

More like 10 inches around.

(Kidding, but that was seriously uncalled for anyhow.)

Any way you look at it, $7,700 is a lot of money, and a whole lot more than the cheaper alternatives. (Although it's probably a better product, to be fair, and competitive with the mini35, which I feel is worth the price.)

It is a lot of money, but it's important to be accurate. There's already a lot of dogma presented as fact, for example, "We know that G35 uses microwax."

Don't feel bad, mine is only two and a half inches,



thick.

less than 1 grand
 

Do you guys agree that top noch off the shelf achromat and condenser
a well home built MCW and a CNC machined black anodized tube and rods
would cost around 1 grand ?

One grand.

In diameter!


Apparently the G35 has "$200" worth of optics (from the horse's mouth.) How much could the anodized tube cost? Maybe 100...the mount? another 20? The profit margin is insane, but I'll give the guys credit: they put a lot of effort into designing the thing. Although someone could probably make something similar and sell it for $300, there market isn't big enough to support a low margin venture like that. So while $1000 is way too expensive, if it works (which the M2 doesn't--ghosting) then I'll encourage their efforts all the way.

Double post

Hold on to your keyboard and/or mouse....here's what I spent so far: (mid. quality optics, wax, tube etc.)

€ 8,50

I know it's a bit of a joke, but if you are just making one or two adapters, you can find real quality parts for free or really cheap. And I didn't plan on doing this as cheap as possible, I just have everything lying around.

If you buy everything new that I put in my adapter, it'll be a couple of hundred dollars, like Matthew wrote.

I don't think the profit is that great and I don't think $1,000 is too expensive. Their "ground glass" (well, whatever it is), as I recall, costs around $500. I don't think it's just some microwax sandwiched between two pieces of glass.

Also you haven't factored in their research costs, development costs, or patent and patent attorney costs - and ignoring paying themselves for their work. Let's say for example they have spent a paltry $25,000 to date, the units cost them around $750 just for the hardware (not counting assembly labor or paying anyone to handle all the sales and aftersale phone/web work), and they sell 500 adapters over the course of two years at $1000 per.

That means once they earn back their $25,000 outlay, Jon and Douglas each make a whopping $25,000 a year at a job where you work 12 hours a day, plus weekends keeping up on the forums and emails, and don't have any job security, benefits, or package. But to top it off, they have to make decently-sized production runs of the machined parts, and do quantity buys of the optics and ground glass, to get acceptable pricing. Let's say they make 25 units at a time. That's another $18,750 they have to front.

That's if everything goes as planned. If a supplier is out of something, or the supplier's equipment breaks, etc, and there are delays, these boys don't get paid, period. Can't sell that you don't have.

So, no, thanks. I prefer a higher paying job with all the fringes and I get to go home after a day's work and not be responsible for everything.

P.S. I can now make an okay static adapter for a pretty low price. But is my uncompressed footage as good as G35 footage? Nope. And I spent a lot of money trying different bits and pieces on the way to this point - and a lot of time. My time is worth something. Sometimes I don't want to get involved, I just want to pay someone who has already spent their own time becoming an expert. This is why many people use mechanics for their cars for doctors for their ailments - they attended school and we pay them for that, rather than us trying to learn it ourselves.

I know for a fact that a lot of people in video production do NOT want to visit dvinfo (as great as it is for those of us here) or screw around learning how to make an adapter and get it tuned just right. They will peel off a thousand or thirteen hundred bucks and not think twice about it. Companies like P+S and Guerilla35 and Movietube are not marketing to most people who even read the forums. They are going to sell to the people who want to buy their product, not the people who are going to try to steal their engineering by reading the patent and trying to DIY.

OK OK Bill, maybe it was €12.-
Like I said, <if you are just making one or two adapters, you can find real quality parts for free or really cheap.>
If I (or Jim or Frank) would want to make a product out of this thing, it will cost allot more to find the same parts. Of course we all know why these pro adapters and things are so expensive, that's why we have this forum. It's accent has changed the last year because more and more people are producing these things and sell them here, which is fine too, but something tells me if it's growing too big, if patents are violated too easily, it will become lots of trouble. What do you think Bill?

I think it's great that there's so many people "breaking patents" and doing their own stuff. And I really hope that somebody can come out with cheaper and cheaper ways to overcome all the technical flaws of conventional DV. Not everybody can afford 1000$ adapters and 6000$ cameras. I know some extremely creative people who would be able to do wonders if they just had the chance to use the right equipment. As for my self, I know that I had to work hard to buy all my stuff. Of course I would rather have an AG-HV200 than a Gl2! Of course I would rather have a G35 than a Letus35! But hey, tough luck. That's life and I'm very very glad that AT LEAST we have these cheaper alternatives. If I had the money I'd be using the best there is (even though this is kind of relative) but right now I'm very thankful to all of those who were willing to "break the patents" and make the "poor mens' " life a bit easier. THANK YOU! ;)

I think someone needs to chime in here. There is a HUGE misconception in the DIY crowd in regards to patents. In many cases this Alternative-imaging forum goes over the line (as grey as it may be). Patents are put into place to protect inventors and their ideas. Patents are good. Regardless of how much an inventor charges for their device, they have a right to protect it. When developers step over the line by not researching current patents and their claims, and release a product in order to make a quick buck, that is when things turn ugly for everyone. The "Poor mens" don't benefit when larger companies start throwing lawsuits around.


Cheers,

Jonathan-

Not to sound like a G35 cheerleader but I have wholeheartedly agreed for a long time. Without patents to protect the inventors, few would invent because their money and work would then be ripped off by companies with the money to hamstring them. This is why medical patents are so much more protective than other patents - we may WANT product innovation so we can have our G35's and motorized seat belts and all other patented devices, but we NEED medical innovation. The best way to create that is to reward the inventors by protecting them.

I used to own a manufacturing business (including in-house R&D) in a completely different industry than cameras/video/etc. For years we were the leaders and pushed the field forward technologically by giant steps with our products. Then the big companies started cloning my stuff. Some even had the audacity (read: lack of morals) to claim they invented it! I tired of this and stopped developing. As a result, the industry screeched to a halt and there was literally no change in the product lines on the market for about five years(!). People would call and beg to get "just one" of the unreleased products which we had stopped development on. But why should I? I was sick of using my own money to be "my competition's R&D department."

So I hope G35 guys and P+S and Hoodman and everybody else who spent money and time and attorney fees to get patents, make enough money to create more innovative products for me to consume.

Oscar, hehe- I was talking about the math in the post before yours, not your post. It probably WAS € 8,50. But at one point or another you did pay for all the stuff you had laying around. However, you probably bought it at IKEA so it was probably a good buy.

Guys, I was deeply misunderstood. The reason why I used the comas is because what I meant by "breaking the patent" is that I think it's great to see that there are other options for people who cannot afford expensive equipment. I'm far from encouraging anybody to rob other people ideas. I think everybody knows that most of the time there is a reason why a certain product costs a certain price, hence most of the time they will not obtain the exact same results by chosing a cheaper option. But I like to know that the cheaper option is available. For instance, isn't everybody happy that the G35 is way cheaper than the mini35? I know that I am very very happy about it. The situation is the same with other products. I'm sure there is a lot of people who love the fact there is even cheaper alternatives. And just for the record, in my personal opinion I strongly belive that the G35 is the best adapter there is and I can't wait to buy mine.

Thank you Rafael,
Please don't take my post as an attack. I just feel strongly towards patent infringements and have spent the money to make sure that we are not doing that. There are other options for people who cannot afford the "expensive top of the line". That is what the DIY movement is all about. When you start selling a product that infringes on a claim that is when you get into trouble. To be fair I don't think you mean "Breaking patents" so much as developing cheaper more efficient methods. I know its semantics, but when you get into patent law it's ALL semantics. I would hate for someone to be labled as a "patent breaker" who is not. You dig? :)

Cheers,

Jonathan-

You are only supporting "forget the biped walk, let's climb back into trees" as perfectly clear explained by Bill Porter in the post above.

Same was with Napster and followers. "Share" music instead of BUY a CD and the artists lost motivation to create. Rip of good ideas, turn them into "whatever", and offer them for a low price. The market will help the "turn back to stone age" buying the fakes. Was there anyone ever able to stop it? Not without a lot of bad blood and law suites and tons of money in legal fees.

Morals evolve with education. The closer to beast, the less moral. Bite before you get bitten, (and run with the dough). Could anyone argue with an alligator?

Some spend years on R&D and others still, or, unable to understand, come up with "their own inventions" and the market applauds them for how "smart they are" for the "short sighted interpretation" of ones work.

I might be a dreamer, but I still believe the good will prevail and all will act in the end as human beings. (or.. I might remain a dreamer)

I started this discussion because we talked about the MovieTube. Bill and Jonathan say about the same as me in a way.
Rafael, only as long as people make something for their own use and share it on these forums, it's OK. But when more and more people are selling these things (unless it's an invention of there own like the FF gears of Dan) on these boards, I think there will be trouble some day. I think on the day when it becomes a real threat to the original manufacturers.
I hope (I'm sure) Jonathan doesn't mind me and others speculating about the G35 and microwax (back to the thread finally) and trying to achieve the same results, as long as we don't start selling a wax adapters. That was my point, back to the wax?

Well put, What makes you say we have a wax adapter? :P I love this speculation. It cracks me up :P

Jonathan-