"When you get immersed in this subject, it's easy to forget until your wife walks over, looks at the footage, then makes the comment: "You did all of this to get that???" Lugging the 100lbs of blast media in five different grades into my shop (GG tuning), I wonder myself sometimes!"

or when your girlfriend finds all the melted wax on her things .. or her hairdryer overheats and burns out, and destroy every cellphone in you house trying to find a vibrator that will work, or you cut your fingers wide open trying to get glass out of a filter and she looks at you and your bleeding hands in horror as you hold your fancy looking frankenstein adapter.. taped together for quick changes sake.. and "ALL" you have to show her for your efforts is "a blurry background :P "

g35 vs. Ben's Modified Letus
 

G35 footage by Matthew Wauhkonen :
http://csxinfo.net/mattw/g35.mov

Modified Letus footage by Ben Winter:
http://www.frozenphoenixproductions....estoutside.mov

Both have the buzzy grain. Both have very similiar results. I think I prefer Bens footage over the g35. Hmmmmm

Grain Question
 

Ok if the grain is there with both the old and new GG. Should one still consider replacing the GG with a new one? Or is what we are after is the Crispness of the image that is in focus?

Craig, by replacing the GG with a Beattie there is an increase in clarity as well as a decrease in light loss, which are the main reasons for the switch.
Don't forget that the G35 is built to be much more durable than the Letus, as well as the fact that the G35 is apparently static...but then again, is it worth the extra $$$?

Removed duplicate

I think I prefer Ben's to the G35 as well. I wouldn't even complain about that amount of grain, since it gives it kind of a film-y look. Since the G35 is static, I suppose you could concievably get almost zero grain out of it by making a grain filter in post (since there's so little as it is), but for my part, I like prefer the very slightly grainy look of Ben's.

Ben, did you have any luck with the EIA1956s with and without the adapter? For my tests, I left the tripod in place, just removed the adapter and reframed with the same f/stop settings (increased shutter speed after removing adapter). I'm very curious! It would be great to try this with the letus GG too, but that's a lot of work.

Well, for another day yet again I have been unable to do the EIA1956 test. But I did try quickly shooting a grid and I noticed that there is some slight barrel distortion, which makes me sad. It's probably the Century Optics macro acting up in this situation, which makes me wonder if my previous "shortened" design is still a better way to go. Still, I have a lot of footage to shoot tomorrow for an actual TV class project so we'll see how the footage looks, I'll post some tests. And yes, I promise I'll get around to the EIA1956, it's sitting on my desk right now :)

Ben, I am noticing this too with my rig, and it is bothersome. I think Wayne was saying there is a sweet spot for the macro to be in so that there is no barrel distortion? Maybe it was him?

The distortion is most likely coming from the PCX lens in the letus. The SG35 also suffers slight distortion.

So how the Mini35 works? No PCX, cause I haven't seem complains of distortions.

Not sure about the mini35, not sure many people know the optical setup of that, but i know the m2 does not use a PCX, but i have heard some have had trouble with vignetting.

Wayne, didn';t you say there was a sweet spot though?

Leo,
Its a trade off. You can move the PCX away from the ground glass, which will remove the distortion but start to give you more chromatic aberration.

Ben,

Did you notice the barreling before the Century optics?