Stunning! Cinemek eat your heart out!

YES!!! my camera will no longer be referred to as the leaf blower.. or the goose neck.. that looks extremely sturdy. I love the size comparisons. decked out with some rails and a mattebox thats going to look some sweet... I think ill be leaving my 16x at home from now on.. actually... i just might sell it to add to my 35mm collection. i dont think ive used it alone since ive got my letus...

So, any word on whether you'll offer the relax lens seperatly! You would certainly have one buyer here.

Matt

Thanks for all comments. Since the connection to the camera is stronger than I expect, I won't include the bracket with the unit which will make it look less professional. Relay lens for other adapters will be on my to do list. Thanks.

Quyen

Hi Quyen,

Congrats on the new adapter. When can we expect to see some frame grabs. I'd love to see a resolution comparison between your lens and the 16x.

That's really impressive. Can someone explain to me why there's a need to put an iris or an ND filter at the back of it though? I'm afraid I'm not very knowledgable on the aspects of relay lenses or direct-to-body adapters.

ben.. its like with your gl2. when you shoot something outside lets say, everythings totally overexposed. so you have to compensate by either using the nd filter built in on your camera, playing with the aperture on the 35mm lens or the aperture on your 16x (20x)lens. if you still wanted to maintain the same DOF then you would want to leave your slr lens as wide open as possible... by darkening any other way (nd, camera iris etc..) it wouldnt affect the DOF. with the xl series, since the lenses are interchangable the nd filter switch is actually on the 16x (or 20x) lens.. so by leaving out these lenses, the relay needs to have that option to be able to control the brightness of the picture to expose corrrectly.

now that im thinking about it i might just sell my xl1s in the near future and purchase just the xl2 body to use with this...

Right! But is the iris/nd filter included with the Letus35XL? *ponders*

yes it is. on the relay.. take a look at the pics and you'll see it

Oh nice! You're right :D

An iris, unless I am mistaken =)
I can't wait to try this stuff out ^^

Wow, I would totally buy a relay for my M2 knowing it has a built in ND filter and iris ring. holy cow!. It would be a beautiful baby. Letus meets M2.... The Letus-rock35

Ahh! I totally forgot that the iris is not inside the camera body but in the actual lens as it should be on XL series (I use a GL2)...duh *knocks forehead* I should've known...sorry. But that is very clever of Quyen and the design looks rock-solid. Hoo-rah!

No ND filter at this time, only IRIS control. I am open for other adapter makers to contact me to have this made for their units if they are interested. Make 1 relay lens for some adapter, it doesn't worth my time and effort, thanks.

Quyen

A relay lens is basically a normal lens, which is designed to focus on a flat surface. So as any normal lens it should have an Iris and a focus. It would be very hard to work with a lens without an Iris. That's not different for a relay lens. The P+S Micro35 relay lens for the XL/HD100 series has an Iris and a focus ring for the record.

That’s pretty good, Quyen, keep up the good work!

More footage please
 

Hello Quyen,
Do you have any more sample footage you could post?

theres some quick low light footage posted earlier in the thread.. we're all still waiting on the good stuff in some good lighting conditions.

Hello Andrew,
Yep, I've seen that one. I'm waiting also.

ill get some up as soon as soon as i get mine

It's hard to find a perfect sunny day in Oregon this season. I manage to take my camera when I go to church today and have a couple of minutes at the park nearby. I will try to upload some seconds when I get home. No firewire at church, thanks for your patient.

Quyen

http://www.letus35.com/park.mpg (12.4MB) 6K compression
http://www.letus35.com/park1.mpg (6.55MB) 3k compression
Both files are the same thing, just make the smaller file for people having difficulty to download larger file. Couple of minutes is too quick for anything nice. Full resolution mpeg1 file. I am sorry if you don't like flowers, thanks.

Quyen

wise fool
 

This is my first DVi post, so go easy on me if I say something really stupid. I am a still photographer who is interested in using my assortment of Nikon lenses to improve the quality of my videos. I read a lot of posts about the importance of having high quality glass on the subject side of the GG, but wouldn't obtaining the best relay lens possible be of equal value? Has anyone considered using a 35mm macro lens as the relay lens? These lenses are optimized for close focus, and have an aperture adjestment...would this be equivalent to iris adjustment in video. I have not done any tests, but I would think that a macro lens would be better suited to focussing on a GG at short distances than a 16x or 20x zoom, which has more elements and is designed to cover a much broader range. It would also address the "leaf blower" isse of hanging a shooting lens and Letus on the end of a long zoom. Any comments?

the non xl versions of the letus use a macro and the 16x lens. the relay lens does away with both of them. a macro by itself can not do the job of a relay lens. also it would have no focusing abilities or iris control

quyen... one thing that just hit me... is it pronounced like :LEETUS or LETTUCE?

Quyen.

If you are looking for easy materials to make a pin lock for the Nikon mount, have a look at the needle rollers out of automotive drive shaft universal joints.

They are chrome finished and have rounded ends which should not gouge the aluminium on back of the Nikon lenses. One of those, in a hole drilled right through your Nikon/Canon reversable mount might do the trick. You would need to have a simple flat leaf spring about 1.5" long, fastened at one end to the case to push the pin forward.

To stop the pin from falling out through the hole you would need to have something like the small electrical screw and clamp wire connectors you find in electrical switches, clamped on to one end or a simpler piece of plastic tube pushed over one end and tacked with glue.

A few little scratchmarks from a little grinding disk on a Dremel cut into the end to be glued should make sure the piece of plastic tube stays put.

There would have to be another button in the case to push against the flat spring so the pin gets pulled back in to release the lens.

I did not engineer a pin lock as I found that using the Nikon circular spring alone was enough for my purposes. The spring also keeps the lens flange firmly against the mount face.

Your dual purpose mount would have to be re-designed into two pieces to accommodate the Nikon spring and there would then be no advantage from a manufacturing standpoint to doing this over making two separate mounts for Canon and Nikon.

The method I described was the way I was going to go about making a pin lock.

There are also very useful little coil springs inside of every disposable cigarette lighter which uses a flint and wheel. The spring is under the little flint which rubs on the wheel to make the sparks to light the gas.

Quyen, would you kindly shoot something in 16:9 and upload? Would be awesome to see =)

Sorry if this has been asked before: does the flipmodule degrade picture quality?

Andreas Rylander

I don't have XL2 to shoot 16:9, my betatesters will do that for you.

Christian Schmitt

I don't think of any quality issue with flipping, just little bit of light loss, thanks.

Quyen

What could possibly be the issue with 16x9? If all the other canon XL series lenses work fine with the XL2 in 16X9 mode why wouldn't the relay lens work properly? The 16X9 ratio is derived from the chips in the camera not the lens. The XL series lenses even work with the new XLH1(albeit not resolving as high as the camera demands). It would seem to me that the flange distance and the lens diameter is the same for all Canon XL series.

I don't think it would be a problem at all, but I'll post some results once I get my Letus35XL.

Is anyone planning to use the Letus35XL with the new Canon XLH1? That is the footage I really want to see.

Quyen, just let me know when the Letus35HD100 is ready. My money is ready. Thanks for the great work. Just got my upgraded Letus35flip and it seems great so far.

I ordered the LETUSXL last week and will be posting footage with the CANON XLH1 and the CANON XL2.

ill be posting xl1s

Hey guys,
I look forward to seeing the XL2 footage especially, and the H1 footage will be an added bonus.

Quyen,
One question ,can the adapter be sent back to you guys to be fitted for another camera?

For example ;lets say I got the xl adapter ,then down the road I got a jvd hd 100.Could I send the adapter in to get it fitted for that for an extra charge?
Or would I need to get a whole new adapter?

We have 2 xl2s now.
We might be getting in a HD100 though in a few months.
Im not sure.

Definitely like the hd100 a little better.

I am making HD100 adapter now. The XL and HD100 are quite different in design, so the adapter for HD100 camera is the whole new design and cannot be interchanged with XL parts. If you want HD100 adapter, I think you should wait another month, thanks.

Quyen

Just jumped in from an H1 forum thread...
 

Sorry if this has been discussed but I don't have time to read through all 116 posts.

I love the mini35 concept, I just wanted to know if by buying either of the adapters will render the Canon factory adapter for still lenses obsolete?

Obviously these adapters do more than just fit the lens to the body.

Haven't bought the Canon adapter yet but it was on my list.


Ken.

I would say it was obsolete before it was made. Yeah it allows you to use those other lenses, but it does nothing for the DOF, and adds 7.7x magnification to your zoom. Unless you're shooting from large distances and need to zoom in a lot, I'd reccomend not getting the Canon adapter. The Letus35 will allow you to mount the same lenses, but take advantage of all their 35mm properties like DOF.

once this comes out my 16x lens will become absolutely obsolete as well.. i havent shot once without my letus since i got it.,

Hey Quyen,

I was looking at the footage and I just had a quick question. I have a mad slow connection so it takes a while for these things to load but as i was looking at the beginning second or so it looked really soft, and i was kind of disappointed, and then the next second loaded and there was this, what looked like, a fade transition, and then it was crystal clear. My question is just what was going on with the beginning.

Also, a request to the beta testers. can you guys do some resolution tests against the stock lenses (16x and 20x and what ever came with the H1).

So far the footage looks really good (cept for that first second or so) and im pretty excited.