Did the original Letus GG not do it for you?
I wonder why some footage is soft? Do you think it is the GG or the achromat?
I was thinking about the homedepot bags again. I think the best method would be to stretch one of those bags across the Letus 'hole' and use it as a GG. It would be thin and have less light loss.

Really soft image is usually a combination of bad GG, achromat and lens. Sometimes distance beetween lens and GG can be off. I have even heard that HDV codec doesn't like highly visible grain too much. This could also soften the image.

Letus seems to be the softest adapter out there.

David, those home depot bags are singular-direction diffusors, in that they only diffuse in one direction. Don't know what I mean? Basically, really, really ugly bokeh.

There are bags that universally diffuse though, the trick is finding them.

Ben Winter - FX1 - dvfilm maker - tips?
 

Hey Ben,

Before I go and buy DVFilm maker, any tips on it? I have the FX1 on rent right now, so I am trying to figure out as much as possible in a short amount of time...

I haven't honestly played around with it much, but I did do a comparison a while back between FX1 interlaced and de-interlaced footage.

On my 42" plasma, 60i -> 30p looked about the same (except being progressive of course). 60i -> 24p looked fantastic as well but I think I could see a little resolution loss.

The settings menu is pretty straightforward, I didn't play around with the 24p editing options since I wasn't editing the 24p segment, but it looks pretty powerful. The only silly stuff is the red boost? and the "add grain" thing which I haven't really tried but from the sound of it appears silly. I'd think anyone halfway professional would do those things in After Effects or something similar. Oh well.

Overall, I wouldn't trust my deinterlacing to any other program, and its half the reason I own a Sony cam in the first place.

David,

No vignetting with the Letus35flip and the FX1. Just make sure you use a monitor with underscan to verify how much to zoom in. With the LCD you are getting overscan and it will look like you aren't vignetting, but you are.

I have a friend here with an Red Rock M2 and we are going to do some tests between it and the Letus35. See how they compare with lightloss, resolution, CA, etc.

With the little bit we played with them it seems they are about the same in light loss and resolution. The Letus flips the image and has less CA than the M2, but the M2 has no noise when the lenses are stopped down, where the Letus is only usable from wide open to about f4.

I shot part of a short film using an fx1 and a letus35 flip enhanced. I put some frame grabs and a clips at http://www.5501.com/adapter

cheers,
-a

I forgot to mention that you can do a check for Nicholas Bartleet on Dvinfo.net or go to his website at www.pixelloft.com to see what's he done.

He uses a homade adapter with his fx1. His work with it for a musical group called 3L was used by Sony on their HDV tour. The groups video also aired on MTV.

Check out Akala music video as well.

Nick's just posted his newest music vid here: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=72041

The images look great, even better than I had hoped for with the FX1. I was worried about sharpness because I think the LetusFlip has a much better GG/achromat/macro than the Letus35A.