Very simple question that has been asked 100 times but I'm asking again. I want to shoot a movie and make it look like it was shot on 35mm but not spend much money. I eventually want to have the option of transferring it to film and projecting it in a theater. I have an XL2 but I don’t want to have to buy a Mini35 for it. I want to either make a Mini35 myself or… I don’t know what. Basically I know that I will have to bite the bullet and just spend money somehow but it’s almost like I just need someone to tell me that before I face the facts. To avoid color artifacts I am going to shoot the movie in black and white… but if I could somehow get my camera modified to output a 4:4:4 signal I would be set (but I think that’s is so far only available for DVX100 users on www.reel-stream.com ). I would probably spend $5000 total but even that is pushing it. I’m just looking for input. Give me some suggestions on how to make a durable mini35, call me a fool, whatever, its up to you. Thanx for the help.

Hi Allen,
Why spend all the time and money making one when you can just spend the money. The M2 or any number of other adapters will help you get the DOF you seem to be after at a very reasonable price. The bigger question is - then what? You would still need lenses. You still need lots of light. You still will want dollies and jibs etc for nice moving shots. I've shot a feature last year on an XL2 without a 35mm adapter and it already looks a lot more like film then video due to 24p and other issues. I would have liked to have shallow DOF options as well, but not every shot needs or should have it, and the extra work it requires in lighting and focus pulling and making sure actors hit their marks perfectly needs to be considered as well.

As has been pointed out numerous times here, there is a lot more to getting a "filmic" look than shallow DOF. It's only one ingredient. Watch old B&W movies and you'll see that they don't all use shallow DOF anyway.