Indeed! Doubt it would work without it.

I have the 72mm Achromat for HD from Redrock... The reason this is happening is that the A1's "telephoto near-focus" (I always forget, is this macro or micro) is a little weak...

Hi Matthew. I have the M2 on an A1 and you can indeed get focus on the gg at the required zoom. I was also in your position and thought perhaps a spacer was needed.

Ok this is much easier to do on a HD monitor but I have also tried it on the LCD and it worked.

FYI I am sliding my m2 all the way hard against the achromat itself. OK so as per the manual zoom in so in your frame you can see the semi circle of the gg filling your frame.

Then get a hard source light point your rig at it then move it off centre left or right until you have some shadows appearing on the opposite side in your frame. Make sure your gg is switched OFF. At this point you should be able to get good focus on the GG.

Then zoom just a little and repull your focus, and repeat until your vignetting is gone.

Henry actually came up with this method and it worked perfectly for me.

Ah, but you see, my M2 is hardmounted to the adapter so I am a little closer to the M2 body than you are I believe... I may add a little tube to help...

Sorry, are you saying your achromat is not connected at all to the body? Or just with the hood ?

Also, what is your zoom # at... I added my little tube, and it seems to work a bit better now, can zoom into 73 and maintain focus

You are using the m2 with 72mm HD achromat. This should work. No spacer needed. Sorry have no idea what the z was at.

i screw the achromat onto the camera, then push the m2 as close at it will go, hard against the achromat.

BUt do you still have the little plastic thingee (Uh, it's a 55mm UV filter and then maybe a 3/4 tube made of plastic) still attached? It's what the rubber hood used to be attached to...

That would provide a certain amount of distance, and since I put it back on, it focuses better... the threads on it just are stripped out cause of the plastic.

Would love to hear Henry weigh in, cause I know his is hardmounted. I think today I'll try and take some M2 footage to post and see if I have gotten rid of the horrible vignietting.

Matthew, any luck yet? I'm seriously considering this a G1. In fact you beat me to it, so I have real need to know this. Also, 35mm lens are you using? I have access to some old Nikon F lens'. An 85 and 150 and a few others.

Thanks, and yeah, it looks awesome.

I, I got it sorted out by throwing a few extra uV filters in place... no spacer tube is needed, just needs to be the normal length away... (Mine was shorter due to modification) Zoom number is 73, fstop, 2.6 making it eat a bit more light... ergh.

Will post some stuff as soon as my comp is upgraded@!

Sorry Matthew didnt realise you were on a modded unit. Thus the variance. I would invest in a spacer and get rid of those UV filters if I were you. Any additional glass is going to degrade your image.

Anyone knows if the magnet trick works with the A1? Or if it has a on-camera "image flipper"?

Ditto on the extra glass, especially if it's cheaply coated, it'll mess with your image.

Depending on the design, you could remove the glass from the filters and retain the bezels as a temporary spacer.

OH, no glass :P I smashed it long ago... *evil Grin*

matt, congrats on finally getting your a1. it seems like you got some of your a1/m2 issues out of the way, and the rig is looking fantastic. can i ask how you're managing to get the rods pushed through the camera baseplate? are you shimming the m2 itself?

in any case, this is the way i have my setup currently configured:

m2 --> 55mm uv (the one that came pre-attached to the m2) --> 55mm male-to-male coupler ring --> 72mm-55mm stepdown ring --> 72mm hd achromat --> a1.

i'm using the achromat itself to attach and detach the m2 from the camera.

i also nudged the motor in the m2 up just a smidge (about a mm) from the very bottom so that i could clear the ground glass and motor at reasonably similar times. i found i had to zoom in a little too far to clear the edges of the gg when i had the motor pushed all the way down.

with zoom set at 69/70, i'm getting no visible vignetting and an aperture of f2.4 with the iris wide open.

EDIT:

oh i see... you're using the cavision baseplate.

just to add... i found the a1's peaking and magnify focus assist tools work beautifully together, and are invaluable for setting accurate focus marks with the m2.