You are a star !!! Thank You very much.

You're welcome :)

What I have been looking everywhere for
 

Ron,

I have been looking for your product for two years but just never found it till now. We shoot XL-1's with EF lens all the time, and are never happy with the balance or the stability of our cobbled together setups. Your product looks like exactly what we need here at Fish and Game. Poachers beware!

Matt

For those Shakey long shots....
 

If you use Premier Pro or even premier 6x and or After Effects, there is a company called 2d3 that makes a stabilization plug in that works really really well. I had a 600mm Sports lens in front of my XL-1 on a cobbled together adapter to a solid tripod. Wind out of my 2 o'clock position at 15 knots, and man the image showed it.

After digitzing the shots, I dropped the filter on it, rendered it and it was almost like I had set the thing in concrete!!!! Very little motion and yet did not seem to affect pans or tilts much, it understood the difference. The killer part.......... $99 usd. Luck you say?....

OK , another shoot, Hand held on a 40' boat in San Francisco Bay, 20 knots of wind in my shooters face, zoomed in most if not all the way on the Canon 16x, you know the shot is completely unuseable, need dramamine just to watch it, I was able to not only salvage the shot, the client wanted to know how I got a gyro stablized lens for the XL. Dang it, I should'a billed him for one!

But seriously, it is nothing short of amazing, and it can save your behind even faster than DV RACK!

check them out at http://www.2d3.com/jsp/index.jsp

canon ef 100-400mm f-4.5-5.6 L I S USM-support
 

i have a canon xl 1s--and i have purchased the subject lense---need to know what would be the ideal lense support if one is needed---i am doing wildlife video---any help will be appreciated--thanks, kal

Paging Ron Armstrong... Ron Armstrong to the front counter please.

Hi Kal;
Thanks Chris. As I recall, Kal and I have had discussions on something similar to this before. Nice to hear from you Kal.
The 100-400 mm lens is an excellent lens used by many XL* owners. I have, however heard some comment on the lack of sharpness at the long end, above 300mm, in particular with the use of the 1.4 converter. I have not used the lens myself, so this is mere speculation. Kal should be able to confirm this as he uses the lens.
Now for suport for the camera lens combination. As the subject lens changes balance during zoom, loading weight at the front in the 400mm range, it requires a change in position to balance properly on the tripod. Also, being much heavier than the standard 16x lens, it has to be mounted at its foot to relieve pressure on the camera lens mount, therefor allowing the occurance of vibration and movement between the camera and lens, the weakest point in the assembly.
The RONSRAIL solves these problems by tying the camera and lens together through a rail and clamp system that also allows the combo to be balanced on the tripod by moving the whole assembly fore and aft.
Kal , I believe, has seen my website showing some of the lenses used.
Chris has given me opportunity to again present my website to those who have not had the chance to view it.

Thanks again Chris!!!

Ron

<<<-- Originally posted by Ron Armstrong : Hi Kal;
Thanks Chris. As I recall, Kal and I have had discussions on something similar to this before. Nice to hear from you Kal.
The 100-400 mm lens is an excellent lens used by many XL* owners. I have, however heard some comment on the lack of sharpness at the long end, above 300mm, in particular with the use of the 1.4 converter. I have not used the lens myself, so this is mere speculation. Kal should be able to confirm this as he uses the lens.
Now for suport for the camera lens combination. As the subject lens changes balance during zoom, loading weight at the front in the 400mm range, it requires a change in position to balance properly on the tripod. Also, being much heavier than the standard 16x lens, it has to be mounted at its foot to relieve pressure on the camera lens mount, therefor allowing the occurance of vibration and movement between the camera and lens, the weakest point in the assembly.
The RONSRAIL solves these problems by tying the camera and lens together through a rail and clamp system that also allows the combo to be balanced on the tripod by moving the whole assembly fore and aft.
Kal , I believe, has seen my website showing some of the lenses used.
Chris has given me opportunity to again present my website to those who have not had the chance to view it.

Thanks again Chris!!!

Ron -->>>

Thanks again Ron for good hints, I will be using this and other canos lenses for next five monts in alaska - let everybody know about lens performance. As far as lens support comes I leaned from previous threads ; according to canon this and other canon's white lenses with their own lens mount can be safely installed on tripot... the XL1 body just hangs off the back of the lens . I can see the safety difference in between this consept and you RONSRAIL , but I am going to see how this is going to work for me. Thanks again - kal

Hi Kal:
"The XL1 body just hangs off the back of the lens." Very true. However there are only four very small machine screws that hold it there. It cannot stand much abuse and the environment it will be subject to in Alaska may be severe. The adapter is not very robust, and I don't think it was designed strong enough for the uses we put upon it.
I completetly severed the viewfinder from its mount at the swivel in Denali, and that happened on the bus!!
Be carefull and protect your gear, you will have much success and an enjoyable experience; But be very carefull with your system in Alaska.
Don't forget to consider the RONSIGHT for those long shots at birds, moose and bear.

Best of luck and keep us posted.

Ron

EF lenses?
 

So are are all of the EF photo lenses compatible with my XL1s or do I need an adapter to fit them?

You need the Canon EF-XL adapter. The adapter makes all of them compatible.

See http://www.dvinfo.net/canon/articles/article58.php#ceos for more info.

"The adapter makes all of them compatible" ...

That is, physically mountable. Remember, the lenses' respective fields-of-view will be narrowed by a factor of 7.2x, because of the size of the camera's chips.

EOS Lens Adapter question
 

I read Jeff Donald's excellent post, The Ultimate Depth of Field Skinny.

But I still have a couple of questions on the XL 1 and its EF adapter.

If you analyse the construction of the Canon EF adapter you'll notice a piece of glass in the actual adaapter. If you look through the end where the camera body connects to it, everything is blown up, as if you were looking through a magnifying glass.

What role does this play in the image size conversion from the EOS lens to the 1/3" CCD?

Second question.

Would using a lens to shrink the light stream to fit the CCD work?

Thanks in advance. =)

I'm not really sure, but the glass inside the adapter is probably focussing the
light beam for the proper distance. It is definitely not doing something like
a ground glass to get that 35mm depth-of-field.

I have no idea what you mean when you say "sing a lens to shrink the light stream"

I'm asking cause I recently bought one of those home made adapters on ebay, just out of curiosity to compare with the Canon EF Adapter I have. The first thing that I noticed is that the Canon Adapter has lens in its adapter and the home made Adapter didn't.

The results were the same. I noticed no loss in quality, no vignetting, etc.

Except for the annoying no lens error I got it looks like the Conon adapter does nothing.

I was also wondering if someone were to add a lens of some sort that would shrink the light signal on one of these adapters, would that negate the 7.2X inflation of the image size; sort of like reverse magnification.

I understand that this would probably take more futzing around than adding something in front of the lens like the mini 35.