Elite Add-On Questions
 

Phil, or anybody that has the Elite add-on, does it completely eliminate the need for the fiddly back focus push and pull procedure holding the ground glass? It's hard to find info on what this Elite upgrade does. I can see that it has a ring, I assume that ideally it will somehow move the vibrating ground glass forward and backward, but it's hard for me to see how it would retrofit back to the Extreme design. Does it put another lens in front of the vibrating ground glass? If so it seems that this would add a bit of quality reduction as light needs to go through another layer of glass, and we're depending on that glass to be good quality. Also if it's just moving the focal point forward and backward it doesn't help if one of the sides of the ground glass is closer than the other, which is something I've also noticed. Thanks for any information.

I don't have it, but I guess it just allows to move the lens mount closer / further from the GG, so you don't have to go through the push/pull procedure any more.

Keith.


As I understand it, the Elite modification replaces the existing Extreme front tube with a new front tube which includes a short-throw telescopic facility enabling the front which holds the lens mount of choice to be adjusted closer or furthur from the groundglass.

There should be no need to mess with the actual position of the groundglass itself unless the unit has suffered a really, really, bad clout in shipping, the groundglass has been shifted off-axis and you are getting a soft edge in the image.

A maybe bonus with the Elite, is that with the wides and ultrawides, say 14mm f2.8, you may be able to macro them a little bit by pushing the backfocus adjustment to its forward limit to get real close focus on a subject. ENG lenses use the backfocus helicoid to do macros. Phil Bloom may be able to confirm if you can macro the Elite.

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Seeing as how other people post footers, let's see if I can do it too.

(Sony HVR-Z1P, Sony PMW-EX1 on loan, Recent infatuous dalliance with SI2K, Home-made AGUS35, Letus Extreme - modded, Letus XL - modded, P+S Technik Mini35-400 - yes modded (for EX1), no-name computer with PP2, Prospect4K. Bolex H16RX5S16 Cinema Products CR16RS16.)