Letus Extreme/Elite vs. Ultimate (actual quality)

[tmdist]

The big differences are known, the elite/extreme cant stop down past 5.6 or use any high shutterspeeds. Is there actually any quality difference in the 3 adapters? Is the ultimate any sharper at all?
I'd be using it with the HPX 170.


Thanks,
-Maksim

[PaPa]

from what i understand, the elite and the ultimate use the same achromat so there should be no differences in sharpness. It seems to be majorily an upgrade so that, as you said, you have freedome of shutter speed, f stop and a new motor system that holds a long battery life with manual speed adjustment.

[tmdist]

Thanks man.
Seems like a hefty price to pay for just a bit more options.


-Maksim

[Dino]

Thanks man.
Seems like a hefty price to pay for just a bit more options.
-Maksim

Lenny Levy and I did a quick test last week with EX1's with Ultimate and Extreme using the same Nikon 80-200 f2.8 lens. We found sharpness to be similar, although Lenny didn't get the left side as sharp as he's used to normally with his Extreme. I think they should both be very sharp edge to edge with the newest achromat.

The Ultimate advantage is due to the spinning GG which, as noted, allows complete DOF control by irising down as far as f22 without seeing the GG grain.
Dust is less of an issue with a spinner vs. a vibrating GG. Shutter speeds aren't what I expected, more like 1/500th max and even then still possible to see grain on some flat fields like sky, so I feel 1/250th is absolutely safe. Back focus is easy, unlike Extreme, but the same as Elite. Speed control is only useful for battery saving. I always run at full speed and recommend clients do the same.

I do think internal build quality is better than an Extreme. The Ultimate is harder to justify price wise vs. Elite or Extreme, but the flexibility to stop down is very useful to me. Just a couple of days ago, I shot kite surfers with a 400mm lens on our Ultimate and EX1. I set the EX1 at f4.0 and the taking lens at f8.0. I still had shallow DOF, but if I had to run at f5.6 or f4.0, it would have been too shallow.

The three Letus adapters, with the newest achromat, do not exhibit much if any CA, and are sharp edge to edge with HVX200/200A, HPX170 and EX1. Ultimate is just more user friendly and flexible.

[tmdist]

Thanks for the info.
I heard the hvx adapter for all the models gives a much better edge to edge sharpness for the hpx. Same with the ex1 and their adapter. Did you guys use that?

-Maksim

[Lenilenapi]

Yes we had the recent achromats. We were a bit rushed on that test after spending more time on B4 adapters which we compared carefully (Letus to Pro 35).

I don't feel that I was close enough to the monitor when setting focus to be absolutely sure of the differences and Jeff is right that something seemed odd on my adapter's focus plane. I checked it again at home and it was fine thoiugh.
That said we didn't see any huge difference jumping out at us. I'm not sure how high our monitors resolution was either though.

Jeff do you rememmber if the monitor was high resolution?

We had fun though. Wish I had my Blade there, but waiting for the new achromat.

Lenny