35mm Adapters: Construction; Function; Pros/Cons

[gregtay67]

Check out Jonathan's adapter the G35 at www.cinemek.com it is a very nice adapter. Yes it looses 1.5 and that's not bad for the amount of "real" diffusion you get. I have to say that I am sorely dissappointed in the Brevis the more footage I see. I am glad I never bought one. Some of the footage from the bright screens used has no shallow DOF whatsoever. I just watched a test footage of the Brevis that had less shallow DOF than my bare camera:

http://vimeo.com/1856537

I think the mark is being missed as to the actual reason why 35mm adpaters were even invented. Look and study the bokeh in actual film, then go check out the G35. It's an exact match.

Wow, I haven't been to that park for more than 20 years. I thought it closed down. By the way, the deep depth of field is not created by the Brevis. It's the lens. I think the shooter might have used a 28mm wide angle lens. Either that or the lens has been stopped down.
By the way, you can close the aperture of the Canon EF lenses. Make sure you have an EOS camera. Even an el-cheapo old film camera will do. You need to put the lens back on the camera, set the f-stop, press preview and take the lens off and put it back on the adapter.
http://vimeo.com/1349372
I shot this footage using a Canon FD f1.4 lens. Some consider the f1.4 lens to give too shallow DOF.

[kan]

Fine artical, thanks.

[astigmatic]

Check out Jonathan's adapter the G35 at www.cinemek.com it is a very nice adapter. Yes it looses 1.5 and that's not bad for the amount of "real" diffusion you get. I have to say that I am sorely dissappointed in the Brevis the more footage I see. I am glad I never bought one. Some of the footage from the bright screens used has no shallow DOF whatsoever. I just watched a test footage of the Brevis that had less shallow DOF than my bare camera:

http://vimeo.com/1856537

I think the mark is being missed as to the actual reason why 35mm adpaters were even invented. Look and study the bokeh in actual film, then go check out the G35. It's an exact match.

Check out Paul Joy's brevis footage.. very shallow if you ask me and the bokeh is very beautiful. It's using the new brevis imaging element. My only beef witht the brevis is my beef with any vibrating adapter and that is grain once you start stopping down.
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NKCKMJxFxm8&fmt=22

[Winston Vargas]

This is exactly what I have done with my medium format adapter. Logic would say that the larger the groundglass the easier it is for the camera to capture that image. there is no light loss as indicated , that is incorrect. There are a lot of misconceptions. Check it out at www.vimeo.com/1614485

There is no reason to limit yourself to a 35mm groundglass. The medium format groundglass is almost 3 times the size of 35mm. It is true that the optics used in front of the adapters have a great deal to do with the final result, but the second thing which is as important is the groundglass. Take the best lenses in front of the adapter creating the image into a crappy grounglass and you have a lousy image. It's like using a top of the line lens and then using a low quality enlarging lens, or a low quality scanner. Where's the logic? It has always been the case that the larger the image on the original the better the quality. That's the reason for 70mm film or 35mm film in relation to 16mm.

[David-35mm]

Thanks for your explaination

[Dick Campbell]

My question is what is the best way to use the adaptor;

1. with a fixed lens - do you use the aperture only on the 35 lens and leave the camera lens wide open? Wouldn't this enhance the aberration of the camera lens? arguing this becasue the "sweet spot" for a lens is usually at f4-f5.6 but that's giving up a lot of light.

2. with a fixed lens - can you zoom into the ground glass? pros & cons?

3. with a zoom lens - do you set the camera at wide and full open, and do all control with the 35mm zoom?, or should you do some zoom and aperture control with the camera lens as well?

My thinking on this is that the camera lens should be at wide angle just to fill the FOV with the GG, fixed focus, and stopped down maybe one stop, and then do the majority of the control with the 35mm lens. This would seem to argue for using a good 35mm zoom.
any commentsor thougts are appreciated.

For the record, I have a Letus35 with a set of Canon FL lenses, no zooms yet. I'm shopping for either an FL or FD.