Lenilenapi
Carbonite Member
Jason is I think on the right path here ( as is Dennis who has been talking about this issue for years BTW) . I've tested all 4 of the above adapters as well as the CF1 & CF3 and stated many times on this forum that a good general rule of thumb is that the more efficient a screen is with light the less linear it is at open apertures especially between 1.4 and 2.8. The Brevis in my exoerience doesn't even see light from the wider apertures so its response at f2.8 and f1.4 is the same. A Letus as I recall lost aprox 1 stop between 1.4 and 2.8 and a Redrock almost the full 2 stops. This is in the nature of adapter optics.
There are numerous pros and cons to either style of screen.
I think Davide is correct about where Barry left the issue but I disagreed with Barry and others about whether you can say which is closer to true 35mm DOF. That's not at all established in my view, and to me that expression gets thrown around way too freely.
I think many people find say an SGPro, a Brevis CF3 or even a Redrock prettier and say it feels more filmic. But "Film Feel "or "Film Look" and even Bokeh are not neccessarily the same as DOF. It may actually be the softness that people are responding to.
Does a Redrock or an SGPro have the same DOF as film? Who knows? Nobody on these pages has ever compared them. To do so you would have to compare either video blown to film and projected, or film transferred to video. Either way a pretty expensive test. Perhaps a careful test comparing a depth of field chart to a 35mm adapter would help. In any case whether you use Academy or full 35mm still frame size would also have a huge affect on DOF. And then there is Academy, Super 35, vistavision, panavision 70, anamorphic, cinemascope, 16:9, 2.35: 1, etc, etc, etc and all affect DOF.
My own guess is the contrary of most thinking. I think that probably the Brevis CF-1 screen scatters light the least and thus might be more similar to film in being closer to the strictly optical circles of confusion (the out of focus parts of the image). The denser screens probably diffuse those circles of confusion more through scattering and thus might have less DOF than film. Its just a wild guess though.
Film has both the softness we like in a dense screen and more resolution than any video camera even without an adapter, so you're just not going to get a perfect emulation. Not possible. Many people find an HDCAM with Zeiss digi primes more filmic because of its sharpness and clarity but the DOF is much higher than a Pro35.
In any case I think trying to determine which adapter is closer to true "35mm film" is a bit of a waste of time. They are all alot closer than an untreated 1/3" or 1/2" chip- cameras.
Pick the tool that you like best for whatever you want to achieve, not for its similarity to something it really can't match.
- Lenny Levy
There are numerous pros and cons to either style of screen.
I think Davide is correct about where Barry left the issue but I disagreed with Barry and others about whether you can say which is closer to true 35mm DOF. That's not at all established in my view, and to me that expression gets thrown around way too freely.
I think many people find say an SGPro, a Brevis CF3 or even a Redrock prettier and say it feels more filmic. But "Film Feel "or "Film Look" and even Bokeh are not neccessarily the same as DOF. It may actually be the softness that people are responding to.
Does a Redrock or an SGPro have the same DOF as film? Who knows? Nobody on these pages has ever compared them. To do so you would have to compare either video blown to film and projected, or film transferred to video. Either way a pretty expensive test. Perhaps a careful test comparing a depth of field chart to a 35mm adapter would help. In any case whether you use Academy or full 35mm still frame size would also have a huge affect on DOF. And then there is Academy, Super 35, vistavision, panavision 70, anamorphic, cinemascope, 16:9, 2.35: 1, etc, etc, etc and all affect DOF.
My own guess is the contrary of most thinking. I think that probably the Brevis CF-1 screen scatters light the least and thus might be more similar to film in being closer to the strictly optical circles of confusion (the out of focus parts of the image). The denser screens probably diffuse those circles of confusion more through scattering and thus might have less DOF than film. Its just a wild guess though.
Film has both the softness we like in a dense screen and more resolution than any video camera even without an adapter, so you're just not going to get a perfect emulation. Not possible. Many people find an HDCAM with Zeiss digi primes more filmic because of its sharpness and clarity but the DOF is much higher than a Pro35.
In any case I think trying to determine which adapter is closer to true "35mm film" is a bit of a waste of time. They are all alot closer than an untreated 1/3" or 1/2" chip- cameras.
Pick the tool that you like best for whatever you want to achieve, not for its similarity to something it really can't match.
- Lenny Levy
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Btw, Barry the overview as you have described has pretty much been done already in what sounds like the most thorough review (free I might add of any outside bias) ever done on 35mm adapters. Doing a thorough review before that "super-review" comes out would be a waste of time.
