HMC150 with Letus Ultimate & Nikon Zooms & OCT 18 LOMO Testing Part 1

G

gmoe

Well-known member
TO SEE SAMPLE FOOTAGE JUMP TO THE 3rd POST :)

For context and review of HMC150 with Letus Ultimate keep reading:

Alright folks!

Here are some of my initial first impressions and testing using the HMC 150 and the Letus Ultimate.

This is not a comprehensive test by any means. This is merely jotting first impressions with the HMC 150 and the Letus Ultimate with merely quick mundane outdoor footage shot at 24P.

Here are my written observations with stills and clips to follow shortly.

(I’m the T.D. working at the Philadelphia Asian American Film Festival so my results have been a bit delayed but I want to get some of the info. up now so that others on the DVXUser forum can benefit and discuss.)

Quick, quick impressions on the gear:

The Ultimate:

Yes, it is pricey but I have used Redrock, Brevis, and Letus Extreme. And this is by far the best of the bunch and others like Kholi and Tim Naylor have posted extensively so I can only echo the sharpness, ability to stop down past F8, to shoot at higher shutter speeds and the ability to adjust back focus is a amazing.

And of course, their customer service has been superb. If you have problems, Aaron and the Letus bros are super responsive. I had just got my Ultimate and had some strange flaking off of the diffused surface of the ground glass and I’m now getting another one sent out to me this week. Bottom line, that glass is incredibly super thin and a delicate piece of glass. I’m hoping the new one will not have that issue. I’ll post updates.
And for my purposes, the Ultimate was necessary for me so that I could use it on the HPX/EX1 and of course the HMC 150.

HMC 150:

I’m lovin’ this camera for what I do. Mainly event shooting & documentary work, with some light narrative stuff, it’s a perfect fit. Light weight, price tag and ability to shoot on cheap SD cards as many have said is a real god send.

Of course there are a few things I wish this camera had. A better monitor!!! Even with the new video assist and wave form monitor, I still had a difficult time getting critical focus for adapter work especially outdoors. It was impossible to see in the bright outdoors and I had to rely on my SWIT video assist monitor for critical focus. I’m going to see if a Hoodman H-400 on the 150 will help.

Another issue is variable frame rates of course! Yeah, I know get the HPX170..

And that single huge plastic cover for your HDMI, headphones, etc , not so great. The piece will definitely fall off soon.

Ultimate/HMC 150:

I know it’s probably over kill to have the Ultimate on the HMC150 but I wanted to get an adapter that would give me the sharpest image and the ability to dial in my results very quickly and reliably. And the Ultimate definitely delivers. My HMC 150 sensor was of course off center but I was able to make an adjustment easily with the Ultimate alignment set screws. I just wish I didn’t have to open the adapter to adjust the alignment. It would be even better if I was able to do it just as easy as adjusting the back focus.

Some of the big pluses on the HMC150 for adapter work..
The ability to lock my focus ring and not to have to tape it off is just super. You don’t have to worry about losing your focus on the ground glass. Once it’s set it’s locked in. I’ve double checked it a few times during my test and it was still spot on.

As I said before, the wave form monitor/vector scope as well as new focus assist graph are great additions but for use with adapter work I do still think you still need a video assist monitor for critical focus especially in bright conditions outdoors.

(Continued on next post)
 
Last edited:
Now for the testing samples..

The testing was done at Penns Landing in Philly. The idea behind the testing was to shoot 24P footy 1080/ 24P and 720/ 24P with the CineD scene File setting comparing my two current lens kit.

My Nikon zooms for documentary, run and gun, event style shooting:

Nikon 17-35 AF-S 2.8
Nikon 28-70 AF-S 2.8 (not used for the shoot)
Nikon 80-200 AF-S 2.8

And for light narrative work OCT 18 lenses:

F=18mm 1:2.8 LOMO OKC1-18-1
F=28mm 1:2 LOMO OKC7-28-1
F=50mm 1:2 LOMO OKC1-50-6
F=75mm 1:2 LOMO OKC6-75-1

On the Nikon zooms:

Though these are Nikon Zooms and not primes, they are the fastest and sharpest zooms you can get for adapter work. Many have posted and shown great footage so I’m not going to go into detail about these lenses and will just have you look at the stills and footage. Only thing I will add is that I had the Zeiss ZF 85 and I think the Nikon 80-200 to me is just as sharp. I also have both the Nikon 80-200 AF-S and 80-200 AF-D and tried to see if there were any initial differences between the lenses on a previous shoot and I found only a tiny bit more sharpness from the AF-S when the lens is at 200 and on a very distant object.

With the sharpness of the 80-200 and 17-35 and the thinner Ultimate ground glass, I really feel the HMC150 shines in the CINE D scene file. I know many have had issue with Panny’s softness with the HVX including myself but I think the improved CCD sensor with the Ultimate and sharp Nikon lenses are a really killer combo. And I will be doing some test with theatrical lighting conditions for event shooters to see if this still holds up.

OCT 18 LOMOS:

My OCT 18 lenses are from a Konvas 1M. Usually these are cheaper and smaller than the Oct 19 LOMOS off a Konvas 2M. I’m using them because I got them fairly cheap, made in the 80s (for OCT 18 lenses the better lenses were made in the 80s not the 70s) and the glass and body were in excellent condition.

As most have said, yes there are problems with the OCT 18 lenses and if you are willing to live with them they can still work for you:

1) Can’t use a follow focus because of the design of the focusing mechanism which rotates inside of the camera lens mount. This means the lens mount actually turns inside of the camera mount as it focuses. So you must manually focus all your lenses without a follow focus. You can get a way with a little bit of rack focusing manually but if the objects are too far away it’s very difficult and you will get camera shake.

2) You must use an OCT 18 to PL mount adapter which you can pick up from Barrett Bilotta at http://www.xl1solutions.com/lomo.htm
The advantage of using Barrett’s version is that he has set screws in the mount so you can adjust the placement of where the mount sits on the shaft of the lens. In my testing I’ve placed the mount as far forward on the shaft that I can get it.

3) You will have to make your own markings and measurements on the focus ring to find out where you are. Because of the weird focusing mechanism, none of the focus ring distance marks matter.

4) Now if you don’t mark your lenses and you are pulling focus and turn the lens too far it will pop out of the focus mechanism. This really sucks for the 75 & 50, I’ve had to pull the lens out of the mount to set it back correctly and that can take anywhere from 10 to fifteen minutes of painstaking guess work. Now, I’ve marked it off so that if it does fall out I can easily line up in a few minutes.

5) You can control your aperture however and that works on all the lenses fairly nicely. But the 18 and 75 aperture ring has no stops which is a pain for these lenses because as you are moving the focusing ring there is a slight chance of also moving the aperture ring as well.

6) The wings get in the way when pulling focus but can easily be removed.

7) Over all, I think the best lens of the OCT 18 bunch is the 75, then the 50. The 75 is just beautiful. It still retains a lot of sharpness with a dab of that softer LOMO look. The 50 is just as sharp and the 28 and the 18 are a bit of a challenge. At least with my set of lenses, they were super soft and had big time vignetting especially the 18. I’ll do a bit more testing to see if I can find a better sweet spot for usability.

Nikons vs. OCT 18 LOMOS:

If you want sharpness and flexibility well that’s easy the Nikon zooms win hands down. Plus, if you want to use a follow focus you can still use these Nikon zoom lenses but from what I understand you may get a little bit of creep because these are not primes.

However, the LOMOS have their own character, they have that softer filmic look that I really love and depending on what you are after, these older Russian lenses can still work for you. If you are doing set up shots where you just focus and shoot then these lenses will work for you. If you want to rack focus, you can still try, these lenses breathe less than the Nikons but you’ll have to worry about camera shake with manually focusing the lenses. You’ll just have to feel it out, shoot a few times just to get it just right.

Now, I had spoken to Aaron over at Letus and if there were more folks who were shooting with these OCT 18 lenses he said there could be a possibility to create an OCT 18 lens mount for the Extreme and Ultimate adapters. This may help in the ability to use the true focus markings on the focus ring and possibly solve the vignetting on the wider 28 and 18 lenses but I’m just speculating.

Another advantage of the LOMOS are because these lenses are smaller, you can find plenty of room to fit them in your case. I have my whole set of LOMO primes in a storm case with my Nikon zooms just in case I need them.

(continued)
 
Last edited:
1080 / 24P Stills & Footage Context & Impressions:

All footage is purely mundane, nothing special. I was also training another camera operator to boot so there is camera shake and places where sharpness and settings could be dialed in a little bit better. However, the goal for me was to see even in these kinds of settings (b-roll footage, camera and adapter in the hands of a novice, if sharpness and reliable usable footage could still be obtained.)

All footage has been compressed for vimeo so there will be some macroblocking which is not in the original footage.

Quick impressions: From looking at still clips from the original footage I noticed that the HMC 150 seems to do very nicely with an adapter like the Ultimate. If you get a chance to view the vimeo footage, you’ll see the Ultimate and the Nikon lens are fairly sharp and to my eye the 1080/24P with SceneD on the HMC150 looks sharper than my results I’ve shot with my old HVX when I’ve used Redrock and Brevis. Again I don’t have an HVX any more so I can’t make a head to head comparison but that’s just initial impressions.

Also note, that both on the Nikon and the OCT 18 lenses, we purposefuly stopped down to F16 to see how well the Ultimate would do. So far, I'm very impressed, I know with my former Letus Extreme I would see the ground glass but you can see from the samples that the Ultimate is a mighty fine adapter.

On the OCT 18 lenses, less sharp, some CA but they do have their own look, warmer, filmic in that it looks less like it was shot with a video camera. I’m a little disappointed with the wide angle primes but the 50 & 75 hold their own.

1080 / 24P Sample Footage:


Tree-%20AVCHD-%201080%2024P%20copy%20%28Small%29.jpg



The first clip: Is a shot at Penn's Landing, I wanted to include the tree foliage as well as the top of the Ben Franklin Bridge to see any pixilation in the 1080/ 24P codec.

Tests: 1080/ 24P
Nikon 17-35 (Zoom at 17, F-Stop 16)
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 81 / MF 82 / Iris 4.8 / 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://www.vimeo.com/1999410



Exit%2020-%20AVCD-%201080%2024P%20copy%20%28Small%29.jpg


The second still: Is a shot at Penn's Landing, looking back at the city at the Exit 20 sign again looking at over all sharpness with the Exit sign text and lamp posts .

Tests: 1080/ 24P
Nikon 80-200 (Zoom at 200, F-Stop 16)
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 81 / MF 32 / Iris 4.0/ 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://www.vimeo.com/1999641



Camden%20Boat-%20AVCHD-%201080%2024P%20copy%20%28Small%29.jpg


The third still: Is a shot of the Camden water front with a Jet Ski racing by using the LOMO 75 lens. There’s slight CA and fringing from the Jet Ski spray.

Tests: 1080/ 24P
LOMO OKC6-75-1 (F-Stop 16)
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 99 / MF 32 / Iris 4.0/ 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://www.vimeo.com/1999905



PSFS%20Man-%20AVCHD-%201080%2024P%20copy%20%28Small%29.jpg


The fourth still: Is a shot of people walking across the Penn's Landing bridge with the PSFS building in the background. There is shaking on the footage as cars crossed.

LOMO OKC6-75-1 (F-Stop 16)
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 99 / MF 32 / Iris 4.0/ 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://www.vimeo.com/2000074



Meter-%20AVCHD-%201080%2024P%20copy%20%28Small%29.jpg


The fifth still: Is a shot of a parking meter and a building to test the ability to rack focus between the meter and the building behind it.

LOMO OKC1-50-6 (F-Stop 16)
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 99 / MF 32 / Iris 4.0/ 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://www.vimeo.com/2000573



PENNS-%20AVCHD-%201080%2024P%20copy%20%28Small%29.jpg


The sixth Still: Is a shot of the Penn's Landing sign looking across to the Camden Waterfront. The clip shows a little bit of lens flare as it pointed first towards the sun.

LOMO OKC7-28-1
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 99 / MF 32 / Iris 4.0/ 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://vimeo.com/2000693



PENNS18-%20AVCHD-%201080%2024P%20copy%20%28Small%29.jpg


The final Still: Same Penn's Landing shot over the waterfront but with the wider 18 LOMO. Again, lens flare on the clip some vignetting.

LOMO OKC1-18-1
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 99 / MF 32 / Iris 3.4/ 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://vimeo.com/2000973


(continued)
 
Last edited:
Editing with Edius 5:

So far what I’ve noticed is that the DVCPro transcoded footage has an edge on resolution between the Canopus HQ footage. In some of the footage particularly the LOMO 50 footage you’ll see the hint of blue from the sky is washed out where as the DVCPro codec retains the hint of blue in the sky.
But overall the transcoded clips seem to retain the original AVCHD footage. I need to look a bit more closely but I’ll let you all be the judge.

At times, you may see the DVCPRO still just a frame off from the Canopus and AVCHD stills, when placing all the same clips in the same sequence matching them all together on different layers I did notice that the canopus HQ codec matched up with the AVCHD codec fine but that the image was just a frame off with the DVCPRO clip.

In terms of editing, I still use an older AMD dual core processor so I was worried about AVCHD editing. If I pop the original AVCHD file into the timeline, I have to render there’s no way around it. A minute or so footage is about two to three minutes to render. This was expected with my system. If I transcode the footage to DVCPro, my file size increases drastically, but I can scrub through the DVCPro clip and play them without rendering. This also holds true for the Canopus HQ codec. The advantage with the Canopus HQ codec is that it seems to transcode faster and that upon rendering it seems to render faster than DVCPro.

Comments & Feedback welcome:

Feel free to comment & provide feedback about the stills and footage. I wanted to put this information out there to help out the many who have helped me along the way in this forum to make informed decisions about their camera, lenses , and adapter and I thought having sat on the sidelines for a while it was time to contribute a little something to team DVXUser.
 
Last edited:
Okay here’s some of the 720 / 24P footage:

These shots were additional takes but with the 720 / 24P setting.


Tree-%20AVCHD-%20720%2024P%20%28Small%29.jpg


HMC150&Ultimate%20Tests%5CTree-%20AVCHD-%20720%2024P%20%28Small%29.jpg
The first shot: Same wide shot at Penn's Landing with tree foliage and BF Bridge but in 720/24P.

Tests: 720 / 24P
Nikon 17-35 (Zoom at 17, F-Stop 16)
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 81 / MF 82 / Iris 4.8 / 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://www.vimeo.com/2001108



Exit%2020-%20AVCD-%20720%2024P%20%28Small%29.jpg


The second shot: Is the same shot at Penn's Landing, looking back at the city and the Exit 20 sign but in 720/24P.

Tests: 720 / 24P
Nikon 80-200 (Zoom at 200, F-Stop 16)
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 81 / MF 32 / Iris 4.0/ 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://www.vimeo.com/2001190



Meter-%20AVCHD-%20720%2024P%20%28Small%29.jpg


The third shot: Is the same shot of a parking meter and a building to test the ability to rack focus between the meter and the building behind it using the OCT-18 lens.

Tests: 720 / 24P
LOMO OKC1-50-6 (F-Stop 16)
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 99 / MF 32 / Iris 4.0/ 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://www.vimeo.com/2001940



PENNS-%20AVCHD-%20720%2024P%20%28Small%29.jpg


The fourth shot: Is the same shot of the Penn's Landing sign looking across to the Camden Waterfront in 720/24P.

Tests: 720 / 24P
LOMO OKC7-28-1
Ultimate: Speed 99
HMC 150: Scene File: SceneD
Z 99 / MF 32 / Iris 4.0/ 1/48 shutter

Here is the vimeo link:
http://www.vimeo.com/2002223



Quick 720 / 24P vs. 1080 / 24P impressions:

It seems to me from some quick comparisons of 720 and 1080 stills using Photoshop, the 1080 footage has a tiny bit more detail and sharpness over the 720 footage. This can be seen comparing the Penn's Landing 1080 & 720 signage stills as well as the Exit 20 1080 & 720 signage stills. There’s just a tiny bit more sharpness from the 1080 stills.

When actually playing the footage though it’s really hard to tell the difference between the 1080 and 720 clips.

Having said that, it seems to me for those who are putting an adapter on their HMC150, they might want to consider shooting at 1080 24P in order to retain as much sharpness and detail as possible. This definitely holds true more with the OCT 18 LOMOS. Overall they are softer than the Nikons and getting that extra sharpness does help. More footage from others will confirm if this is true using the Ultimate as well as other adapters. But these are my quick impressions so far.
 
Last edited:
In an effort to get sample footage accessible for all to see, I have created vimeo links to see the actual footage shot.

Though it was a good idea it was a little difficult to provide the original footage from my server. It just took way too long to download.

The vimeo footage is compressed but at least it gives you a pretty good idea.

Hope this helps provide some useful information for those considering the HMC150 and the Letus Ultimate combo.

Thanks for looking,

gmoe
 
Last edited:
Don't take this the wrong way, but if you showed me that footage, I would guess that it was shot with a homemade adapter, I would never guess ultimate. I think you should take another look at your camera and play around with the scene file settings and your whole camera build again.

The footage isn't horrible, but it definitely doesn't compliment the Ultimate, and the images you shot could be achieved with any other adapter out there.

I appreciate the effort though.
 
sorry if I chime in as well but the footage doesnt even look like it was shot with a 35mm adaptor, the DOF is as broad as any regular video cam with zoom over 50% but I see vignetting and some other problems.
Maybe it would have been better to use the filter instead of closing the iris for those bright outdoor shots?
 
Thanks for your comments guys. I appreciate it. And agree with you.

It doesn't really showcase the Ultimate in all it's full glory. Again, as as I said in the review, there were no tweaks in the Scene Files or in post and the footage is just what it is just raw testing on mudane b-roll type footage testing sharpness as well with Nikon and OCT 18 glass.

Mainly I was stopping down on the lens to see if I can see the ground glass which I could not versus on the Letus Extreme at F16 you would definitely see it.

But I appreciate the feedback because I want myself and others to be able to have the optimum settings posted here when using this combination.

We'll find it.

Next week, I'll have time to go out and shoot something purty now that I have my Chrosziel follow focus (Thank you SomewhereinLA!) and yes I will be using the Barry Green suggested scene file settings which will help in the contrast department .

I'll snap a few pics of the rig too John! :)

Feel free to post, it's all part of the process. :)

Gmoe
 
Last edited:
Appreciate the effort, G. But I have a question: is it just me, or does the shot in the first vid link seem to 'warp' at the edges during the pan?
 
Do you shoot around that area often? I always wanted to shoot there but I never wanted to walk to that side of the city. Now I am at 4th & Girard so I think I might have to soon.
 
Appreciate the effort, G. But I have a question: is it just me, or does the shot in the first vid link seem to 'warp' at the edges during the pan?
Click to expand...
Yup, I hear ya, I think that must be some vignetting on that Nikon 17-35. There might need to be an optimized Letus mount for the HMC150. :(

Now Sony Shooter can have a full rasta 1920 x 1080 can have a FULLY WORKING $100 16GB Express Card for the EX1/EX3 camera. I am sure you are very interested in this one Gary. :P
Click to expand...

Aww. man.. I might have to try that out. Anyone in the philly area have a EX1 to rent for a day?

Do you shoot around that area often? I always wanted to shoot there but I never wanted to walk to that side of the city. Now I am at 4th & Girard so I think I might have to soon.
Click to expand...

Hey Steven, I actually don't shoot at Penn's Landing very much since it's pretty touristy there. But for this test, we just needed to find a familiar Philly spot that we could test out the lenses, Ultimate, and HMC150 with out having to move around that much. But yeah, would love to shoot there again with better optimized settings based on the feedback given.

Thanks all!

-G
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top