A Canon 35mm adapter that's been ignored for years?

W

Willis Chung

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I was doing a little bit of research until I discovered an EF mounted 35mm adapter for the Canon XL series. There wasn't a whole lot of information out there, but some complains about magnification, some complained about it not being cinematic because it's just an SLR not built for HD. However, aren't most of us using SLR's for our 35mm adapters right now? Is it really true about the magnification? Some people have proved it doesn't magnify @ all. This product has been ignored for a few years, just want to bring it back.

This is the link:
http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/146134-REG/Canon_3162A002_EF_Adapter_XL_for.html

So basically, it's a 35mm adapter strictly for EOS lenses that's strictly for the Canon XL series. You can get one of those Nikon to EOS, C/Y Zeiss to EOS, or i guess anything to EOS, it seems universally used, and adapt it on there.

But yeah, I understand the XLH1 isn't the most popular camera out there, however I trust with the NanoFlash technology capable of recording 1080p XDCam Codec, people might come into it more. It's just a guess though.

Anybody want to knock me off of the boat for brainstorming to get the XLH1?
Anybody want to talk a little about the EOS to XL adapter?

Thanks,
 
It's a good idea at first glance. But there's more to a 35mm adapter than alowing you to mount a 35mm lens to the camera.


Generally the idea of a 35mm adapter is the ability to actual capture images from a standard 35mm film-sized image plane. Most 35mm adapters have a "screen" ("ground glass") that the 35mm lens projects the image on. The video camera then captures the formed image from "screen".

The EF adapter for the XL-series cameras doesn't have a 35mm "film-plane" screen. It simply passes the light directly from the 35mm lenses to the 1/3" sensors of the camera.

Lens characteristics ultimatly depend on what you are focusing the image onto. "35mm" lenses are only called that as they are made to project the image onto a 35mm film plane. In the case of the EF-XL adapter, the lens basically becoms a 1/3" lens.

The lenses are still actually projecting a 35mm image into the camera, but a lot of that image is missing the sensor - only the smaller middle part of the image actually hits the smaller sensor in the middle. As a result, the sensor is only "looking through" the center of the 35mm lens, and this means that it has a smaller angle of view ... and therfore it is "zommed in" by a factor. If I recall, the "zoom factor" of the EF-XL adapter is 7.2 - meaing that a "100mm" 35mm camera lens will act as a 720mm lens. And so on.


Practically it isn't as all a "35mm adapter" for "the 35mm look", but rather an adapter so that you can put various focal length lenses on the XL series of cameras. Do to the good selsection of long tele-photo EF lenses available from Canon, multiplied by the "zoom factor", the Canon XL cameras are very popular for wildlife videography as it's really easy to put on a larger lens to get in really close to the subject.

For example Canon's biggest lens is a 1200mm lens ... adapted to the XL1, it acts as a ~8640mm lens .. usefull for videotaping tigers from a safe distance (in fact, with that much reach, you could probabaly film fleas on the tiger's back from a safe distance of a couple of miles).

Check out an article by Chris Hurd of DVinfo.net here: http://dvinfo.net/canon/images/images17.php

- Mikko
 
damn, that multiply is annoying, otherwise i'd like to see what the quality looks like. Thanks Mikko for your knowledge.

Any thoughts on the XLH1 w/ nanoflash
vs.
hpx170 / ex1(3) ?

Thanks,
 
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