Brevis, Letus Extrem, SG Blade: what differences ?

D

david61

New member
Hello All,

I'm planning to buy a kit mini35mm for my HMC 150/151 but i strongly hesitate between


  • Brevis
    Letus Extrem
    SG Blade

I saw a ton of video, read several articles but i'm not sure about the real differences between these three machines. Any help welcome ,-)

Thank uou a million!

I'm director of documentarries.
 
ask more specific questions, or lay out what you think the differences are, but with all that stuff already available I doubt you'll find many people here eager to re-invent the wheel for you.

Lenny
 
David, there are quite a few differences, and as the manufacturer of the Brevis, and as Cinevate's CEO, I'm a bit biased. In a nutshell:

The SGpro uses a spinning internal disk, while the Brevis and Letus use internal oscillation. Our product, the Brevis MP.2 differs from the Letus in several ways. First of all, it is controlled by an internal microprocessor which also handles oscillation control and power management. Oscillation is tunable on the fly. The imaging elements (we call them CINEFUSE) are user interchangeable with six choices depending on your camera platform. Letus has one, and it's glued in place. We also have an internal power cells which provide about 30 hours of run-time, on a 10-15 minute rapid charge. In terms of light efficiency, particularly with a lens stopped down a few stops, I've yet to see tests that show anything more light efficient on the market than our MP.2 system.

In terms of service, we work extremely hard with a real person answering a real phone very day from 9 to 5 EST :-) Additionally, you'll find a bunch of videos that we've shot here at Cinevate's Video University. to compliment our active user support/sharing forum. You'll find very complaints here, or anywhere else, in terms of how we treat our customers.

Cheers,
Dennis Wood
 
Dear Dennis,

Thank you for your reply.

My question is actually about this:

Dennis Wood said:
The SGpro uses a spinning internal disk, while the Brevis and Letus use internal oscillation. Our product, the Brevis MP.2 differs from the Letus in several ways.
Click to expand...

What differences it makes between spinning internal disk and internal oscillation? Is the way of filming different with these two choices? What kind of impact it goes on the images?

Thank you very much.
 
Hey man!

As far as I know, you don't have to film differently when using the different adapters. The downside of my sgpro adapter, is that the spinning disk becomes vissible(half circles) in the footage when I stop down the 35mm slr lens too far(beyond f 5.6, especially when shooting the skies)
I believe you can stop down both the brevis and the letus as much as you want because of it's vibrating gg and the lightloss is lower due to the lesser diffused groundglass. (Please correct me if I'm wrong, Dennis).
What you need to do is found out what your priorities are. You write that you are a documentary filmmaker, what kind of documentaries do usually work with? Big crew, small crew, only you, etc. I do mostly do documentary stuff myself, but as a camera operator, not as a director. We're usually no more than 2-4 people on a production, and I mostly run around handheld to spare time and baggage, so therefore the ideal for me would be a light rig with lots of light effiency(because I rarely bring lights with me on location). Therefore I shoot without a flip module for my sgpro adapter, to save weight, size, lightloss and maintainance. BUT, the sgpro has more lightloss than both the brevis and letus, so if I was made of logic, I would by a Brevis. The Brevis has a lot of nice specs and "brains" (30 hour battery with 10-15min recharge is nothing less than fantastic) that the others don't have and I see a dedicated Dennis on this forum all the time helping his customers out with great support and quality products.
But I'm kind of stubborn when it comes to the "Image" I want, so I picked the sgpro because of it's esthetics and I shoot a lot of exterior in daylight, so I thought I didn't have to worry about the adapters lightloss. And I have recieved nothing but great service from Wayne Kinney(Sgpro creator). I wish I could have less lightloss and still get the same image, but I can't so therefore I run into panic attacks on the job when winter-darkness arrives. Esthetics are subjective, all adapters have their own look, only you can decide what you think looks best.

I would whip out the specs on the different adapters(side by side maybe), sit down and go through your previous workdays finding out(with the specs you have gathered) about what adapter would be most practical in the situations you have been in and issues that can happen when working. Read around more on dvxuser, my entire film education comes from these forums. It takes a lot of time, but hey, I spent over a year reading up everyday and downloading every footage available before deciding on which adapter to get, and I have never had any regrets about the choice I made.
And customer service should be a high priority with everyone. You never know when something stops working and you need to fix it fast.


And Dennis, I remember the start of the Brevis, and it's really cool to see how Cinevate has grown and the quality stuff you guys produce. Just wanted to mention it :)

Anders.
 
Actually, the adapters you can't stop down too far on are the vibrating/occillation(brevis and letus) adapters and the old sgpro. The current adapters that you can stop down on are the Redrock Encore, Sgblade with rotor razor 1, and Letus Ultimate.

Personally, I would reccommend the sgblade with rotorazor 1.
 
Smetti,
First astigmatic is correct about the issue of stopping down the lens, On the Brevis it varies with each screen but you won't get past 5.6 with any of them. Also even that f stop number is an aproximation - On some adapters I've seen static grain at 2.8 on my Nikon zoom where a prime letting in exactly the same amount of light was fine. The zoom had a smaller rear element though.

Second, from your needs and your love of the SGPro image, I would think the Blade would be a great step forward as it gives the choice of RR3 - probably similar to the Brevis C1FL, ( in lightloss and slightly more DOF but that's just a guess since I've never seen it), the RR2 - same as the SGPro (though mine inexplicably is a little faster than a Letus) and the RR1 - similar to the Letus but with more ability to stop down. With practise it only takes about 5 min to switch screens.

The optics of the Flip are usually superior to non flip, but there is the added weight - of course you can use your Blade without a flip as well. That does mean spending more money and buying a new unit though.

Lenny Levy
 
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Thanks for correcting me guys, there is nothing more handicapping to the searchers of this forum than to spreading wrong info.
I'll be less sloppy next time(I blame it on my present fever sickness, haha) :)

I actually beta tested the sgblade(with rr2), and loved it! But the gg was scratched so the gg shows up in the footage. I want to buy a new sgblade, but I'm kind of in an economical roughpatch and I'm currently trying to gather money for a mattress to sleep on, haha.

Thanks again guys, keep the good info flowing! :)
 
Anders thanks for those kind words. We've been working very hard to temper our growth with corresponding improvements in fulfillment times, customer service and product quality over the last four years.
 
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