Barry, having just built a pretty-mediocre home built adapter, I've learned a lot about these things and have a few suggestions for your comparison which would heavily influence my decision regarding which I'll buy. I don't want to be too demanding or ask for stupid stuff, so you can totally ignore this if you want, though:
Grain would theoretically be much more apparent on high definition video. So if we could possibly see a grain comparison (SLR lens at f4 or something) with a high-definition camera or a dSLR or something pointed at an overexposed uniformly white surface, I think it might be quite revealing. Testing the M2's ground glass in both static and rotating positions would also be interesting.
Contrast is clearly an issue for these adapters. On the plus side, they seem to diffuse highlights as can be seen with the "vacation footage". On the negative side, ground glass has a tendency to totally wash out dark areas. Certainly the original micro35 produced some washed-out imagery, as does the mini35 to a lesser extent. I'm curious about this, since it REALLY effects how the image looks and what type of color correction is necessary.
Also, a stress test with the SLR lens at f16 or f22 or something would be pretty revealing. Vignetting and grain would be huge issues at these apertures, and any flaws would be glaringly obvious.
Lastly, the quality of the achromatic diopter is obviously really important, and I'm not convinced that both adapters have diopters of comperable quality. I've noticed that the center of my cheap diopter gives an image free of chromatic abberation and distortion when used in an adapter, while the edges are blurry, soft, and show major color seperation. Certainly testing for chromatic abberation with a high contrast scene, strange as it would seem, would reveal a great deal about diopter quality, as would edge sharpness and resolution tests.
Just some suggestions. Feel free to ignore them since you probably have some better tests in mind, but I think that these tests would prove pretty interesting since they would test the possible weak points of both adapters.
Grain would theoretically be much more apparent on high definition video. So if we could possibly see a grain comparison (SLR lens at f4 or something) with a high-definition camera or a dSLR or something pointed at an overexposed uniformly white surface, I think it might be quite revealing. Testing the M2's ground glass in both static and rotating positions would also be interesting.
Contrast is clearly an issue for these adapters. On the plus side, they seem to diffuse highlights as can be seen with the "vacation footage". On the negative side, ground glass has a tendency to totally wash out dark areas. Certainly the original micro35 produced some washed-out imagery, as does the mini35 to a lesser extent. I'm curious about this, since it REALLY effects how the image looks and what type of color correction is necessary.
Also, a stress test with the SLR lens at f16 or f22 or something would be pretty revealing. Vignetting and grain would be huge issues at these apertures, and any flaws would be glaringly obvious.
Lastly, the quality of the achromatic diopter is obviously really important, and I'm not convinced that both adapters have diopters of comperable quality. I've noticed that the center of my cheap diopter gives an image free of chromatic abberation and distortion when used in an adapter, while the edges are blurry, soft, and show major color seperation. Certainly testing for chromatic abberation with a high contrast scene, strange as it would seem, would reveal a great deal about diopter quality, as would edge sharpness and resolution tests.
Just some suggestions. Feel free to ignore them since you probably have some better tests in mind, but I think that these tests would prove pretty interesting since they would test the possible weak points of both adapters.
