homade mini35?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Guest
  • Start date Start date
G

Guest

Guest
does anyone know of or know anyone who has made some kind of homade mini35. I shoot Surf Films and I just got the DVX and it does not have the reach i need even with a doubler, and i don't have the cash to buy a mini35 system or rent one because i travel for such long periods of time. any help would be great. thanks
 
Re: homade mini35?

There are plenty of people who have built them for the DVX100 at www.dvinfo.net (I'm one of them)

Heres the deal though. Your still going to need one hell of a zoom for surfing (600mm+) which, unless your real careful, could break the bank. The other issue with using such long lenses with the a home made mini35 is that longer lenses (specially more inexpensive ones) have minimum f stops like 4 or 5.6 or worse. Such a small minimum f stop is a real problem with homemade mini35 systems because the grain of the ground glass becomes more apparent as you stop down past f/2. Now thats only a problem with homemade mini35 that follow the static ground glass design. You'll be in better shape if you make a mini35 with gg that moves.

Honestly though, and I hate to say this on a DVX100 forum, but the best answer for this problem is to get a Canon XL1 with the Canon EOS 35mm lens adapter and just mount a 35m lens in front of it. Why is this so much better? Well by using 35mm lenses with out a mini35 you do something very interesting...You increase the telephoto power of any given lens by 7X! For example what that means is you can buy a much more inexpensive 300mm film lens and mount it to a XL1 and get the same power out of that lens as a 2100mm lens! AND you'll have a much faster lens too. All in all the package will be MUCH MUCH smaller and lighter for your traveling. And you wont miss the DOF because at the focal lengths you'll be working at you wont need a mini35. Besides whats your background in surfing...open sky. Working with the DOF of a mini35 system at real long focal length may be a HUGE headache that could even require a skilled assistant camerman to pull focus. The only draw backs to the idea of using a XL1 is you cant shoot progressive/24p film look but if you still want that look there are plenty of software programes out there that will do a fairly good job at approaching the film look. I LOVE the Dvx100 (I own one) but there are two applications in my mind that the XL1 is better suited for...Surfing and Wild Life videography.

-Brett Erskine
www.CinematographerReels.com
 
Re: homade mini35?

do you know of anyone who could give me instructions on how to make one. How much one might cost to make one?
 
Re: homade mini35?

Brett,

I have no problem recommending the XL1(s) here (I'm a happy ex-XL1-user), but I think one important point in your last post might escape the unattentive reader:

Changing lenses with the XL1(s) and mounting any kind of pro-lens with a simple adapter does not really solve the problem. Sure, you're getting a longer focal length, which leads to a shallower depth of field. But still, the image gets projected on a small 1/3" area which means, if you want to use a long focal length, you have to go FAR, FAR away from the objects you are shooting - compared to a 2/3" or 35mm film area.

The way the mini35digital solves this problem is by projecting the image on the ground glass (as you said) which is much BIGGER than 1/3" and therefore allows a longer focal length (=shallower DOF) for the same "angle".

Going far away from the objects you're shooting is a cool method (which I used successfully in my last film) to shallow DOF, but the impression of the image is (of course) different and sometimes maybe not tolerable from an artistic viewpoint.
 
Re: homade mini35?

[quote author=Brett Erskine link=board=news;num=1085012072;start=0#1 date=05/19/04 at 19:11:06]There are plenty of people who have built them for the DVX100 at www.dvinfo.net (I'm one of them)
[/quote]

any footage or screenshots?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top