letus vs. sgpro vs. brevis

cckid

cckid

Well-known member
Hi everyone,

I know this has been a hot topic. I have read thousands of posts concerning this issue, watched a ton of movies done by users and still can't really make up my mind which one to choose. I know I want to have the shallow 35 DOF and I would like to summarize in a short way the main attirbutes of my shortlist top 3 adapters....please fill in with yours pro and cons...and maybe along the way we could make one of this posts a sticky...since people will want to have a quick overview of the the main differences from available 35mm adapters....mind you I know my list is not perfect, I just need your help (specially of those who owe one of top 3 adapters) to help me out buying the one taht best serves my needs.


My main criteria is: easiness of mounting, sharpness, light loss (as less as possible) bokeh, flip mode and of course low price.

1. BREVIS

PRO: Edge to edge sharpness. easy to use, very little light loss, good custommer service, fast shiping
CON: pricier than sgpro, and letus....no filp mode - anyone knows if they're making one and when???


2. LETUS

PRO: the cheapest of the 3 on the my shortlist, sharp and has flip mode (which is of course a money and time saver)

CON: spinning glass that shows weirdness to some owners, low profile shiping with no mounting instructions, no rods, and heard some people having some problems with some of the screws, is it really that hard to mount and unmount the letus FE


3. SGPRO

1. nice sharpness, reasonable light loss, and ok price that includes the rods, seem like a good packaged product

2. long shiping time,.....??, no flip mode


That would be from my part...maybe a public poll as a sticky would also be nice...it could include all most notorious 35 adapters that are available at the moment...


Best regards

ccklid
 
I happen to like the SGpro best. Takes a licking and keeps on ticking, its the most reliable thing i own.
 
I own the Letus35FE and i had some issues with dust.
It's very difficult to keep it clean, unless you keep it always attached to the camera and to a lens.
If the dust goes too deep in the mirrors you have to open the chassis, at your risk. the mirrors are attached with little glue. If you force them, you will have to re attach them....

But once it's clean, no adapter out there can beat it. It's sharpness and transparency are amazing.
I hope it will come a closed version for dust free night dreams and nightmares free nights.
 
cckid said:
CON: spinning glass that shows weirdness to some owners, low profile shiping with no mounting instructions, no rods, and heard some people having some problems with some of the screws, is it really that hard to mount and unmount the letus FE
ccklid
Click to expand...

Letus doesn't have spinning glass it has a vibrating gg. There are no mounting instructions because it's probably assumed you know how to screw something on. It requires a step down ring to fit on the HVX200, then you screw it onto your camera. I wouldn't make instructions for that either. I had to do some adjusting so that when screwing it on it stopped where I wanted it to. It's nice and snug and I don't use rails unless I need other things like a matte box.

I also get the impression that Quyen makes improvements on the Letus frequently but doesn't announce it as new and improved. So maybe some of the troubles that I've read about are due to them having a model from years past because I don't have any of the issues that I've heard about. He also made mine and delivered it in a week and was very responsive to my asking questions when I was in the decision making process.

The clincher for me was the flip enhanced. There are many people that swear it's not a big deal but I didn't want to deal with it. I was going to buy the Brevis but I couldn't get them to answer my emails (I assume something unusual happened because I hear they have good customer service) and although they are in the works with a flip enhanced I didn't want to pay even more when it did come out. And with the money I saved I bought three nice used lenses to complete the kit.

I would be willing to bet I'd be thrilled with any of the three you mentioned as far a quality goes but I didn't want to wait and I didn't want to deal with flipped images so I went with Letus and I love it so far.
 
Right now I'm deciding between the brevis and the letus. I'm wondering if you should be running rails with the letus, that's really my only concern other than keeping it clean. Any help?
 
It's okay without them as long as you're using small lenses. If you put a big 200mm lens on there, you'd be really taxing the ability of the lens thread mount to hold up. But with a small 50mm or 85mm lens it's fine.

Now, if you were to somehow drop your camera, the Letus'd snap off there in a heartbeat, so rails would definitely make it stronger. But I don't know that I'd say they're always necessary; I don't use 'em with mine.
 
I had the letus and it did a pretty good job..It is hard on the threads...to a point that it will take the paint off of it. Highly recommend that you keep the uv filter on it a let those threads get stripped. Now I have the SGpro and I find it a pleasure to use. Granted it is only good to have it on rails...I would rather have it secured that way. Also the flip to me is not that big of a deal compared to light loss.
 
SGpros light loss is about a stop. same as brevis/LEtusA/M2 (the m2 loses maybe a touch more) its not a big deal, you just use an appropriate lighting kit.
 
Has any one compared the Letus, SGpro, or Brevis with the Redrock M2? The M2 is the adapter I'm considering. I've read and heard a lot about it, but not so much these other adapters.
 
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TimurCivan said:
SGpros light loss is about a stop. same as brevis/LEtusA/M2 (the m2 loses maybe a touch more) its not a big deal, you just use an appropriate lighting kit.
Click to expand...

i found the letus to be 1-1/2 stops and the SGpro about a 1/2 stop. That is without the lenses mounted.
 
The light issue isn't an issue if you use lights. Especially if you're going for a film look. In fact I've heard some people say that it forces them to not get sloppy forgoing the use of lights and they're in return getting better footage. I notice outside that I've got to turn the f-stop way down. Indoors you need more light, but you really need more light with regular video too.
 
All adapters will lose at least 1/2 stop. You'll lose yet another 1/2 stop zooming your camera into the GG's projected image, so it's safe to say all adapters lose at least 1 full stop of light. Add in a lens that is not f/1.0 and you'll see further light loss.

I've read user reports about adapter light loss on other forums, ranging from 1 1/4 stop to 2 1/2 stops among the various low-cost adapters, eg. letus, brevis, sgpro, micro35, etc.
 
LonnyQ said:
Has any one compared the Letus, SGpro, or Brevis with the Redrock M2? The M2 is the adapter I'm considering. I've read and heard a lot about it, but not so much these other adapters.
Click to expand...

I will be doing a quick non-comprehensive kinda deal with Matty_G and his new SGpro Rev and my own M2.

I just want to see if the SGPro is that much sharper, if at all, than my Hardmounted M2.
 
J, it's not safe to say that all adapters lose at least one stop of light with a lens attached. With CF1L, and a 50mm f1.4 lens (with open aperture) the Brevis will run .5 to .7 stops loss over the same scene framed with a bare camera. In our testing, the camera position is not changed. This is why our wedding videographers like the adapter so much...light efficiency is very important for them.

The gap widens as the 35mm lens is stopped down: http://web.mac.com/philip.bloom/Shootout/Page_4.html

In these tests (done with an older Brevis Rev1 unit) Phil is recording a 2 to 3 stop improvement in efficiency with the Brevis.

CC, the Brevis removable flip module (and yes, it will work with existing units) is expected here by month's end. We'll be contacting a few Brevis users with diverse cams to play with the first production run. Yeild on the optics systems was better than expected so we'll have more units than expected.
 
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