Redrock M3 vs Letus Ultimate.

V

vousetestouscons

Carbonite Member
I lost my Letus Extreme. So I need a new adaptor with my EX1. As prices have dropped since I bought the extreme 2 years ago, I figured I should upgrade to top of the line adaptors. I'm looking at the following adaptors:

Letus Ultimate: 2800 Dollars
Redrock M3: 1400 Dollars
Letus Elite: 1200 Dollars
SGBlade: 1200 Dollars
Letus Extreme: 700 Dollars

It appears to be a no brainer. The M3 will give me everything the Ultimate does at half the price, making it the best buy. The Elite is not as good an adaptor as the M3 and is therefore uncompetitive.

Am I overlooking anything?
 
the blade is really good but for an ex1 the m3 might be a better choice. I hear the Ex1 is one of the more difficult cameras to put an adapter on. Might want to post this in an EX thread and get their point of view.
 
I haven't had an experience with the M3, but the original Red Rock was kind of a pain to get setup correctly, and ate up alot of light. However at that price point I don't think you can justify getting the Ultimate over the M3.
 
M3, all the way. The m3, is pretty much the same as a M2 encore, in a new body. they both have very little light loss. I took out the old dof adapter and A1 to shoot last eve. Still love the look.
 
I would go with the M3. I am a happy owner of the SGblade (non flipped due to more edge to edge sharpness and less light loss). I think I would have gone with the M3 if I would have the money.

The M3 gives a superb image, low light loss and a really solid body that connects to the camera. It is probably the last and the best 35mm adapter. But you also need to ask yourself what look you want. Redrock has a different look than my Sgblade with the rotorazor 1 in it.

Personaly, I feel that the Redrock gives sometimes a bit too shallow DOF. That's why I go with the rotorazor 1 in my SGblade.


The sony EX series has quite some difficulties with adapters due to their lenses, and because of the built in ND filters. We have done a lot testing and what we found out was that the ND filters changes the backfocus that you have pre-adjusted to the spinning ground glass. So that means that every time you slap on an internal ND you have to check the camera focus... Dangerous on a job!! Some say that the SGblade works great with the EX series, other say it's all bad. But the majority say that the redrock m2 encore worked great on the EX, so I don't see a reason why the M3 wouldn't be ideal for you.
 
Actually I'm used to the Letus Extreme look and depth of field. Will the image change style a lot going from vibrating to spinning adaptors?
 
The image look itself is not determined of how the glass is moving. A typical (false) myth with adapters is that "adapter gives you a nice filmy grain". The one and only reason why you should go with a spinning adapter instead of a vibrating is that the spinner will eliminate any chance of the grain showing up. Also, it allows you to use faster shutter speeds than the default ones. A vibrating adapter's glass shows up really easy. Also, if you get any type of dirt on the glass, the vibration wont help. It will even make it worse by just moving the stuff arround all over the picture, where the spinner just would have spinned it off.

I also like the Letus look, where the DOF is controlable, so that's why I chose the rotorazor 1 glass in my SGblade that has almost an indentical look as the Letus Ultimate. The Redrock has a bit more filmic look and quite shallow depth of field. So you might notice some difference but in any case the M3 is a huge improvement from your Extreme...
 
Compared to the Letus Extreme, how much more narrow is the M3 depth of field? I'm getting worried here. :)

An by the way, is the M3 more reliable than the Letus in terms of fungus or dust on the prism? I had to send the Extreme in for maintenance twice dues to those problems.
 
The difference isn't all that huge but there is a difference. The image is by no means less good, it's just a matter of taste. Now when I think about it, the Redrock m3 could probably give you more depth of field than a letus. A letus can't go pass f5.6 on your lenses, any more and the grain will show up. At f5.6 you have a pretty shallow DOF. The M3, because of its spinning ground glass, can go down to I belive f16, and at F16 you have an image that looks almost the same as without an adapter because of the stopped down lens taking away a lot of the shallow depth of field.

So in other words there shouldn't be any problems because of the M3's F stop capabilities...
 
Is the difference due to the ground glass? Where can I look at sample differences? (I find it annoying that nobody every did a side by side adaptor comparisons and I also find it annoying the Zacuto left adaptors out of their tests).
 
The difference is mostly because of the ground glass. It depends on what the glass is made of, if it is achrylic or real glass. A big factor is how the glass is being polished and coated, that determines the overall look. But other things also come in play, such as what type of condenser glass the adapter has (the glass that comes after the ground glass, it eliminates vignettes and gives you better edge to edge sharpness.

I really think it's a shame that redrock haven't done any type of in depth videos of the M3. The redrock M2 and the encore got a lot of attention, the M3 barely exsists on the net. This is really sad because it is a real bad ass adapter and looks really great.

People just don't care about adapters any longer, DSLR's killed the adapter scene. And now with the FS100, the AF100, F3 and other cameras on the way people simply don't see a reason using adapters. I understand them totally, but if you're a guy like me that worked 3 years so that I could afford an HMC151 and the SGblade, you just can't change the gear that easy.
 
I agree with admir to a point, you also have to consider the look your trying to achieve, there's been many times I take the dof look over the dslr look. they can be close of very different in terms of post work flow. the adapters have a beautiful grain, it's very filmic to my eyes. and I feel its because of the gg.
 
The FS100 and AF100 cost less than my Letus Ultimate kit did.

My Sony PMW-F3 cost about the same as I paid to buy a new(ish) Sony-EX1 in 2008 and a Letus Ultimate kit when it first came out.'

Some may genuinely prefer the grain aesthetic of the adapter, but the FS100 and F3 are super sharp, and have incredible low light response.

Grain can always be added in post. Harder to subtract.

The adapters eat light for breakfast.


But truly, my largest problem with the adapters - they add more potential points of failure. I did a a lot of great things with my adapter, but there were more pieces of glass, and more ways for the light path alignment to get screwed up, and that meant sometimes I'd notice in post something was out of focus that shouldn't have been. Or the zoom on the barrel switches, and you get vignetting, or black borders. And so on.

Glad to be on the F3.
 
If you can afford an F3 then you have nothing to worry about. This said, how many people can afford an F3? Meanwhile, if you go for the FS100 or DSLR, you won't get the XDCAM EX Codec. To stick with XD CAM EX, there are only two solutions: Either you spend the money of the F3 or you stick with adaptors.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top