Troubleshooting a Letus Extreme/XF300/Nikon situation

digital_walnut

digital_walnut

Active member
I ended up buying a Letus Extreme off of eBay so I could use my Nikon lenses with my XF300 - the unit I bought was equipped with the HVX200 optimization kit, but had the Nikon mount i was after, and I was able to find an XF300-friendly thread mount for cheap. However, I'm running into a situation where there's dimming around the edge of the frame when I use the adapter, and if I zoom in far enough to eliminate it, my XF300 won't focus on the ground glass.

Does anyone know if this is happening because of the HVX200-optimized achromat lens in the Letus Extreme? Has anyone successfully been using an XF300 with a Letus Extreme and Nikon lenses?

I've tried asking Letus' support staff about this, but they've been less than helpful. Their phone rep couldn't identify the problem without footage from the setup, and whoever answers their email didn't even bother to read most of what I had written, and just responded with:

"I looked over the footage and don't see anything out of ordinary about it. The "dimming" around the edge that you have are very normal. You can get rid of that by zooming just a little more. All SLR lens does create some "dimming" on the edge."

Follow-up emails I've written have not been answered as of yet.

Thanks in advance for your help/advice
 
If it's a wide angle lens yeah, there can be some vignette. If it's like a 50mm, there should none. Are you using an achromat? Im assuming you are. You should go from your camera lens to achromat, then to letus, then to slr lens. The adapter needs to be spaced from the camera lens to gg correctly, and from the gg to the slr lens. other wise you can not focus to infinity. You may need a more powerful achromat, like 8x's.
 
More info is needed:
Does your focus change on the GG change a great deal as you zoom in, and how far beyond the full frame do you need to zoom in to lose the vignette?
Also as Maran noted, what len(s) are you using?


Lenny
 
I've been using a 50mm Nikon lens with it, so I can't imagine that would be causing the issue. The letus Extreme has threads for an achromat lens at the camera end of the adapter, and they offer a "standard" achromat lens and one that's optimized for the HVX200/EX1/EX3. Mine currently has the HVX200/EX1/EX3 achromat in it, and I'm wondering if switching to the "standard" one will fix my problem. Unfortunately, their product pages don't have any information to clue me in on which lens offers more magnification, and their support staff isn't horribly helpful.

Lenny - I have to zoom all the way in on the XF300 to get rid of all vignetting. To focus on the ground glass, the XF300 has to be focused at 2.6 feet, and when it's zoomed all the way in, focus will only pull back to 3.3 feet.

If it's at all useful, here's the clip I shot to demonstrate the problem to the Letus staff
http://www.moonpotato.com/movies/letus35.mov
 
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I haven't had any chance to test the XF300 as how adapter friendly camera it is.. Some cameras simply works less good with adaters such as the EX1 and EX3.

I've been down the same road as you with Letus adapters, and yes, the support team won't give you any good answers, nor are they polite. Google and DVXuser is your best friend in this case...
I know it might be hard to hear it, but maybe the best thing is to sell your Letus and go for some other adaptor where one achromat fits all cameras, such as the Redrock M2 Encore, or SGblade (my personal favorite).
You could start buying other achromats but belive me that will just add to the cost and to your frustration.

Also, my 50mm 1.8 nikon E series lens gave some soft edge, but my 50mm 1.8 AF gives almost none (barely visible). Also, some cameras (again, such as the EX1 and EX3), when using internal ND filters, can suffer from a bit softer picture overall or at the edges.


Good luck!
 
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Well, google is turning up nothing useful. Unless I can somehow pin down someone at Letus who can answer my questions about their achromat lenses, I guess all I can do is wait and see if anyone here has successfully used a Letus Extreme with an XF300. Thanks for your advice, everyone!
 
your best option is to sell the letus on here or ebay and get an SGblade from shoot35! The blade is newer tech , rotating ground glass instead of viabrating ground glass. And you wont have any problems like you do now.

plus Waynes customer service is hard to beat. reply's via email are super fast , less than a day. and their warrenty service is great.

also , the sgblade on my canon xh-a1 is beautiful , on an xf300 is must be insane!
 
Yea I bought a bargained Sgblade that had some issues with the spinning disc.. I didn't have any warranty left since I was the second owner and a year had passed, but still he helped me. Not only did I recive a free replacement, I didn't even pay for the shipping!
I've used everything from redrock, to letus and and cinevate. The SGblade is the best spinning adapter out there. And lately they've dropped in price, so you can get one for the same money as your letus, take or give a couple of dollars...
 
I agree, dump the letus, their useless to shoot with in a real movie making enviornment. Not being able to stop down the lens to me makes it useless to shoot with. Whats the point in using slr lenses if you cant even shoot the sweet spot on the damn thing. Not to mention, shooting wide open is just plain dumb. The Letus ultimate is nice, but the price is absolutly rediculous. The Redrock encore is a beautiful adapter, the redrock m3 is a beautiful adapter( new design). the sgblade is a beautiful adapter, the handy35 is a beautiful adapter. The brevis, letus, jag, or anyother vibrating adapter is useless, and should be avoided at all costs. There's some PNS out there, but I cant for the life of me still figure out why these things are priced from 7k to 10k. I guess it's the relay lens and the kit to shoot on a 2/3rds cam without a eng lens. But still, it's insane.
 
Yea we used a Brevis MP.2 adapter for a while. The vibrating ground glass really didn't work. Instead of removing the dust it just made it play around all over the screen, it made it look even worse than if the adapter was turned off.

As for the price of the adapters I couldn't agree more, the price is just insane on some of them. I understand that a lot of effort, time, and technology goes into them but I just can't see why the letus Ultimate costs so much! No wonder that people abandon the 35mm adapters when just the adapters costs more than the whole dslr camera and a lens or two.
 
Unfortunately, money will be pretty tight until later this Summer - I can afford a $150 achromat lens if it will fix the problem, but not a $1500 adapter. Thanks for the offer, though.

I only paid about $300 for the Letus in the first place, so it's no big loss if I can't get it to work and have to re-sell it.
 
Walnut,

Sorry I'm so late. Just found this while researching a different topic.

While it sounds like a missing achromat, you problem could be a mis-aligned screen. You're supposed to adjust it if your lens is back-focusing, so maybe the previous owner REALLY messed it up. I have the mini, but I assume the extreme is the same. All you do is push-pull on the little rubber stand-offs that hold the screen. (be careful not to touch the screen as they scratch incredibly easily!)

Letus has downloadable instructions on their website.
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Now, can someone explain to me what the condenser does? (g)
 
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