Tut, media students, no sense of humour. How does this widget work, presume there is a ground glass screen the the prime projects on to?

Maybe your right, I really should go check the website.

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Mark W:
tho this isnt your post I notice that you took some interest to that adapter that was used....

speaking of that I ordered me an adapter but mines is coming from Redrockmicro.com, their adapter is designed a bit different than the Letus35 but I think the quality might be a bit better than the Letus35 and quality is important the Letus35 is a bit more sleeker tho... it doesnt require a lot of the extras that the m2 adapter from redrockmicro does and it actually flips the image so there is not need to look at an upside down image, also its waay waay cheaper too. by no means is this an advertisement but if you are looking for that film look with out having to spend a fortune then both these are things you need to research

Oh and the answer to you ground glass question is YES for both of those adapters yes the letus has a gg that it projects its image on to that the dv camera actually focus's on

The RedrockMicro is a fantastic piece of kit, as Sean says its a bit bigger, and more expensive of course, but it's made very well indeed. I like the portability of the Letus and that I can use it handheld, but the image will not match that of the Redrock, and certainly shooting HD any defects are more noticeable. There are a few other models, such as the G35 from Cinemek which looks amazing, look for a short called Similo by MacGregor for some jaw dropping footage.

The principle is, the lens (35mm SLR) projects the image onto a semi-transparent screen (or ground glass), you zoom in and focus your camera onto the screen within the adapter. This results in an upside down, back to front image in your camera. The Groundglass is typically spun or vibrated to erdicate any grain in the image. I enjoy the level DOF control you dont get with a DV or HDV cam. I find it important in helping (and thats all it does, no means a magic cure for sloppy storytelling as some seem to think) tell a story, the focus diverts the attention of the viewer in the screen space.

Hey umm anthony I am also aware of the g35 adapter from cinemek but I left that one out for one main reason...tho I've been hearing much about those guys it seems like they are having more problems than they can handle and too many changes....right now they have people waiting in line for an adapter that, they SAY will be here on a certain date but when that date gets here, they change the date again and again and again... they have really influence me to go with them IF THEY HAD THEIR S*** together but since they dont so I wouldnt even mention them and having Mark all upset..that he's waiting while we are making good movies hehe but I went with redrockmicro which is a bit bulky and has the flipp image problem(which can be remedied) but at least they got their business part str8 they none of that hanky panky with trying to get a better distributer for this or that and trying to change this to make it better for that, they are DONE! you pay they send..as a matter of fact, I am waiting on my adapter from them as we speak, and it should be here by 6 th of april according to the email I receive then I can get to shooting my first short. And also I can stop commenting on everyone elses work and start giving you guys something from me to comment.

dont run off anywhere just yet anthony, Tell us about your lighting, how that was all put together which type of lighting and why?
DETAILS
DETAILS!!!

Sean,

The Cinemek situation is unfortunate. They had a fantastic product, but at HD resolutions they were getting grain problems with their static adapter so decided to upgrade to a vibrating version. It's a shame that this move has affected them negatively, I don't think they have much business nouse, should have released a static SD version in my mind and offered the HD version up later.

You MUST get some footage up once you get your Redrock!

Regarding lighting...a mixture of 1k, 2k and a giant 5k for sunlight through the window were used. It was our first time using lighting on such a scale, so very much a steep learning curve for us. It is of course time consuming, but the control gained makes for a much more pro looking piece. Previously we had only used the odd redhead.

To begin with we had found an old abandoned warehouse, we cleaned it up and began to build our set...until, one day we turned up and it was being knocked down, just a week before shooting was to begin. This was a blessing in disguise, forcing us to use the film studio and to be honest we never looked back. A lesson learned.

You can see we used a lot of light, this is due to the light loss with the adapter. We used orange gels to give it a grimier look, although it came out a bit too orange for my liking, easily fixed in post though.. We were adjusting the light according to times of the day in the story, to create a change in atmosphere, but to be honest in an 8 minute short such light changes are unnecessary, perhaps only night and day (and maybe dawn/dusk) lighting setups needed. The intro tracking short is supposed to be in the morning, hence the low light coming through the window.

Any more questions fire away

when will you be debuting your short?
I want to see more of what you've done

From what I've seen so far, so do I!

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That's a very nice title run. Like it a lot.

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Cheers for the kind comments guys, I hope to have some more footage for you to have a look at over the following days...no idea how long the final piece will take as we are all working on other video projects, which will no doubt end up on here too!

Anthony