ASOM Posted February 18, 2004 Share Posted February 18, 2004 Hi everybody, we?ve just finished our first short movie using a homemade MINI35 kit (based around a Nikon F-2 and a Canon XM-2/GL-2). It?s freely inspired by the movie Fight Club (but it?s not the point of the movie at all). Our budget was about 400$, mostly spent on food and tapes. A lot was done in post, color-correction, stabilizing, degraining,? We hope you?ll like it. If you have any question, please just ask, we?ve a lot of ?making-of? pictures if you?re interested. A last thing, it?s in french, excuse the quite crappy subtitles, if you have any correction, please tell us, thank you very much. Stills: http://www.originalversion.net/temp/marla.jpg Movie (Quicktime 6): http://www.originalversion.net/temp/marla.mov (right click + save as to download) Olivier & Sebastien Another State of Mind, www.anotherstateofmind.be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alvin Pingol Posted February 19, 2004 Share Posted February 19, 2004 a homemade MINI35 kit Making a MINI35 adapter has been a project that I've been meaning to tackle for quite some time now, but as I read more about these systems, they are a lot more complicated than what I had thought. I don't have a clue where to start. How did you go about designing your MINI35 kit? From the stills, aside from some vignetteing, the pictures look good (of course, I can't really tell how sharp the images are since they are small). I haven't watched the video yet (it'ls loading as I type this). I'm very interested in techniques you used to build your MINI35, and any problems you have encountered during the construction of the unit, anything you wish you could change, etc. I would like to see some of the BTS photos, to see how the unit looks in action. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ASOM Posted February 19, 2004 Author Share Posted February 19, 2004 New Links Stills: http://www.anotherstateofmind.be/temp/marla.jpg Movie: http://www.anotherstateofmind.be/temp/marla.mov Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Gross Posted February 26, 2004 Share Posted February 26, 2004 He posted the link to some stills of their homemade Mini35 rig on another forum. http://www.originalversion.net/temp/makingof01.jpg Looks like he basically ripped off the pentaprism of a still camera and pointed the video camera at the focusing screen. Doesn't move to reduce the grain of the gg, but it probably cost him pennies. Interesting toy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DanStewart Posted February 26, 2004 Share Posted February 26, 2004 Very clever! That's the beauty of this plan dude, it's simplicity. Congrats ASOM. How about a few seconds of DV footage for us to inspect? The f**k the moving focussing screen approach is great, but I'm interested in why PST thought it was worth all that effort. Cheers Dan Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted February 26, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted February 26, 2004 Hi, Could you actually get hold of a big chunk of ground optical glass to make a spinning one? Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Gross Posted February 26, 2004 Share Posted February 26, 2004 I wonder if one could remove the ground glass completely and focus on the arial image. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted February 26, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted February 26, 2004 Hi, Well that would kind of defeat the object, ne? Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted February 26, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted February 26, 2004 Hi, ... plus, wouldn't you run into sharpness and collimation issues? The whole splitter-block-depth problem, and the sharpness of the PL-mount lenses being optimised for the large 35mm frame. I wonder if creating a groundglass is simly a matter of sandblasting an optical flat. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GeorgeSelinsky Posted February 26, 2004 Share Posted February 26, 2004 I wonder if one could remove the ground glass completely and focus on the arial image. If you used a condenser lens, perhaps you could... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alvin Pingol Posted February 27, 2004 Share Posted February 27, 2004 Thanks for the link Mitch. Very interesting rig! ^_^ I sort of expected the body of an SLR to be somewhere in there, but didn't expect the camera to be pointing downwards. Of course, it certainly makes sense, but throw a couple more mirrors in there and you can get a forward pointing (albeit larger) homemade Mini35 unit, eh? ;) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Gross Posted February 27, 2004 Share Posted February 27, 2004 Well it is a forward-facing rig really. Who cares how the camera is positioned? Trim down that wood board a bit or better yet make it out of metal and it's easy to view off the LCD screen. Not bad at all and easy to do. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ozgur Baltaoglu Posted February 27, 2004 Share Posted February 27, 2004 hi ASOM, Question: How does the dv cam receive the image from the still cam? and how does it affect the fstop... I'm betting it's somewhere between the lens' and the ccd's... If I were to make this rig myself what would you recommend? The rig seems a bit limited to movement... dpes pan and tilt give you trouble?... any technical tips? The stills you put up look sharp but they're small, are you pleased with the quality of the final product... Focus pulling? I'm sorry I bombarded you with questions but the rig is inspiring, at least to me because I cannot afford 35 cameras and if I can make this rig work for me than I may have an option other than the builtin lens of a, say pd 150 or vx1000... thx Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Gross Posted February 27, 2004 Share Posted February 27, 2004 The quicktime movie made it look like there was nothing particularly sharp, just some parts less sharp then others. Of course that could be more Quicktime resolution than the footage itself. As far as using the rig it seems fairly simple to me to drill a hole in the base of that rig and mount a tripod quick release plate. Then just use it like any other camera rig. I did keep noticing what looked like spots on the groundglass surface. It's very important to keep dust & dirt out of the rig. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ASOM Posted February 28, 2004 Author Share Posted February 28, 2004 Thank you all for the comments !! Pans, focus pulling,...surely work. We tried to avoid movements because we had no good tripod. We had an ironing table as tripod, every exterior shot was done handheld :-) Focus pulling on SLR optics is quite hard but doable. All you need to do this kit is a SLR with a removable viewfinder (so you can shot the focusing screen, medium-format are great too), a plain focusing screen (D focusing screen for Nikon SLR), some optics, a macro-adapter (+4 on the Canon Gl2, maybe more on other cameras) and you're reading to go. We did our first tests using two tripods, one for the SLR, another one for the DV Camera and it did work too. The picture on a TV is sharp but not videoish sharp, edges are smooth,... we're currently editing a small trailer, if you want, I'll try to upload it in DV or MPEG2 to some servers. We're also working on the website, where we'll explain everything we went trough. If you have other questions, we'll be pleased to answer. Thanks again, Olivier & Sebastien www.anotherstateofmind.be Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted February 29, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted February 29, 2004 Hi, Out of interest, how large an image is the GL1 shooting in that configuration? The reason I ask is that I find that my camera, a 1/2" chip type with 20:1 lens, shoots an image area about 3" square in full macro - this determined simply by laying my PDA on the edge of the lens ring and focussing on it in macro. To make the camera shoot an area the size of a 35mm stills frame, it ends up being about eight feet away on a huge zoom. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Gross Posted February 29, 2004 Share Posted February 29, 2004 Phil, Even with the lens zoomed in you can't get a macro focus smaller than 3"? If that's true, you could go with a diopter lens mounted to the front of the lens. I've been able to get coins to fill the frame this way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Phil Rhodes Posted February 29, 2004 Premium Member Share Posted February 29, 2004 Hi, With the lens zoomed in, the macro image is completely soft. Guess I'd have to get a series of pretty powerful diopters! I imagine the ideal solution would be to find an old zoom that'd been trashed, and rip the relay group off the back. If I remember my remedial optics correctly, that'd allow you to focus a very small area and avoid the additional abberation of the zoom elements. Phil Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ASOM Posted March 18, 2004 Author Share Posted March 18, 2004 Hello all, the website for the movie is online. You'll find the teaser, trailer, full-res stills, making-of pictures, deleted scenes,... we're still working on the technical guide (mini35 how-to, post,...), it'll be online monday. Here the url: http://www.marlathemovie.com Hope you'll like it, Olivier & Sebastien www.anotherstateofmind.be www.marlathemovie.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Alvin Pingol Posted March 19, 2004 Share Posted March 19, 2004 Looks quite nice! The texture from the GG gives an interesting effect, but the shallow DOF looks awesome. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ASOM Posted March 26, 2004 Author Share Posted March 26, 2004 we've just finished our small filmmaking guide based on the experience we got making "Marla.". You'll find a illustrated homemade MINI35 how-to, shooting tips, post-production tips (how to get the best out of DV), references,... It's available as a PDF file on the movie's website www.marlathemovie.com (in the bonus section). Thanks again to everybody for the nice feedback, you are the reason why we made this guide. We hope you'll find it useful, please send us your comments. Olivier & Sebastien www.anotherstateofmind.be www.marlathemovie.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mitch Gross Posted March 26, 2004 Share Posted March 26, 2004 A very well-designed, well-illustrated tutorial with good info for other areas as well. Worth checking out. I feel like building a rig myself just for kicks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Manu Anand Posted April 1, 2004 Share Posted April 1, 2004 Congrats Oliver and Sebastion Have just taken apart my f3hp . mmmmmmm. Aaaah the waist level viewfinder .mmmmm To use my nikon primes(bliss!!!!). My connection was too slow wasnt able to look at the quicktime file. The smooth edges and non video-ish look have me intrigued. Manu Anand New Delhi Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ASOM Posted April 3, 2004 Author Share Posted April 3, 2004 Thank you Manu! The F3hp is such a great SLR ! Have fun ! Olivier www.anotherstateofmind.be www.marlathemovie.com Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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