Aapo Lettinen

Or flooded parking lot like they did in LOTR ?

I was meaning more like a 40ft x 20ft pool which never needs to be moved for being so wide. Add just enough water so that it reflects and hides the black tarp surface. It is much safer for the studio if it is so wide that it can stay stationary for the whole shoot. Moving pools like this when they are filled could damage the plastic making it leaking but if it is laid down once and then filled and stays stationary there is very little risk

I wonder if it would be possible to make a "pool" using huge black tarp and only tiny layer of water, like one inch or so. Just enough to show ripples and reflection but not enough to cause the deeper pool issues. If the whole studio is filled with fog, then could be possible to cover almost the whole floor with the one huge black tarp, roll it up to the walls on the sides, then fill a thin layer of water and pray it won't leak😅 even half an inch might work if the shooting angle is right

the aluminium control panels arrived for the 3d-printable motor version, looks really nice! I will refine the casing design in Summer but will start making camera tests with this first version pretty soon, likely with Krasnogorsk3 as this motor type is a perfect fit for most K3 shooters because of the affordable price and easy availability

If needing something super heavy duty and extremely stable, one can check if metalworking machinery or industrial automation systems have suitable parts which can be used. For example a large "screw axle" operated by a stepper motor or crank and that moves the camera assembly. Can allow extreme precision too. Kind of same idea than how the small 3d printers rise the printing platform but more sturdy device

Made more music yesterday. Some of the sad local news must have influenced it, I recognized the whole storyline there when mixing this and changed the song name then

something under 10mm would be optimal for my use, for example 8mm Peleng or something similar. Will need to investigate if Mir11 lens is available in M42, that would work OK though between 6 and 9mm would be best

here is some size comparison of the first draft of the 3d-printable 4-speed motor casing compared to the normal aluminium version of the 4-speed motor assembled by me. The diy electronics kit fits inside the 3d printable casing so that no wires need to be shortened or cut, there is enough space inside to fit the extra wiring the kits have attached. Solder a power connector and possibly the wires for additional external start switch and it is ready to work aluminium control panel is included with the diy kits from mid April onwards, the panel will fit the 3d printable casing but can be used with diy designed casings too if needed. It is easy and affordable for me to make these control panels and people often struggle to make good panels diy so it saves lots of time and resources for everybody 🙂

Thanks! yes it is very useful especially for documentary shooting. The whole thing fits in a backpack even with the kit zoom lens and batteries etc attached and can be used with the original pistol grip and shoulder support. And will be super compact when I find some wide angle M42 primes for it, then will be a perfect car rig camera

finished 4-speed installation on K3:

finished 4-speed installation on my K3:

longer video of the 4-speed with k3:

Finished the installation, now just needing to print a new spacer to install camera front and can start shooting

4-speed crystal motor installed on my Krasnogorsk3:

designing the control panel for the 3d printable motor kit. The electronics kits will include this type of aluminium control panel because I can get them made very affordably in large batches. so the kit includes the electronics and the control panel. One needs to diy print the motor casing and install the parts inside. you can also design your own casing if you want. there is some white area left on the sides of the panel so that one can easily add one's own markings, for example the polarity of the power connector etc.

I bought my own Krasnogorsk3 when finally found one for cheap. Now modifying it to crystal sync with the 4-speed crystal motor. Figured I want to shoot more tests with the crystal mod Krasnogorsk before Summer and need to have my own camera for that

I have really good pricing on the "diy kit" of the 4-speed motor if one orders from the August batch so that I have maximum amount of time to assemble them. I am working on the 3d-printable casing in the Summer and files are included in price so this is the absolutely cheapest way one can access the 4-speed Universal Motor system: purchase the electronics kit, print the casing for couple of bucks, install the electronics and solder the power connector and make power cable for it, then get the camera model specific mounting parts made from aluminium using the included files or you can order the mounting parts from me with the kit if needed. This is less than half the price of the aluminium body 4-speed motor so it is the ultimate low-budget option I have available and still makes a perfectly viable crystal sync motor. DM here or on Instagram(aaplet14) if wanting to order. I may have other similar type of deals later with "pay early, wait for long, get product much cheaper" system as I can get parts made in much larger batches this way to lower the costs.

Waiting to get the updated axle adapters back from cnc machining to continue testing. the first version was already very well fitting but I updated the clutch/slip disc design a little. The prices for the 1:1 Bolex motor until 15th April: 950usd including shipping. Price for 8:1 model until 15th April: 1050usd including shipping. I may need to raise the prices a lot in May, the 1:1 model will likely go to 1050usd and the 8:1 model may go to 1150 or 1200 so please make sure to order in time if you already know you will need these motors. And like mentioned these are preorder-only products, I rarely can make extra ones and even if could they would be very expensive, the current pricing is only possible with prepaid orders

There will be price increases on the aluminium body 4-speed motors in mid April. Original pricing until 15th April and price increase after that. The Chinese are increasing cnc machining prices so have to compensate for that. If you want the motor with the original price, make sure to place the order before 15th April as I will order the new batch of casing at 15th and will immediately raise prices after that. Looks like I can keep the "diy 4-speed kit with only circuit boards and motor + wiring" kit pricing the same until about 15th May as it does not need custom cnc parts and I still have lots of materials to make them.

Price for the 6-speed motor if ordered before 15th April: 900usd including shipping. Price for orders between 16th April and 15th May 2026: 950usd including shipping. Not sure about later pricing, will try to keep it under 1000usd but cannot tell yet because Trump may invent some new kind of nightmare which messes up all my calculations again. Chinese are already raising cnc machining costs due to the Iran war affecting their energy costs and this reflects directly to my pricing, they raised some prices about 30% overnight and I am having hard time compensating the losses to have some kind of predictability on my own product prices.

testing 4-speed with Konvas1M. pretty nice and compact setup, may need help starting up in high friction situations like cold temperatures but runs fine with 200ft mags otherwise. the cheeseplate and baseplate are also my own design

working on the lower "boot" of the motor now which supports it. (still on social media break but wanted to post photos 😄 ) the electronics box and the camera side mounting flange are already final designs and the control electronics have been finished.

Yes there is good people existing but they are such a small minority that they have no other hope than to make art to try to survive mentally and wait and wait hoping that the bad greedy people would die and the World could then become a little better place. The poster image of the lonely pine sapling is taken on a huge 2 million ton pile of toxic mine tailings which they took copper and gold and silver out of using cyanide, then the rest was just abandoned in the middle of the forest and is leaching heavy metals and uranium to the nearby river. Once the profit is extracted they lose interest and let the environment to survive on its own. The frost-looking stuff is not ice and the black looking stuff is not soot, they are metal oxides forming over the bright-orange sand-like waste due to exposure to rain and oxygen. It was the perfect image for the poster because it sums up the impact of the humans to the nature so well and showing the nature will still try to survive. I translated some lyrics of another song which is not recorded yet, that is again a made-up language by me but lyrics are telling similar kind of stories about destruction, war, genocide and extinction than most of the other soundtrack songs of the movie. These are pronounced differently than English or Finnish, I marked them down in a way which makes it easiest to remember how they fit the melody