Shooting with a Letus 35mm Adapter – Puerto Banus – Part 1

Written by: Frank Knipschild | October 1, 2009

We bought ourselves a new toy a little while ago and i thought would be interesting sharing it with you. This toy is called “Letus Extreme”. It is a 35mm adapter which we mount on our Sony EX1 High Definition camera. The purpose of this adapter is to create dramatic, film-like effects and it should take our productions to the next level.

With it we bought a set of prime lenses; 180mm, 105mm, 50mm, and 28mm. With the help of the Letus35, we should now be able to achieve the same shallow Depth Of Field effects as a high-end 35mm film camera. Still using our existing HDV camera, it should change the look of our footage producing the same Depth Of Filed effects as a  cinema level camera. Sounds almost too good to be true !

The Definition: Depth of field (DOF) is the distance in front of and beyond a subject that appears to be in focus.

But first things first. My next few posts will handle this subject so I will slowly take you deeper into the matter, alongside my own experiences.

I went to our nearby, decadent harbor, “Puerto Banús” to do some shooting on two separate occasions. The first time I went with only the camera and a tripod. The second time I mounted the Letus and carried our set of prime lenses in a shoulder bag. The first thing I noticed is that moving around with the Letus is rather complicated as it altogether weights a ton !! Either I have to grow some mussels here or I have to bring along an assistant to help me carry this load. Not sure what i choose yet :-)

Using the Letus 35mm Adapter

Other than that my first experience was excellent ! You should know that working with the Letus changes the whole functionality of the camera. So buttons you’re used to work with are now without function and everything is manual only. There is one new button however on the Letus itself, which makes the inside focus-plate vibrating, and it is an important button. It is mounted underneath the Letus so you don’t see it and in the viewfinder you don’t see any difference either. This is very tricky and unfortunately my first few shots came out useless as i forgot this f***ing button.

Shooting is a whole new experience but it is fun though. You simply put yourself in a spot and start looking around. By changing lenses you right away have an enormous variety of shots to choose from. I felt suddenly more like a photographer being equipped a video camera. Depending on the lens you use of course the focus is very sensitive and a 1mm turn of the focus ring results already in quite some meters of focus shift. Anyhow the image you see through the viewfinder is somehow much more interesting and softer and you can really put the attention on a specific area in your frame.

Back in the studio

I couldn’t wait to get back to the studio and see the first results. Apart from the fist few shots being ruined by not pressing the Letus button I became really enthusiastic with the results. No doubts anymore that this will take us a level higher and I am very eager to go out for some more test shooting.

Underneath a short edit I made with the footage from the two different occasions. So some are shot only with the Sony EX1 while others are shot with the Letus mounted. Let’s see if you can already figure out which ones !

A day in the Port from Frank Knipschild on Vimeo.

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