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Canon GL2 and 35mm DoF adapter

Hi everyone. So here's the deal. I am stepping up the effort and amassing my tools for my short (Deep Love) that I will start shooting in the spring. I have a Canon GL2 and have been investigating 35mm DoF adapters. The funds? Well they are limited. So I've been looking at the Jag35 pro kit but have been warned of the drastic loss of light. I do have a lighting kit (from EOS Lighting) and will be adding a few more lights to it in a few weeks, but this severe loss of light with the Jag35Pro has me a bit hesitant. I've heard of rumors of close to a loss of 2 stops. Is that true?

The Canon GL2 is a solid camera, SD, but solid nonetheless. However it does not do well in low light situations, so is the Jag35 pro worth it? Is there another (affordable) brand out there that will do the business for me and not soak up all of my light?

I appreciate all the help I can get on this. I am a pivotal point here where I have to decide to keep investing in my GL2 which is in great condition or stop spending on it, see what I can get and go another route.

Thanks in advance for all your help and all responses.

Sam
 
Depends on what your shooting. I have a 35mm adapter (Letus extreme) and even with its reported 1 stop light loss, it sucks light like a black hole!

Also, most lenses don't look their best at wide open, so your typically stopping down again with the lens..

Also, the more you can STOP DOWN your lens, the deeper your depth of filed(more of the scene in focus) I know your thinking you want shallow DOF, but when you go this route you'll quickly learn that 35mm can do EXTREMELY SHALLOW DOF, which is VERY difficult to film with.

Even so, its worth it. You'll need to light EVERY indoor shoot, hand held focus will be crazy hard, you'll have to buy lenses, and again, its worth it, but only IF you can take the time to LEARN what your doing with it.
 
Thanks for the info, wheat. Most appreciated. To reiterate so that my brain can process - even with the light loss, the DoF gained can be shallow enough to get me the effect I am going for? If so, sweet!

I plan on using tripods when going for the shallow DoF shots - there will be movement via a dolly (for which I plan to use a focus puller) but I don't plan on hand-held for these types of shots in this movie.

The Jag35Pro bundle I plan on buying comes with a choice between a Canon 50 mm f1.8 FD or f1.4 FD lens (I was going to go for the faster lens in anticipation of the light loss - I would appreciate some knowledge on this). After the purchase I was going to comb ebay for a wide angle and a telephoto FD lenses to complete the set (once again more knowledge will be most appreciated).

Finally, will the light loss be hugely magnified because the GL2 is a SD camera? Oh and I will definitely need an external monitor to get my focus right - any suggestions?

Thanks a million.
 
don't need external monitor to get focus; but you do need a lot of practice. fd 1.4 is sweet. you will also need to learn how to shoot your camera upside down with the jag as it does not have a flip prism.focus pulling at 1.4 will be extremely difficult with moving shots. use 2 500watt work lights as ambience then key with china ball for a budget light set up. use digital zoom to zoom then focus with ring...this is if in the future you get zoom lens.
 
The GL2 is a great camera, but it's nearly 10 years old. Do you really want to start sinking hundreds of dollars into a camera that's still only going to shoot in SD? DOF adaptors were a great stop-gap solution a few years ago, but the idea of now investing with one seems a bit ridiculous to me. The Jag35pro bundle your talking about sells for $440. If you combine that with the $500+ that you can get for a GL2 on eBay, you can get a nice DSLR setup. A refurb T2i with kit lens goes for $650. You can pick up a 50mm f1.8 lens for around $100, and a Flycam Nano stabilizer for another $125. This will give you a nice starting kit with some money left over. I'm not trying to hate on the GL2, I have many fond memories of the camera. It's just not worth sinking serious money into at this point in time.
 
I think I'd be inclined to agree with SinEater here - if you had a small chip HD cam with really good image quality, then it might be a worthwhile investment, but for all their sins, downressed footage from a DSLR will look miles better than anything shot on MiniDV. On the GL2, unless you want to use your camera upside down, you'll need to buy a monitor (even more expense) or work out some way of taking the camera apart and flipping the screen (making it useless when not using the adapter). The light loss would be another problem for me - I like to take the time to light things properly, but I've had to do the odd shot outside, away from power, when the sun's already set and being able to shoot at ISO 800 and f/1.4 is amazing. You won't miss what you haven't got, but that's not to say you won't find it useful.
 
Kosh,
the other folks here are right about this being and OVERALL waste of effort. Me, I fell in that stopgap mentioned by chilipie.. I had just bought my video camera and missed the DSLR bus by about a month! I chose to go 35mm adapter route to sorta extend the life of my video camera. Your situation does not seem the same. I would advise you listen to sineathers comments very closely. But your an adult so here are some answers.

With a 35mm adapter on a video cam, you WILL have shallow DOF, and you will have too much of it! For those shots where you what deeper DOF, you are limited. (research on DOF and aperture) with the 35mm adapter technology used in the Jag35pro and the Letus Extreme, you can not go past F 5.6 or the grain starts to get very ugly and dirty looking. Understand that a PINHOLE camera (smallest aperture possible) has almost infinite DOF... the more you open the aperture the shallower your DOF. With a 35mm adapter limit on f 5.6 your stuck, even in bright light you cant close down anymore than f5.6 and that has to be dealt with.

As a rule, even in DSLR, the faster lenses are preferred. Remember what I said about most lenses looking best NOT wide open, with the 50mm f.14 (I have and love that lens) you stop down a bit and still have good light gathering.. not 100% true in all cases but a good rule.

Yup, wide angle and telephoto primes to round out your options. I find a zoom is pretty useful too.

SD wont wake any diff on light performance, its the camera.

Yes, you will WANT an external monitor. Or get a 35mm adapter that flips the image.
 
I want to thank you all for your insight on this. The information gained on this topic has been most valuable. Man, I love this site!

As the GL2 will indicate, I was on the cusp of the technological shift (like wheat said) and was a total noob in the camera business so I went the safe route with the GL2. But it is most apparent that this technology is not going to meet my needs and will cost me more cash to get where I want to be. I have been in some serious thought about going the DSLR route this crossroad may be what pushes me in that direction. I hope I am not at the wrong end of another technological shift here, but...I am in. It's up to HD and DSLR for me. Ebay here I come.

Thanks everyone for your insight and expect to hear a million more questions from me in the months to come as a new DSLR noob will be joining the ranks. I know there are probably cons to this but they cannot outweigh where I am right now. I'll deal with them when I get to the next level.
 
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Good point about not wanting to pick up the wrong tech when it shifts again, I had not thought of that..
so you got me thinking..

seems the DSLR shif has prompted makers to rethink what consumers want in a camcorder.
interchangeable lenses seem to be the direction for camcorders too. A feature that I think you could NOT get on a camcorder for less that $15K a few years ago.

These two proper video cameras are impressive..

The sony nex vg10 is a good example of the top end consumer with interchangeable lenses under $2k.

Stepping up to the prosumer Panasonic AG-AF100 for $6K still seems like a lot of money, but for the tool it is.. my guess is its worth it.

Both of these and the updates coming to DSLR sugest that we very well maybe on the edge of another shift. Perhaps canon, Panasonic etc will upthe game on the consumer camcorders rather then keep improving the DSLR for video (there are still big tech problems with DSLR's most dont care about em, but there are reason why they arent PERFECT for everyone.. )
 
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