I am a television guy. But ever since I purchased the Letus Extreme, I have wanted to experiment with old film equipment. Specifically, old lenses designed for photography. All the videos shot on my page to date, were “filmed” though Nikon prime lenses. No zooming allowed.

Now, I am interested in using true 35mm cinema film camera lenses on my Sony PMW-EX1 high definition television camera.

This morning, I met up with my friend TJ (from Comcast Sport Network) and we walked though the doors of “Boston Camera” in Brighton, Massachusetts. I had used stuff from them in the past and they had merged with a big rental house in Boston, called Rule Broadcast. They will soon be moving in with Rule, but for now, they are manning a small shop in the basement of an old apartment building.

I just received my “PL” mount from Letus Direct a few days ago and I really wanted to try out a proper 35mm film camera zoom lens on my Extreme adapter. The PL mount is solid, but it will be very important to get a cinema camera rod system that could work with my new Letus V2 rod system. It must support the 12 pounds of French glass!

The lens has a 25-250mm focal length with a 3.5 f-stop. It is fairly fast, but not as fast as the f2.8 24mm-290mm Angenieux Optimo lens that they had in the back room. That expensive lens weighs nearly 40 pounds! Maybe I will rent that someday and have my camera assistant carry the rig.

A young and knowledgeable fellow named, Adam from Boston Camera, helped TJ and I get the camera fitted with an Arri rod system designed to hold the weight of the cinema lens. It took us about 30 minutes to get the Letus V2 rod system dialed in to accept the solid steel Arri rod and tripod mounting plates. Once, everything was in place, we mounted the lens and tested it all out.

The lens is great. We pointed it to a focus chart and did a few tests. Nice zoom, super smooth and fast enough for what I was going to be shooting…a documentary on the Boston Celtics in a brightly lit Boston Garden. The fact that I can change the focal length without changing my prime lenses will save me time and I will be able to shoot more footage.

I expected the back focus to be out and it was. Unfortunately, I did not want to go back inside the Letus and pull on the ground glass element to try to get the film plane correct. I had done this before and it was a bit fiddly (thanks for that Phil). Plus I added a small finger print to the corner of the frosted rectangular glass…that I cannot fix! So I told the guys at Boston Camera that I would purchase the Letus Elite retro-kit from Letus Direct later that afternoon and have the back focus adjusting block Fed Ex’ed to my house overnight. This will give me the super slight adjustment I need to back focus the lens and allow me to maintain focus all the way through the zoom range.

I am renting this lens Friday morning and will use it at the Celtics game on Friday night with my Sony PMW-EX1, Letus Extreme, and a Vinten Vision 10 LF tripod. I will bring a few primes just in case the lens proves to be just a bit to heavy to cart around!

I will post another blog and let you know what problems I ran into. I will try to get permission to post some of the footage to this website for you to evaluate.

Check out this video to see how this setup looks! CLICK HERE.