The Brevis Flip and the Letus rod support

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First and most importantly my first EX1 footage to be broadcast went out today on Channel 5 at 1904 GMT. Very pleased, despite being just in SD it looked terrific. It was part one of my religion series that you can see on my website under religion. It was the protestant one. I had so many comments on how amazing it looked. Nobody can believe it was shot on that little Sony. That is one good camera!

Anyway onto the matters that interest you…The Brevis flip arrived, as well as my Letus mini and Letus rods.

First off the Letus rods are terrific. About the best rods out there bar the Zacutos. Very well made, very solid. A bit heavy mind but for tripod use it is rock solid. Highly recommend them. My cavision ones come loose all time. I can’t see it happening with these.

I have mounted them on the EX1 now. It’s a big high at full height, meaning it won’t fit in my Petrol Doctor’s bag. If you lower them then I can’t get my Miller tripod plate on in the right place as the vertical adjusters get in the way. I would like to see two sets of vertical adjusters in the box. These ones and some MUCH smaller ones.

I also got the Brevis Flip today. Very nice, very solid and well made. It seems very much like the same material as the Letus extreme. So I tried to mount it to the EX1. Unfortunately I couldn’t get focus on the GG. It was just too close. With the 1/2 chips it makes it harder to get close focus. I found this on my F350 and Brevis and with the EX1 and Brevis. I was hoping the flip would cure this but it hasn’t.

So I tried to put a large spacer between the achromat and the flip. No joy. So I then put the spacer between the achromat and the ex1. Success. I was able to easily get focus now. Also like the Extreme I can zoom in and out and not lose focus. Very handy!

It’s a shame about the large spacer as it makes the Brevis and flip quite long. Certainly longer than the Letus Extreme. But still completely usable. I can’t see anyway round this. Hopefully someone will as it would be great if it was more compact. Despite it being Christmas Day tomorrow the workaholic in me will test it out to see the most important part. How good the picture is. I will report back.

I was also slightly confused by the two Cinevate logos. On the front and back. When you are mounting it for the first time it gets slightly confusing as it looks very similar both ways round.

Dennis certainly has an impressive piece of kit there. It’s been a long wait. He said he expected them to be ready for Christmas…last year. Oh well, it has been worth the wait. Am sure the version that would have come out last year would have been inferior.

UPDATE…UPDATE…UPDATE!

I took the Brevis flip and EX1 out to do some filming. Unfortunately it didn’t go well. I was unable to get anywhere near edge to edge sharpness with my CF1LE, flip and EX1. I believe this to be an EX1 issue. The half inch sensors have made it necessary to put spacers between the lens and achromat. Big mistake. By doing this it means edge to edge sharpness is impossible. The spacers need to be between the achromat and the flip for that the happen and in that configuration or without the spacer I cannot focus on the ground glass.

Dennis has promised a solution post Christmas. I hope so as I have invested a lot of money in my Brevis system and I adore it. All the different diffusers, the light weight. I have every faith in him. But, until then I cannot use my Brevis with my EX1. Damn!

12 comments

  1. Congratulations on the footage! Do you know when the next ones will be shown? I’d love to see them on the TV … and say hey, I know what camera he used on that!

  3. My family and I just saw the Catholic piece. I wish we had a widescreen TV, although the 4:3 crop looked good. I did noticed a swoosh effect to add in the names of the parents… didn’t like it, but I guess it made sense. Did they ask you to add that?

    Congrats! Looking forward to tomorrow.

  4. Thanks for the update. This is interesting and makes me wonder whether or not to even get the flip as I plan to get the EX-1 soonish. I know (based on Dennis’ info) that it will be better for the XH-A1 I own currently, but…..

  5. philip,
    I saw you simply using the plastic adapter to focus instead of the whole ff set up.I was doing that today without the whole set up and it was easy from old manual focus slr experience.
    good work,
    Babu

  6. Sorry to hear that the Brevis flip doesn’t live up to expectations. I thought this may happen based on the amount of spacing required on the Z1…the optical path in the flip unit was unlikely to be long enough to compensate for the loss of the spacer. Looks to me as though you could improve the chances of focusing on the GG by placing the spacer between the Brevis and the Flip unit. That way you lengthen the optical path in the right place (ie in front of the Achro). Spacing between the Achro and the EX1 isn’t really going to an option as the achro should be as near to the Camcorder’s lens as possible.

  9. I’m confused, no follow focus? Good looking rods, can I ask why you got the Letus as opposed to the Cinevate? I have an EX-1 coming and was going to go with the Cinevate rods and Letus adapter, any reason you would advise against? Also, I’m thinking about using this setup on a steadicam, any idea the weight?

  10. i don’t generally use a follow focus as the way i work is very fast. I normally just have gears on my lenses and focus using them.

    The Brevis rods are good but I recently received the letus rods that’s why they are on there. I have just got the new super strong Brevis rods so will try them out soon. The Letus rods support system are very solid, but heavy. They are designed for the letus extreme so it makes sense to get them for the letus.

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