I call Hot Rod Cameras Bluff with a $10,000 Bet (for Sharpest PL RF for Komodo)

[Jacek Zakowicz]

I must say that setting adapters precisely has some merit. We have sold a large number of our Canon and Nikon adapters for RED, Sony, ARRI cameras. We always set them and QC at a pretty close tolerance. Over the 12 years of selling them we had very few flange depth error inquiries. Fraction of a percent.
There were some conditions however
- all camera models have adjustable sensor position so the flange depth still could be adjusted. (from my conversation with the customers it is a rare occurrence that they would do that- most of them were not actually aware of it)
- all cameras have a very rigid base mount ( DSMC, FZ, ARRI Alexa Mini/Amira,LF Mini) so they tend to be quite stable once set. Canon RF would not qualify IMO.
- We do not generally have any glass in our adapters so potential glass variance is not a consideration.

Now we did make some custom adapters with glass both flat and powered (speedbooster) That is a quite a different ball game. Especially the speed booster project required customized equipment, procedures and sampling of the camera bodies. The camera manufacturer had to be involved when we supplied the specialty test equipment and the manufacturer gave us feedback with the numbers we needed to build the adapters .

 

[Illya Friedman]

I leave it up to the viewer to draw conclusions to be polite, but if I were to be straightforward I'd say you got smoked by the Chinese with regards to performance.

You can't shim your way to the finish line.

Bluff called, bet lost.

Unless of course you can produce something that outperforms the Chinese copies?

How Trumpian of you.

Double down on your position, insult, deny science, claim victory and move on. Classic.

I do find it entertaining that you dictate the terms of a wager without waiting for my agreement, then when I attempt to confirm the details and suggest the contest be transparent, scientific and repeatable, you say it’s all over. Nice.

So it’s finally my turn to share.

Graham, you built a PL mount, like dozens of other people before you.

By your comments you worked alone on this PL mount without input from experts or the industry, and have shown there’s only one criteria that matters to you, accuracy of “pre-shimming” a mount.

I take these facts to mean two things.

One, you don’t understand what makes a PL mount adapter different from some shoddy mass produced dslr adapter you’d find on ebay and 2, you don’t understand what the market actually wants or demands from a PL mount.

By your own admission you do not have history or experience in the cinema business, instead coming from working in “landscape photography” and “machining.”

Like many other people you believed you saw a new business opportunity and entered half-cocked, without the appropriate understanding of the technology or the market. You are frankly not an authority in PL mounts, or lens mounts or cameras.

Those happen to be 3 things to which I happen to have decades of experience. Most people don’t know, but I have either provided the detailed specification, or actually manufactured the PL mounts now for 3 different camera manufacturers, one of which is a giant corporation and a household name, one is well known and highly prized in the cinema space with cameras being used at all levels of the industry, and the 3rd is the beloved Digital Bolex the only 2K digital camera that has tripled in value in the used market and continues to appreciate.

Between the two of us, only one is qualified to judge what criteria makes a PL mount good, bad or inbetween.

Exhibit A, you’ve spent an incredible amount of time trying to convince everyone of a NON-ISSUE (pre-shimming) is how a PL mount adapter should be judged.

As has been pointed out by this community (repeatedly) this claim is false.

But because you have based your go to market strategy around this falsehood you are experiencing a cognitive dissidence. It’s as clear an example of what Upton Sinclair said so eloquently and in various ways “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it.”

To be clear, this “out of the box” performance you tout means nothing.

For the record, the Hot Rod PL will make a better image and be more accurate than your product every day of the week.

It’s easy for me to set up a shot which you, along with everyone else, can duplicate. Which will make it easy to see that the PL mount which you’ve taken every opportunity to slam is in fact superior.

You made a statement earlier that some lenses should be shimmed to a PL mount. That’s a cardinal sin. A fireable offense at one major rental company, who did in fact fire someone for that.

You also seem to believe that people who desire accurate focus marks and are competent, will choose to ignore shimming a mount and then go directly to work. That’s laughable.

You may be unaware, but there is something intrinsic to professional narrative production work called simply, prep. That is not the time that someone chooses to instead shim a PL lens to their camera, instead of the right way round. This is not some unusual geographic behavior. This is how it’s done the world over. If you had had conversations with the industry in the US, Europe, Asia, Africa or Australia, you would have learned that professionals do it one way, and not the way as you’ve advocated.

You believe you know how to test a PL mount adapter, but based on everything you’ve said here, you don’t. You don’t know what criteria is actually important to the market. Because what you are touting, is not it.

In my 2 previous posts here, I only asked a couple of things of you, but perhaps the most important one was when I asked “what conclusions” you drew based on all the measurements you took. You chose not to answer, and I realize now that is because you couldn’t.

So please consider looking in the mirror for a second. Does being a machinist, an entrepreneur and landscape photographer offer you some inherent qualifications for building a professional tool for the cinema market? I’d say no.

Can you build something that looks like it would work, sure- but so do manufacturers in China and Europe and others who sell on Amazon and ebay. That’s not the hard part. If you had a little humility and asked for help, it’s unlikely you’d be in this situation today.

I am seriously not belittling you here, but I made this thing for fun in a couple weeks as a side project to the drop-in PL RF to serve as a baseline for glass in the optical path.[/IMG]

Dude. Being 100% real here- it shows.

There’s a lot of companies that are tourists in the cinema industry. They try something and it doesn’t catch on, then they pivot or disappear.

Sometimes one of these companies makes a product just good enough for the pre-professional market (my favorite new euphemism for prosumers) and they never really break through (pun intended) to the professional market.

I’m asked probably every other week why one company or another released a product that is lacking in one basic area or another. Something obvious to professionals. Typically the reason is ignorance, other times is from designing inside an echo chamber, but still sometimes the reason is arrogance.

It’s not only individuals that suffer from arrogant design, big companies do too. Really an end user typically has no way of knowing how something comes to market until they get a glimpse behind the curtain.

There’s a number of problems I can see immediately with your product without seeing it in person.

I know you said you didn’t have any help, but you really should have asked for some. I don’t particularly like posting online how other companies' designs are a failure, as it gives them the ability to have an authority offer fixes to their problems, so I’m going to point out 2 basic problems that you don’t know you have. I will attempt to do this without actually telling you what they are.

Without even holding your mount I can tell that you will have compatibility issues with some PL lenses. Sorry, you copied the design of the wrong mount if you wanted maximum compatibility, particularly for some vintage lenses that aren’t going to work.

Also, you did not solve your delta L correctly. That’s possibly the most serious fail. There’s other fundamental problems I can see as well, but I’ll hold off until someone brings me one of yours in person.

Your go-to-market strategy is banking on your customers being ignorant. It would be so much better just to educate your customers, instead of trying to put one over on them. Supplying a certificate is an attempt to legitimize your false thesis that “out of the box” is what matters. But as has been pointed out by so many here, your “sharpness” claim is worth less than that piece of paper you printed it on.

I’ve noticed you haven’t responded to most of the questions and comments you’ve been asked in this thread, notably and repeatedly from Jacek, Bjorn, Vance, Michael, John and Mr. Orlandi. For the most part you ignore them. Other people like Blair, made valid points that completely flew right past you. Instead in the case of Blair you re-directed back to the false importance of the thickness of a section of your mount. When Kyle pointed out that you were arrogant (really obvious from the jump) you again re-directed back to your other big false narrative, which I’ll get into in the post immediately to follow.

 

[Illya Friedman]

If anyone goes back and reads this thread from the beginning they’ll see it took several pages of comments just trying to understand if the Breakthrough adapter even uses shims. You would not answer that basic question, and frankly that was definitely not made clear when you “called me out” on Instagram. It seems to me the rest of your time here is spent deflecting and saying that it’s my fault we are even here reading this now.

For just one moment, stop and pay attention to the push back here from the community, re-read what you’ve written. Clearly so far in this thread, I’ve barely said anything. I don’t know most of these people who are refuting your claims. I believe they are doing it simply to attempt to show you how very wrong you are. Maybe they just don’t want to see misinformation propagated, I understand that.

Thankfully most people here are highly competent and know that the most important criteria for a PL mount is not having it arrive in a box pre-shimmed to 1 particular model of camera.

So for my last point, it’s something I really can’t ignore any longer.

But after you falsely claimed our spectral data was bad, I had to call your bluff.

This quote above, recycled in several other posts so far, including a rather unfriendly reply to Kyle Wright all include attempts to paint me as the person provoking and as such would be responsible for your public theatrics and indignation.

As directly above, you keep saying that the “bet” is calling me out for the offense of testing your filters. But the reality is that you challenged me with that bet before mentioning your filters.

https://www.instagram.com/p/COwO0jmHxsN/

However, you statements and screenshot arrangement in post #74 are an attempted deception. To show comments in the order you wished they’d occurred. Not how they actually did. Why would you purposely attempt to justify this bet and indignation over measuring your filters? That kind of action seems crazy to me and I don’t know why you would do something so easily disprovable.

 

[Phil Holland]

I must say that setting adapters precisely has some merit.

Just landed back in LA.

And agree. I think something that will be a moderate discovery for some reading this, but there is a large, very large portion of people now using PL glass never shim their lenses, check their back focus, etc.

This wasn't always the way, but this is the way now due to the general state of the mass industry. Rental houses, lens shops, etc. do a good job at making this all work seamlessly for the most part, but I have spoke to a few filmmakers who rented glass and cameras online, shot a whole bloody project, and asked why their images were soft. Even more apparent when shooting with anamorphic glass.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Just landed back in LA.

And agree. I think something that will be a moderate discovery for some reading this, but there is a large, very large portion of people now using PL glass never shim their lenses, check their back focus, etc.

This wasn't always the way, but this is the way now due to the general state of the mass industry. Rental houses, lens shops, etc. do a good job at making this all work seamlessly for the most part, but I have spoke to a few filmmakers who rented glass and cameras online, shot a whole bloody project, and asked why their images were soft. Even more apparent when shooting with anamorphic glass.

Yes we do it quite often. Bunch of different camera bodies and lenses to be used and no time in hell to set it all up properly on some odd location in some even more odd country, on the beach in the rain... Then simply one does not want to dick around with shims and try to get shit calebrated. But when doing so the normal procidure is to not just pull focus using the focus scales of the lens but tap in 1:1 and such and check focus on the actual image and if using zooms then yes dont count on them to be parafocal and possibly infintite cant be reach on some of the setups etc.

Normally then, for the primes, the AC make a focus disc with proper markings on his hand unit so atleast he knows where, 1,2,3 meters etc are and then he use that and his monitor to pull focus.

So the little offset that is caused by a slight ofset in backfocus should not ruin the show, it just slips the focus scales.


And again as I asked above. Possibly you know the answer.

RF mount flange distance is 20mm
PL mount flange distance is 52mm

So the difference is 32mm

Now does the above mean that a RF to PL mount machined ecactly to 32.0000000000000mm works perfect on all well colimated RF cameras?


I´m not sure. But as all the different brands and makes out there use different in front of sensor glas arrays. I´m not 100% sure the correct offset is equal for all. As the real distance RF distance is not 20mm for any of these cameras, the real distance is 20mm with the optical / glas elements taken into account. And I might be mistaken but those could work as a factor so for camera make A the added / needed distance might be 33mm and for camera make B the needed added distance to reach the PL standard might be less than 32mm etc.

Or is the flat glas not working as a factor but as a straight offset?

 

[Phil Holland]

And again as I asked above. Possibly you know the answer.

RF mount flange distance is 20mm
PL mount flange distance is 52mm

So the difference is 32mm

Now does the above mean that a RF to PL mount machined ecactly to 32.0000000000000mm works perfect on all well colimated RF cameras?

I´m not sure.

The printed spec is certainly exactly that, but every camera represents different variables. You have a filter or filter stack of some sort, sensor coverglass, and the odd shocker of the sensor itself with very subtle impact due to surface and/or microlens design.

RED world, we get a heads up on this as we all know what an OLPF is as there are Interchangeable OLPFs, though I think at this point we should refer to that stack as the "Color Science Filter" or CSF as it better represents the intention and impact. I say this because when RED updated to DSMC2 they moved the Low Pass Birefringent material into the sensor coverglass.

Just to touch on the subject here, that CSF tends to have a few layers of optical goodness to absorb or cut infrared as well as potentially other layers like a subtle color filter tuned to get the best results out of the sensor itself. Ultraviolet can be cut here, but examining lots of cameras I have found it gets handled everywhere from the sensor coverglass to even the sensor itself. It certainly wasn't this way early on (pre-RED days), there's obviously been refinement and improvements over the years.

We currently have cameras that have various different sensor designs, different CSF strategies, different recipes, and cameras that have "nothing" in the form of Low Pass filtration to assist with protecting against aliasing artifacts like moire. You may have a lens "on point" of 52.0000mm, but it may work "correctly" at say 53.02mm or something given the optical path. This compensation is done camera or lens side, ideally more camera side or camera w/ adapter sidem but that's not always the ideal or best way.

At the manufacturer level, ideally cameras are built to a very, very tight specification as well as calibrated to that specification in the factory. From what I can observe from cameras I've purchased from RED compared to others is they have a target that's really tight. Komodo more so as it's a rigid world. Same with DSMC2 Rangers actually. On rigid platforms that leads to either getting an adapter or mount that's tight and tied to that spec or begin to shim or adjust as necessary.

The question in itself is the spec and I'm finding lots of chaos in the modern era among E-Mount, RF-Mount, PL, etc. Add an adapter into that mix and odds are some adjustment will be needed.

I'll go zig zagging on an awful road real quick because the lens designs themselves play into this. Finding lenses that are inherently more telecentric than not actually plays a role on their level of forgiveness on a subtle level.

With that said, precession within low thousands of a millimeter is ideal. Or a low tenths on micrometers. Or within a hundred or a few hundred nanometers.

It's a game of tolerances and calibration. The key to understanding I think what is going on here in terms of the tit for tat jibber jabbing is "out of the box" performance. Which I can certainly say is relevant as many owners of sub-$10K systems don't get into spending the time, resources, or have the tools necessary to be on point when it comes to their glass.

This somewhat underlines some of the be careful who you talk to regarding lens performance even because some people who have told me certain lenses are soft haven't fully investigated all of this.

Cinema generally favors shimming in lenses, though a few of them have built in adjustment mechanisms. I've been on record as saying the DSMC2 adjustment mechanism is a thing of beauty and alleviates shimming, which opens up some fun opportunities as well. Rental houses likely are happy shimming away. If I was king of the world with lightning shooting from my trident I'd likely have adjustable mechanisms in camera as well as lenses with a sliding scale with a different style of open or locked infinity, but I haven't learned how to muter the words form the ancient texts correctly yet.

In the meanwhile, it looks like many are working towards tighter tolerances overall and that's been what's been discussed at many NABs, Cine Gears, IBCs, etc. among manufacturers even.

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

You guys are complicating things unnecessarily. If you are not adding glass to the optical path (no glass comes in the adapter) you don't need to add anything. Straight 32mm (for RF to PL) for the adapter with no glass. For such (glass-less) adapter the flange is always 52mm for PL lenses and is calculated from that number for adapters. If you are adding glass in the optical path you need to compensate for it. The camera manufacturer takes care of the optical path compensation with glass in the camera body. No matter what you always attach the adapter to a 20mm deep RF mount.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Thanks for the long reply Phil. But thats all clear to me. But the question Im looking for an answer for is the followinng:

To simply. Lets say.

A specific Camera of one camera make, lets call it A is proven to have a perfect backfocus on its RF mount. The focus scales line up perfectly on a certain lens and the zoom is parafocal etc.

Then we have another camera we call it B is from a completly different brand and all together built differently, But it also works just as flawless with the same RF zoom lens.

So in this hypotetical example we csn agree the two cameras RF backfocus is identical and perfect.

Thrn we add a PL adapter into the mix.

Camera A then shows perfect backfocus using this adapter....


My question is now.... drumroll, will that adapter show the same result on camera b that is a different brand and has a different glas stack infront of its sensor?

So, my question is if the different flat filters built into the different cameras just give an offset to the physical backfocus distance or do they work as a factor / multiple for the backfocus distance.

The simple answer for those that knows this stuff would be.

A. Yes the flat glas just provide an offset. The adapter will work identical on both cameras.
or

B No the glas works as a multiple and that is part reason why one RF to PL adapter needs to be chimmed.

Now I think my theory here is false. So answer would be A. But Im not hundred procent shure. Normally I would call my dad his sort of a doctor in this field but he is unreachsble at the moment.

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

The answer is A

 

[Phil Holland]

The camera manufacturer takes care of the optical path compensation with glass in the camera body.

I wish it was that easy. Test a couple thousand cameras. Fun discoveries. FUN with a capital F.

But yes, ideally back focus to set the correct sensor/image plane for your given mount or mount + adapter combination and/or shim as necessary.

 

[Jacek Zakowicz]

In a way I have tested that many cameras since we sold our adapters for them and no complaints...;-)
But again-
all have adjustable sensor position
all have very rigid base mounts
we did not put glass in our adapters
Neither condition applies in this case-
Komodo does not have adjustment for the sensor position
Komodo does not have very rigid base mount
Adapters for the Komodo have glass inside them (which may not be an issue ...)

 

[Phil Holland]

I'm not taking any stance that any adapters are rubbish really. What's merely being discussed is being a bit more ideal out of the box, which is a tit for tat between two manufacturers. That's between them really.

However, if anything can be taken from this thread outside of the chatter and slapping, please do inspect and properly collimate your glass and back focus your sensor or sensor + adapter combo. Your images will thank you.

Now what I'd love to see is a RF>PL strength test on a few different cameras, but again use a support of some sort either to body or base plate and you'll be fine.

I'm going to go roll naked in my Les Bosher and old Panavsion adapters for a while.

 

[John Brawley]

No lenses in PL mount are shipping to spec.

If they are, then they probably won’t stay in spec. That’s how it goes. Thermals. Stress and change over time.

The whole idea of a perfect PL-RF mount to spec on a camera that’s also perfect and to spec is kind of pointless if the lens has to be assumed to either be out or, one day will be out.

I get that a lot of new players are in this market. Both those making lenses and those buying them.

I get that some are ignorant of the shimming and adjustment process.

Hoping for some magical day when the variation copy to copy and tolerances from a plethora of manufacturers is unified and good enough not require vigilance and shimming seems to just be encouraging bad practice. Those problems will never STAY solved over time.

Marketing a product that solves a problem that can’t actually be solved whilst encouraging the teaching of bad practice doesn’t seem like the best path to be on.

Shouldn’t we be teaching those that are new to PL what best practice is ?

Even if the stated goals of the two manufacturers of making a perfect mount could be met, there’s still a problem in that the lens must be assumed to not be made to the same spec or if it is, that it changes over time.

So the marketing promise is actually creating a solution that actually isn’t good practice. Someone’s going to buy a perfect out the box mount, slap a poorly performing lens on their Komodo and have potential issues with their lens not scaling or staying parfocal.

We should be educating those new to PL users. Not assuming that they won’t check anyway and selling them a “perfect out of the box” solution that will lead to problems when they mount a PL lens that’s not shimmed to spec…which at the moment as has been said many times…is more likely than not.

JB

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

I still dont understand why should i pay 2-3 times more for a dumb mount?

 

[Vance Colvig]

John,

I do not buy into your statement "No lenses in PL mount are shipping to spec" as that is certainly not my experience. I buy my glass from Duclos and I know that every lens that goes out the door from them is in spec. Duclos even follows up a year after purchase and asks if the customer if they would like their lens checked to insure it is still in spec without charge. Although this service is not available from box houses such as B&H and Adorama as far as I know, I would certainly think any reputable retailer with an adiquately equiped lens repair department would or could verify proper lens specs as routine or by request. Over the past 50 years I have purchased new PL Angenieux and Zeiss lenses and had no need to reshim. Those were purchased from Century Precision Optics back in the day.

 

[John Brawley]

Vance, I have no doubt Duclos checks the lenses before they get into your hands

Like any good sales company would do.

It was a while ago, but we took delivery of lenses while I worked in prep and some were great and some weren’t.

We routinely checked and and it certainly wasn’t unusual to need to re-shim them.

On my last job we had to send back two of the six zooms to be re-done in prep.

JB

 

[Robert Hofmeyr]

Or is the flat glas not working as a factor but as a straight offset?

Ah, now I understand what you were asking before. Thanks Björn. I don't know the answer, but I would tend to trust Jacek above.

I am still confused by the side-by-side images Graham posted. Why is one not sharp? Was it focussed using a tape and the lens markings perhaps? Or was it done by eye? It does not make sense to me, and I would love an explanation from someone who knows more about this.

 

[Björn Benckert]

Ah, now I understand what you were asking before. Thanks Björn. I don't know the answer, but I would tend to trust Jacek above.

I am still confused by the side-by-side images Graham posted. Why is one not sharp? Was it focussed using a tape and the lens markings perhaps? Or was it done by eye? It does not make sense to me, and I would love an explanation from someone who knows more about this.

Yes, happy A was hte case or there would just be chaos with bachfocus issues.

Now, why did Jarred and gang not atleast give Komodo a flat machined front around the FD mount with 4 threaded screwholes. Its not like the camera has anything else going on in the front and imagine how much easer it would be to make / mount riggid lens adapters if it had. So much beta testing etc and then the camera comes out with some completely not needed design pattern in the front. Flat machined aluminum would have been a god send in comparison.

 

[Robert Hofmeyr]

Yes, happy A was hte case or there would just be chaos with bachfocus issues.

Now, why did Jarred and gang not atleast give Komodo a flat machined front around the FD mount with 4 threaded screwholes. Its not like the camera has anything else going on in the front and imagine how much easer it would be to make / mount riggid lens adapters if it had. So much beta testing etc and then the camera comes out with some completely not needed design pattern in the front. Flat machined aluminum would have been a god send in comparison.

Yeah, I'm playing with my Komodo rigging right now. The Canon RF to EF adapter is really not a solid solution. It rotates quite a bit, but what worries me more is how easy it is to move the lens up or down. I can use lens support, but that might even hold the lens at an angle to the camera and push the sensor plane out of alignment if it is not very carefully fitted.

 

[Phil Holland]

4 threaded screwholes.

It does, 4X on the front sides, which is why there are some adapters that use this.

And if I was a guessing man, also more useful to have those in that orientation on a smaller camera, but who knows.

Unfortunately Canon's focus with the RF to EF adapter has not much to do about motion peeps, moderately why the door is wide open for better adapter designs suited for motion. Interestingly their focal reducer is a different concept mainly for the C70. It's got a bit of play, just like anything else.

And yes, some PL lenses "ship to a spec". The Supremes would be the more interesting example as their release is tied to being the main competitor to the Arri Signatures and with that they initially were released shimmed for the Alexa LF and Mini LF. Zeiss is now changing this however to put them right on 52mm.

A lot of the notable manufacturers are tightening things up camera and lens side.