A small Shenzhen-based company called Cinematics International Company Ltd. recently caught the eye of No Film School at NAB 2018, and in a second you'll understand why. The company is showcasing a smartphone DOF lens adapter that enables full-size lenses to be used with an iPhone or Android handset.
Unfortunately, many key details about the adapter—including a product's name—aren't provided, but the company representative said Cinematics' adapter supports just about any lens the user may want to attach to their phone. The product also features a pair of metal handles and what looks like a viewfinder.
When asked whether the handles on the adapter are sufficient enough to support such a large lens, Cinematics' rep indicated the company has an additional hardware solution for that, one not shown in the video.
It isn't clear whether Cinematics International Company Ltd. has any immediate plans to sell the adapter—although why would the company bring it to NAB if it didn't?—but assuming it does, the product will probably appear first on the Cinematics' eBay store.
On a film set it would work very well as a directors viewfinder. It would allow the director and DP to find the right spot and lens combo before moving the tripod or dolly. Also, no guess work on how the background would look on the final shot.
Just to be clear, this appears to be a conventional DOF adapter, which basically means it is a camera obscura: the image is projected on a "film" plane and then that film plane is imaged by the cell phone lens. The "film" plane would be a material that acts as a focus plane, which essentially means a diffuser, such as ground glass or translucent plastic. The key problem is that the diffuser's texture will show, so most serious rigs incorporate a mechanism that physically moves/vibrates the diffuser so that any texture is smoothed; many use rotating ground glass, but vibrating would seem more likely here.
Without the motion of the diffuser, these are trivially home-made. Perhaps I'll throw-together a 3D-printed one just for laughs...?
DSLR and mirrorless cameras just became obsolete. Your phone is your next camera body. Sell your gear now before the general public finds out about this.
According to the web page it is a DOF adapter. If we assume that they know what a DOF adapter is, then it is the ground glass solution. Which is a standard way of getting shallow DOF when the film format is small.
It all bouils down to if it is a good DOF adapter. and also if the adapter takes non cine lenses, so we ordinary photographers at DPReview can use it. Not everyone that has a collection of expensive cine lenses.
Ha so it's ground glass DOF-adapter type on the earlier camcorders. Interesting. The problem had always been light loss but actually modern glass manufacturing came a huge way that the loss can be very minimal.
This is an interesting product.
To put a nifty fifty on an iphone not a 50mm 1.2 CN-E. But I guess it's too expensive for nifty fifty users thus will fail?
OK - looking at the web page - it is a DOF adapter. A DOF adapter means that the cine lens is focusing the image on a matte screen (a.k.a. ground glass). So, you can forget all talk about crop factors. The image is the real thing, without cropping, and with the original bokeh.
You will lose sharpness, dynamic range, flare resistance and light.
Of course, the lens in the mobile phone and the auxilliary macro lens in the adapter also will degrade the picture.
That said - DOF adapters are the real thing. They are actually used for professional filming. Might be a matter of cost how good they are though.
Is it there a huge focal reducer? Ground glass? What's that? It catches my eye as it seems giving a 28mm field of view/ DOF with decent (at least from a general "look") quality.
Ground glass means that the cine lens do focus the image on a matte glass of the same size as the cine sensor. So - the same image as for the normal cine camera. Then a macro lens do film the back side of the matte glass.
Well, no crop factor at all. I think the lens produces an image on a piece of ground glass and the smartphones is actually filming this ground glass. With that, the tiny sensor of hte phone can acceed to the small DOF of the lens (ie super35 dof on an Iphone) This was usd in the ear where camcorder had no interchangeable lenses, the device was addad in front of the lens ans the camcorder filmed in macro mode. Not so bad, I had one and I used my nikkor 35mm gear on a Sony Z1, but expensive and very huge (letus adapter hdv)
The crop factor is extremely high which is what makes this adapter almost unusable. I'd estimate it to be a greater than 6X crop factor. So a 28-70mm lens on a smartphone would be equivalent to a least 168-420mm lens on full frame (try doing wide angles with that).
Not the exact crop factor. I just know that one of my older compact cameras which has a sensor about as large as those in many smartphones (canon s5is) has a crop factor of 6X. I don't need to know the exact crop factor to determine that this is ridiculous.
I did some research on this and it kind of blew my mind. I already knew that speed booster (basically a converter as you call it) adapters could help a smaller sensor collect more light, but I didn't realize these speed booster adapters actually made the equivalent focal length usable. Now that I understand that I am able to see that this adapter may actually prove to be a useful piece of gear (although it does look ridiculous). Thank you for bringing this to my attention:)
Looks good. I can't believe how many negative responses there are to this product. Looks like a handy piece of gear. As Casey Neistat said in a recent 386 YouTube, smartphones are the future of cinema photography as its the great equalizer. Everyone has one in their pocket. Its not the gear but how you use it. An adapter like this provides added flexibility to get great cinematic shots using your smartphone and your DSLR or cine lenses. I'm curious as to how it normalizes the image circle to 'fit' the smaller smartphone sensor. How "good" do the adapter optics have to be to provide lossless and distortion free image quality to the smartphone? Would micro-scratches on the surface of the smartphone lens significantly affect image quality with this adapter?
Alien1 "Things are getting absurd down there" Alien2 "Invasion is indicated" Alien1 "Wait, Is that an iphone with a cinelens?" Alien2 "Invasion cancelled. Kickstarter joined".
You ever wonder how to show off as the hippest kid on your block? To show you have tons of money and little brain mixed together? you have the solution! With our adapter you can mix super expensive lenses with your cheap crappy smartphone camera!
*The company isn't responsible of insults to your intelligence after and during the use of our product"
Not from me, nothing to be respected about dropping 100k on risking the lives of a team of people to help you up a mountain you have no reason to climb other than to brag.
Graham, what a rediculous statement! The team of experienced experts that assist are paid and have the option to pass. No one is forcing anyone. Also, i really doubt anyone would do that just for for bragging rights. You can use that same argument for men going to the moon, entering the Olympics, skydiving.... they do it because they want to, and most people fail at these lofty endevours but those that succeed earn the right to brag. You can also extrapolate your bragging argument to photogrpahers that shoot things just brag, instead of for the love of it - which is probably the reason for most photo enthusiasts.
Hasn't Apple already been doing this-using high end cine optics with adapters so they can say "shot on an iPhone" even tho the commercials look far better than any average person's gonna get with their iPhone?
Is your budget running out because you spent too much money on good glass? Well have no fear, we've created the perfect solution for you. We created this new mount that allows you to adapt your smartphone to any cine so you don't go over budget spending thousands more on that cine body that you'll use for years down the road.
Great idea...some people who may need this will like to test it. Its a beginning. Does this mean that I can use some of my zoom lenses on my iPhone???? If it can than im definitely interested.
Folks, this is not absurd at all. This is intended to be used to preview the effect of a lens and perspective without moving the whole camera in place. It is not for filming directly on a smartphone.
If you watch documentaries about films are made you will notice that the director often carries a lens attached to an eyecup to make quick checks on lens settings, angles, and perspective before shooting. This widget is just the next step in the evolution of that eyecup, turning an OVF into an LCD display.
@Toni Salmonelli - There's something in the article (or maybe someone's comment) about it being a DoF adapter, which is something that has hit the market before back when FF sensors were insanely expensive and not suitable for video - the adapter would have a ground glass element (sometimes *spinning* to avoid the texture of the element appearing in the recording) that the lens focused on, and the other side was effectively a macro adapter focused on that ground glass element.
This would allow them to preview focus and DoF on the phone's monitor.
Even if you mount the "world's finest cinematic" lens to the front of this thing, you're STILL shooting into the image path of it through the crap that passes for optics on your phone. Yes, we get it. "Fine cinema optics" or whatever. If I can mount my Sony 70-400 G SSM onto my phone, it's still going to be no better than the glass in my Droid Turbo II. Yeah, I'll have REACH, but still seeing it through a phone lens. Maybe it's time for someone to build a phone with a collapsing telephoto lens built into a phone like those in compact cameras. It's not like phones are getting any smaller.
samsung did do a camera phone with a collapsible lens ..looked a good idea to me but never came to much ...maybe a head of its time maybe 20mm is to thick ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noUv27Zkgqw
Now if someone would just invent a padded phone case with shoulder strap that can have a pocket for a phone and the lens/lens mount and some chambers for some extra accessories. I wonder what you could call it.
Why not, I have a phone and a slew of great lens for my camera. If there us a way to adapt one for fun, why not? If its $100USD or there about I bet they sell 1000's of units, good for them. My phone shoots better video than my D500 anyways. And with the new video features in iOS and other manufacturers OS this could enable a ton of low budget artists to do what they want. Kudos.
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