Lense sold separately?

Agreed about the torque. I don't understand that. But maybe is has something to do with the say the Mini35 is mounted. I'm purchasing the Redrock Micro M2, so I'm not sure how different that will be.
And, yes, the lens is definitely sold seperately. I've done a lot of "research" on the M2, and found that it can use (depending on the mount you purchase) any Nikon "F" mount or Cannon lens (the lens they had attached to that Mini35 was a Cooke, I think). A very cool option. And, if you are able to go straight to the camera body, then it seems like the "prime" solution!

Is this actually a prime lens straight to the CCDs?
If so using a lens designed for a 35mm imager straight to a 1/3" imager has many issues.
If not, what's between the lens and the imager.
Have you seen any resolution charts, how do they compare with Canons native lens on the same camera?
Certainly this kind of kit should be a better deal on the XL-H1 than the Z1, with the Z1 you're adding glass in front of glass, hardly the way to get the best possible image.
How much light is lost with this rig, that might or might not be an issue depending on what you're shooting.
Bob.

Don't they crank it on to a large piece of glass infront of the primary lense? Maybe there's some kind of setup to allow the image to clearly hit the CCD's on the backside ????? - I SURE DON'T KNOW THOUGH :)

Dave

>>Is this actually a prime lens straight to the CCDs?<<

No. It's projecting the prime lens' image onto a piece of ground glass. Then the CCDs look at that ground glass through a relay lens.

So there are at least two elements between the still-camera lens and the video camera CCDs: a piece of ground glass, and a lens to relay the image from the ground glass to the CCDs. In the case of the Z1 or other fixed-lens camera, the camera's built-in lens serves as the relay lens; in the case of the XL1/XL2/XLH1 or JVC HD100, there is a separate custom-built relay lens that gets mounted to the camera.

WOAH-WOAH-WOAH...hold on...

The RedRock M2 (formerly Micro35) and the P+S Tech "Mini35" are two different products (and a $9,000 diference in price).

That picture is of the Mini35 (and yes, it will go direclty to the chips on an XL-anything). Last I checked, the M2 has a universal 72mm mount and has to go through the camera's glass - fixed or not - which will make your XL-? VERY long (DV-wise).

I emailed RedRock about this, but haven't heard back from them. I also talked to the people at Serious Magic about adding an image flip feature to DV Rack to compensate for the upside-down image the M2 puts out. Don't know if the Mini35 puts out a corrected image or not, but there has to be something that makes it 10 times the price...

You can't argue with the image quality of the M2 - but it still has its growing pains. And looking at an XL H1/Mini35 rig with 4x4 matte box and follow focus is roughly a $24K investment before any primes or filters.

IMHO, a "brushed-up" M2 would probably explode - even at $2K or $3K a pop.