I got a great Idea, at least for me I consider it great, need to know about you all:

Let's start a collaborative film production about all this thing we are doing together:

The main idea is each of us start shooting ourself in front of the computer typing messages on the forum, like in real world we are doing. So as we type, we say what we are typing, because a movie is image and sound.

You also can include in the movie your relationship with your family or friends, or with your work fellows including in the movie things you talked to others about the project: something like: "This Brazilian guy is freaking out, he will never make this happen" or anything you want to include: "Look, he got something, we have a hope now..." or: "Father, why did you not get out from this computer? You stopped playing with me many days ago...come on, sing that song for me"

So here I shoot my experiences with the glass and plastic and this way we can turn this into a movie.

Am I freaking out about like a diy collaborative gone mad? or could this be a start point for a movie called: The collaborative glass hack project or anything else?...

Somebody here said to me: show your face... so my idea is, lets show our faces we all together in a movie!

@apefos @JohnBarlow You know I can read your conversation, right? Get a room, you two ;)

$30 in for anamorphic. Good work Adriano :-)

The optical lab ground a better lens.

They advised me to buy thicker glass, because when the machine grind a cylindrical lens, it is prone to "eat" the edges of lens if the glass does not have enough thickness.

This new glass solved the problem. The 2,3mm difference in thickness decreased to 0,8mm difference in the new lens. I do not now yet if this result will be the same for all lenses, maybe it can increase or decrease a little in each lens. For me to say what will be my error margin I will need to wait until I do at least 10 lenses to compare them. But it is very better!

Now it worked, no problem! It was some kind of maintenance issue (I guess) within paypal.

I was just about to donate 30 USD, but paypal apparently can´t transfer money to account holders in Brazil at this time.. Oh well. I´ll try again later. :)

Sure you can't make the edges/sides of the lens smooth / polish them before "glueing" it inside? If that's somehow possible, it would look much much better. People judge quality by cosmetical appearance as well. It could make the difference between someone thinking it's a viable option for Anamorphic video and someone thinking it's probably not that good and more of a DIY product. The rest of the product looks pretty good! I'd probably go for black screws.

there is another easy way to find the cylindrical focus before fit the adapter in the taking lens: you look through it with your eye and rotate the parts between them to find the cylindrical focus. Fit the adapter after cylindrical focus is set will make things more easy on camera. When adapter is in camera you do a fine tweaking in the cylindrical focus when adjusting the distance focus.

I updated the instructions with this idea and it will be not necessary to remove parts anymore, so dust will not be a problem.

thanks!

Second draft for the Instruction Manual: (updated: no need to remove parts anymore)

To setup and focus the adapter, the best way is:

1-unscrew a little the three big screws, look through the adapter with your eyes and rotate the parts between them to get the cylindrical focus, fix the screws again. take care rotating the screws slightly to not hurt the plastic parts

2-remove the filters from your taking lens. If you want to use a ND filter you can fit it in the taking lens before setup the adapter. The adapter is 52mm thread, if your camera have a different thread size you can use step up or step down rings

3-rotate all adapter to align the image in the LCD. the image must look thinner, If it looks fatter rotate the adapter 90 degrees. To fine align after find the thinner image, rotate to both sides alternately until find the best position

4-in fast taking lenses open the diaphragm to one fstop after wide open. In slow lenses set to wide open.

5-enable focus magnification on camera

6-to tweak the focus, start working alternately in the taking lens and in the adapter

7-first do the best focus you can in the taking lens

8-unscrew the three big screws again, fix the back of the adapter and rotate the squeeze element to find the best cylindrical focus

9-move the squeeze element front and back to find the best distance focus, move to back for close objects, move to front for distant objects.

Steps 8 and 9 must be done alternately and/or simultaneously. When you find the best approach in the adapter focus, you need to go back to the taking lens and redo focus on it. keep focusing the adapter and taking lens alternately to get the most precise focus you can

10-after find focus hold togeter the squeeze element and the back of the adapter with two fingers, with the two fingers touching both parts of the adapter (the front and the back) to guarantee the parts will not move between them when you rotate the screws

11-with the other hand rotate the lock screws, one by one, a little bit each time until the squeeze front element is fixed. Rotate a little bit the first screw, and move to the next. Rotating the screws a little bit each time alternately, until the squeeze element is fixed will do better alignment between parts. Do not rotate so much the lock screws to avoid hurt the plastic body

12-doing focus can cause a misalignment in the aspect ratio because sometimes the back of the adapter rotates a little, so after focusing, rotate all the adapter together to align the image in the camera LCD. A tip to do this is to rotate all the adapter for both sides alternately until find the correct position

Tip: I will show a very thin tape that can be used in the thread to make it more tight to make the back of the adapter do not rotate eventually. It will be very useful

13-the people and objects must appear thinner in the LCD, if people are fatter, the adapter is in wrong position, rotate all the adapter 90 degrees

14-to de-squeeze the image in post, just multiply the height pixel count by 0.75 or the width pixel count by 1,3333

Notes

A precise focus in the adapter is a must to use fast fstops

It is not recommended to use the taking lens wide open. Stop down one fstop is necessary to avoid blooming and glow

Rack focus is possible only between objects close to each other. Stop down the taking lens a little to get better rack focus.

Squeeze factor changes a little bit when object distance changes. Infinite distance objects will get a slightly different squeeze factor from closeup objects. The squeeze factor is smaller for closeup objects and bigger for infinite distance objects. There is no way to solve this in the optical system, because the lenses power would need to change for each object distance to keep the same squeeze factor. To correct this you just need to stretch or squeeze the image a little bit in post production. Do not worry, because the difference is small and this will not bring a resolution loss. Looking to the objects and to the people it will be easy to see if they are correct or thinner/fatter, so you can adjust if needed. First do the default 0.75x in height or 1.33x in width correction. After this move the height or the width scale slider for both sides alternately so you will see the image stretching and squeezing and you will perceive the best point.

The assembled unit is in page 10 of this topic.

Two donations until now: 35usd.

As I promised, here it is: the first Apefoscope assembled unit. The black plastic body with focus mechanism.

I followed @Vitaliy_Kiselev advice and I created the donate button in my website. You type the amount after click. I need a total amount of 250 usd to finish the coating tests. So @others can donate.

My website is: http://www.apefos.com

It was just five days delay from plastic service to get it ready.

The body alignment is ok.

There are small scuffs in the edge of lens and this normal from grinding and do not hurt image quality.

I removed the front clamp from the body to allow it goes a little more wide.

The front lens now is fixed with dark grey cement.

The big screws can be black painted if you prefer.

The two small screws in the front part is for allow hold the part to move it.

The three screws in the back part is to fix it after doing focus.

The rear thread is 52mm, step up or step down rings can be used.

Focus is from 51cm (1,7 feet) to infinite (measured from the front of adapter using Nikon 35mm AIS lens)

It works in GH2 with 35mm and 50mm full frame lenses. With the kit lens you must set it to 42mm.

I will do tests to find the focal length to use it with APS-C and Full Frame cameras.

ND filter can be used between the adapter and the taking lens.

The weight is 125 grams (4,41 ounces)

I will wait until I do the review before start selling. So buyers will know exactly what they will pay for.

I recommend you write to the kickstarter staff to find out what the problem is, if they refuse to help, there are alternative sites to kickstarter.