Andrew - EOSHD

Btw Thanks to continuous Fukushima disaster, hot topic is now Pacific sea food, tuna fish etc. Who is still eating Pacific catch? It may have low radiation and you can stop it by piece of paper, but if you eat it, it will stay in you and you will be exposed to the low emissions for the very long time, probably rest of your life, and that can be pretty serious. Cumulative radiation is harmfull.

 

This is a great thread, has been wonderful to read and actually thank you to the original poster because it is well intentioned and interesting.

 

Thank you even more though to the people curious enough to do some proper research, because hysteria is everywhere today and it is not constructive. Most people don't have any real threats effecting them, so they invent them. This is human nature. One example is the complete decommissioning of nuclear in Germany due to a one-in-1000 year 5000 mile away tsunami which happened to one plant on the coast of Japan combined with a magnitude 9 earthquake.

 

Clearly nuclear is very dangerous in such circumstances. As it would be in your kitchen.

 

So the Germans decided to kill their perfectly safe nuclear industry and become dependant on expensive, ugly windmills and Russian nuclear power (a whole lot less safe) because of the threat of a magnitude 9 earthquake and tsunami!

 

Logical?!

 

About as logical as being scared of a 35mm F2 :)

A day at the beach is more dangerous than owning 100 Thorium coated lenses. We should be thankful the Thorium makes for a sharper picture. The only reason Thorium was replaced in manufacturing was due to hazards related to the actual manufacturing with large quantities of the stuff, day in day out. I don't intend to grind down the rear element of my Asahi Takumar and drink it in a cocktail.

 

So I guess I'll just keep using it.

Pretty good example. Any lighting other than natural sun light?

I can see Junior's case for dangerous ingestion of thorium coating if the lens is smashed and dust ingested somehow, but in the case of just using or living around the lens your skin acts as a shield... the radiation doesn't go past it and the doses aren't enough to cause skin cancer so I honestly don't think there's much to worry about. Obviously the manufacturers (Canon, and plenty of other biggies) would have done a full recall in subsequent years if evidence came up that the lenses were dangerous. They have been around for 30-40 years and there's never been anything proved!

 

I'll remain open minded and see where the argument goes. I did once sell my radioactive FD 35mm F2.0 with concave front element and got the non-radioactive version. Might be a good subject for the A7 book to add in the specs an annual dosage ;)

Very interesting thread.

 

And I am reading it very fast with my three eyes.

10 μSv is the dose everyone just got from background radiation in the last 24hrs.

 

So 1 hour of cuddling the rear element of your radioactive lens = 1 normal day living on earth.

 

Just after Fukushima I went to Japan.

 

People there over the entire year had a 1,052 μSv dose of radiation based on Tokyo's readings.

 

That is still only 2% of what the US allows workers to receive per year at work!

 

Source: http://www.blacksmithinstitute.org/blog/radiation-101-what-is-it-how-much-is-dangerous-and-how-does-fukushima-compare-to-chernobyl/

 

So say you spent 5 hours shooting with your radioactive lens per day, EVERY DAY of the year. That is still only 1825 Î¼Sv exposure and still under 5% of the total limit which is considered 'safe' by the US authorities.

I do cover some Leica M, Pen-F and Contax G short flange lenses in the book and some pancakes as well.

Like I said, it's a matter of taste, and depends on your personal needs.

 

What are you arguing for then?

Does this cover only lenses you own? Or all lenses available. I don't see a Sony lens chapter at all which seems odd.

 

Only the lenses I own. I have one E-mount lens and it doesn't cover full frame! The new Sony FE mount stuff is not very interesting and it's pretty much a known quantity...I just feel it's overpriced but if you want AF (why? not useful for video!) then the 55mm F1.8 FE mount lens is the best.

The reasons to go for the A7S are 1.0x crop instead of 1.5x crop and having to use Speed Booster, otherwise 2.2x crop.

And the low light performance.

 

Let's see what dynamic range is like on the A7S that might also be impressive.

 

There are very few other reason to get the A7S over the GH4.

Just a brief note: Panasonic have given me a ship date for the GH4 in Europe. First shipments leave the factory last week of April destined for Germany. Shipments to dealers start after the May 1st holidays so from the 5th the camera will be almost ready to ship to customers.Read the full article here

A comparison of standard bitrate / high bitrate from Lars

 

Available now, special price of $19.99. Instant electronic download.

Recommended lenses for the Sony A7 / A7R / A7S - A Reference Guide by Andrew Reid

 

Read the full article here

My advice is use Premiere and set the playback resolution to 1/4.

I see they listened to the pros at NAB.... "As expensive as possible please!"

Nice rumour. Promoted to front page. Happy Easter :)

 

Discussion continues here - '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>>

Here's a rumour of the latest GoPro specs. Source is not known to me so take it with a pinch of salt until it goes official!

Read the full article here

The AX100 is of a species we thought extinct in the filmmaking world... the consumer camcorder. I had a brief hands on with the camera to find out how much of it is high resolution point and shoot and how much cinema camera.

Read the full article here

I have tested it.

 

Clean means no onscreen graphics or icons.

 

'Clean' in the sense of image quality means no moire, aliasing, false detail.

 

Uncompressed clean HDMI does not effect moire and aliasing.

 

On the A6000 the HDMI is free of onscreen icons so you can record from it. It is also uncompressed so you avoid the worse instances of break-up with the crappy internal AVCHD codec. However there's a lot of processing being done to the signal between sensor and HDMI output. I don't think it is 4:2:2 and the pixel binning process loses you quite a lot of the original sensor data making for a thin signal. End result is that although you can record it to a 10bit 4:2:2 file, it doesn't look like one. It looks only a little bit better than AVCHD!

 

Still lots of banding and blockiness especially in shadows.

The problems I encountered mostly had a lot to do with getting colour to look right and grading the weak codec.

 

Lots of banding in the shadows and a weird electronic look to colour.

 

I tried everything to get it to work, but just not for me.

 

You have to mega crush the blacks... loses you so much dynamic range... otherwise image looks odd.

 

When I went back to the 5D Mark III I knew why the D800 looked so 'off'.

 

When I then picked up a GX7 and started grading the 28Mbit/s 1080/50p MP4 codec in that I was really surprised. It holds up and I have got it to match / intercut really well with 5D Mark III raw footage.

 

I am not against small file sizes and compression or 8bit but it has to look 'right'.

 

GX7 will replace my Pocket Cinema Camera. That isn't getting any use since it still lacks too many features and Blackmagic have shown little interest in updating it.

Soon EVFs will be 14bit 4K OLEDs.

 

Then the flippy mirror will say bye byes.

I also found the D800's video output looks strange in terms of colour. Sorry but despite initial excitement, I don't rate it that highly...

 

Archaic as a stills camera.

 

Surpassed by 5D Mark III raw for video.

 

Like the Italian styling job though!

Much further along with my A6000 experience now since the introductory blog.

 

The codec has real issues. Lots of banding and mud. A very bad implementation of AVCHD I'm afraid. AVCHD can be good. On the FS100 it's fine! What a shame Sony do not pull a Panasonic and give us a proper codec on their stills cameras.

 

There is still some moire and aliasing too but then it's now more in-line with other cameras, and certainly not as bad as before. Better than the A7 for sure.

 

It's still a nice camera for the price but the D5300 will give you a better image.

I come from a digital world and the analogue way is just unnatural to me. When I look through the optical viewfinder I can't really judge accurate depth of field, accurate bokeh, accurate brightness, proper rendering of the lens especially wide open. Don't get me wrong, the viewfinder on the D800 is one of the best optical ones there is but it bares little relation to what the sensor gets. It's an out of place analogue part in a digital body, indeed a digital world. Time to move on.

I also would like to know if there is a speedbooster that works with AF on the GH4.

 

None of them do.