Caleb Genheimer

Sure . . . give me a bit, my MBP is on the fritz. I just hope it isn't on its last leg.

Enjoy! Feedback more than welcome. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUKW-pxCQ3o&feature=youtu.be

Nice. Looks Just about useable. The upper right corner has that light grey vignette that shows up when a light source is in frame shining at the lens. I've been brainstorming ways to get rid of it, some sort of matte black felt coating might do the trick. Darn, now I've gotta ave up for the Nokton  ;) I for one think this is pretty big news. The Kowa Bell and Howel/8-Z/16-H is useable down to 25mm, which his approximately "normal" on GH2. This makes them bested in this department only by the LA-7200 and perhaps the Iscorama, neither of which are 2X anamorphic adapters.

Really? I just stuck it in front of my Tamron Adaptall-2 24mm, and it didn't circle up all the way. In fact, it is borderline useable. I guess I should rent a Nokton and find out once I get my proper lens clamp.

Hi, all! I've recently obtained a wonderful Kowa 16-H, and I've discovered (to my delight) that it is in fact usable with as wide as a 28mm lens on GH2 as long as I'm cropping the sides off in post from 3.55:1 to 2.35:1 ratio. I've not yet tried my 24mm as my red stan adapter has yet to arrive, but I'm wondering if it might work that wide. Is there anyone with a Kowa Bell and Howell/16-H/8Z and a Voigtlander 25mm 0.95 that could test the two together? Andrew perhaps? I know that the anamorphic guide has max wide focal lengths for this anamorphic on FF, APSC and M4/3 sized sensors, but those focal length suggestions seem to be for full coverage of the sensor, which is not necessary when cropping the sides off the footage in post to 2.35:1. If by chance the Voigt works with Kowa, it could be a killer combo. Anyone know of any exceptionally impressive 28mm lenses?

Yeah, based on what I saw in my research about kowas, I wasn't expecting blue flares. But this is most definitely blue, and its not a blue light source, its a maglite.

This is with a Canon 28mm f2.8 nFD some VERY slight vignetting (crops out if you do 2.39:1). Enjoy. I did!

Andrew, seriously. It's killer awesome. try it out. The GH2 can totally pull it off with good intra footage, its such a sharp camera. Other cams with big piles of garbage in the shadows won't fare the same, the garbage will shine through. But the GH2 holds so much detail, this overtop of it is icing on the cake. It helps stretch softness of 1080p anamorphic stuff like a charm too. I'm not buying another camera for a long time now. This little trick made me so happy with the GH2.

This file was converted to ProRes422HQ via ClipWrap, then dropped into a 4000x1674 (2.39:1) sequence for the same codec settings as the clip. (my old copy of FCP only goes up to 4000, so no 4096, sorry.) I stretched the footage out from 2X, then scaled it up from 1080 to 1674 vertical (313X scale approx.) zoomed in to 100%, it is very obvious that the footage has been scaled both ways. Then the magic started. I dropped a 4679 × 3119 film grain PNG file in the track above the footage, scaled to 100% (pixel-to-pixel with my 4000x1674 frame). See for yourself, but I think this is pretty brilliant. The grain brings the footage right up into 4K. To my eyes, it appears as if it was shot at 4K, just with a softer lens or with a softening filter in the matte box.

THanks for the suggestions  ;D Unfortunately, I live in the backwoods of Northern Minnesota. Not much for any camera shops anywhere near. 

I'm sorry but this is getting very frustrating. None of the good anamorphics seem to be available for anything south of $1000. Am I just crazy, or is a Kowa 8Z not worth anywhere near that much? I really don't even want to bother with Sankor/Proskar etc. because I know I'll just wish they were wider. I mean, I know these are special lenses, but come on people . . . who's paying that much? You're crazy. *sigh* end rant.

In short . . . they just cropped. They shot spherical, so how else would they? Regardless, I thought it was well shot. I saw it in 3D last night and was pleasantly surprised to see a masterful use of deep DOF, which really made the 3D pop. There was shallow stuff too, mostly in character closeups, interior, during conversations and it wasn't distracting in 3D like shallow DOF often can be. I imagine it would hold up pretty good in the second dimension as well.

https://vimeo.com/42735440

I know everyone here is really into their anamorphic shooting, but what about projecting? At the end of the day, does anyone slap their Kowa onto a nice projector and just watch the footage that way, or does everyone just desqueeze in post?

It was Saturday before I realized what was going on, so a lot of houses were closed. Oh well, it all worked out, and I got to impress everyone with my understanding of mount distances  ;) Great product, it worked really well on my GH2.

[quote author=tttulio link=topic=738.msg5496#msg5496 date=1337434884] Great, They just finished it and it is now irrelevant as it is missing the BlackMagic Design Camera... [/quote] AHA! I see what you did there  ;D Gosh, they'll just have to make another one  ;)

Hey, @Illya Friedman! You gotta hit up the LA rental houses and get one of them to buy one of your tuner S-kits. I was in LA last semester, and I advised (I still stand by this advice, it made the film) our director to use PL mount SuperSpeeds. So our DP rented the 18 and 50mm, and what he thought was an S-kit from a rental house where I was interning. I stopped the presses on the supposed "S-kit" when I discovered it was being sub rented and was actually an AF100 kit. Long story short, after hours of phone calls, nobody in town has the S-kit AFAIK. Thank God that I rented the adaptor for my GH2 just for the heck of it, (Who wouldn't with two unused SuperSpeeds), and that I was smart enough to look up M4/3 and E-mount flange distances. With a little gaff tape to block light and a lot of careful setup, we got the AF100 kit in front of the FS100 (I think think in the end what had happened was the similar names confused the rental agent over the phone).

I say wait and see on the BMC, or even wait till the 3rd generation. The important thing about the BMC is not necessarily the cam itself, but what it is hopefully going to push the whole camera industry to start doing . . . move to the next level (RAW). I hope it is an amazing camera, I really do. But it is a first product, remember that. I suspect it might have its fair share of shortcomings. RED did when those first started, and look where they are now. Wait, trust me.

Yeah, a lot of those guys have their heads lodged fairly far up somewhere or other. I completely believe the guy about it not being well received in Hollywood. Not everyone but a lot of people there (I was only there for a semester, mind you) had some pretty serious BS spewing out their mouths on many things. Many don't pixel peep. It goes something like "well my friend (so-and-so) worked on (big name project) and he (only uses/hates/made love to) the (C300/Alexa/RED), so I prefer (to not listen to anything you say about codecs because I don't know anything about them)". Pretty hard to convince some of these d-bags to even unstop their ears for a GH2 discussion. I own a GH2. I know what it can do, and they're placing it in third exactly where I would have expected it to land in a fair test. The FS100 is very good too (shot our short film on one . . . with 18 and 50mm SuperSpeeds. Looked incredible.) The F65 at least on paper quite frankly looks to be in a completely different league from anything else in existence, and for the most part, I trust Sony's paper, they make good stuff that does what they say it can. Truth is, any of these cameras can look good if you know how to tailor to it. The big differences are in noise/compression, resolution and color. Unless a camera's DR is terrible, you should be able to light for its needs. The thing with the GH2 is, it womps most stuff besides the big boys on the resolution/noise/compression front thanks to the hack. I really am interested to hear specific reasons why they think it has the edge on RED, though.

I have a 37mm MIR, but its f2.8. The more I shoot, the more I realize that I don't even want to bother with any lens slower than f1.8, or anything much longer than 50mm. I'm sure this is just the crop sensor limitations that are bothering me. Really, a 35mm 0.95 from Voigtlander would cure all, but that's going to require some patience and a chunk of change that i don't have  :)

Hi, all! Looking for suggestions on a good 35mm lens for use with GH2 and Kowa 8Z. Looking for fast. f2 or faster. Looking for hard stops, no focus by wire mumbo jumbo. The more aperture blades, the better . . . I like my bokeh round (albeit stretched). I was thinking maybe Nikon ai or ais? The color rendition of these I like a lot.

Andrew, one anamorphic film that is really growing on me and is now on my short list of all-time favorites is Hunt for Red October.

I for one am holding judgement until after I see the completed film in theaters. I suspect this could be a case of them showing stuff they're not done touching up.

This keeps the MFT fire burning VERY bright. Canon and others have a lot of catching up to do. If the GH3 and the next AF-whatever are anything as good as the GH2 (and why would they not be?) . . . MFT will be leading the pack.

I agree also, give them some time. If it works on other cameras, how hard can it be to get it working in those two? What they have done is very tricky to do. Give e'm props and some slack.