Caleb Genheimer

This past year, I’ve had a HUGE personal revelation concerning digital cameras. Firstly, the Pocket 4K has opened my eyes to the image quality and flexibility that is missing in any camera that lacks RAW or near-raw codec options. It really is a sticking point for me at this juncture, and sets apart what I would trust as a professional tool from what is prosumer. I just don’t want that uncertainty about quality during production. Secondly, I recently got a 16mm camera, and there’s still in 2020 NOTHING digital that can touch real film. There’s just not. The nuance in color, detail, highlight retention, everything... it is simply unmatched. Only ARRI gets anywhere near the ballpark. The myriad of other cameras, even cinema cameras, are of course capable of producing beautiful images, but they don’t come out of the gate like ARRI does. That first test roll of Vision3 500T scanned you an SSD full on blew my mind, and I was going into it expecting to be impressed. Now, instead of obsessing over which new multi-thousand dollar digital camera body I should commit to for the next four or so years, I’m obsessing over what I might shoot on a few thousand dollars of celluloid this year. IMO everyone should shoot film once. Honestly, 16mm cameras are not terribly expensive, even good ones with crystal sync and quiet operation for sound recording compatibility. Excluding getting your own, many rental houses still have SRs just sitting around, and will rent them out for very reasonable rates. Kodak has labs all over the place, most of them staffed by wonderful and helpful people. Obviously, there’s no permanent replacement for the convenience of digital cameras in the modern content creation environment, but film is also a more viable and accessible option for the occasional project than most people realize... and as more people use it, it will be more likely to stay alive and well. Using film re-adjusted the way that I shoot digitally as well.

You say the Leica is almost a dead ringer for Alexa, eh? That’s a pretty hefty claim considering the Arri’s now decade-long reign at the throne of digital motion picture sensors. I’d be genuinely interested in a breakdown of the Leica’s latitude and highlight handling, as I think those are the aspects of Arri’s image which competitors still fall short on. It is possible to re-map densities, colors, and tailor denoise/sharpening appropriately to get close to Arri’s look from any high quality camera file these days, but if the latitude and roll-off are not attainable at the sensor-level, the end result still falls notably short. I am beginning to lose faith that any of the current manufacturers will ever truly crack that egg. At this point for me to ditch just sticking with my oh-so-affordable Pocket 4K, one of them would have to make an Alexa-competitive full-frame camera with DPAF, in the sub-$4K range. That S1H is so close, but the AF is once again a crying shame... if the Leica truly is knocking at Arri’s door as a full-frame 10-bit camera, color me EXTREMELY tempted. That would make it the Poor Man’s Mini LF, which is a huge deal even without good AF. If Metabones would get off their butts and make an L-Mount to Medium Format Speed Booster, I’d be into one of the new Panny/Sigma/Leica bodies in a heartbeat. Ive been looking at the Kipon Baveyes, but apparently it has some distortion, which makes it a zero-sum-gain IMO. At that point, may as well use faster full-frame glass.

I would die happy if they would go in the opposite direction: 16mm coverage. There are many wonderful 16mm film cameras not being used because it is costly and/or impractical to convert them to the coveted Super-16 format, but 1.8X anamorphic and “Regular-16” would be a match made in heaven! Their 28/40/65 already cover the format, they could just do a wider lens for 16mm specifically, and re-house the other three lenses in PL mount. I’m scheming regardless to get that 28mm onto my Eclair NPR, but it would be preferable to have a wider option. I would think they could do it with the anamorphic optics from the 28mm and a new spherical block designed around the smaller 16mm image circle.

Kowa. Sankor. Elmo. There are many good options, it doesn’t have to be “for 8mm”, any 16mm or even 35mm scope will work as well. ebay is great, expect to pay about $400 for a decent scope these days.

I’m REALLY crossing fingers hard for a “Pro” version of the Aivascope 1.75X lens some time soon. Heck, I’d buy 3 or 4 and make myself a set of anamorphic primes!

I STILL feel 99% confident that an oval aperture blade system would be relatively easy to implement. Why 1.33X lens makers haven’t tried this I have no idea. If they hate the concept of loosing light, the final stops of the aperture can just open the sides up to a spherical opening for max T-stop. On digital? It’s past time to trick out my Kowa 16-H and call it a day. Probably a FVD-35 for maximum width. I’m eyeing up the Z-Cam F6 with a Kipon Baveyes for near IMAX size sensor emulation. On film, I’m starting in next year with a (regular) 16mm camera, and I’m hoping that Aivascope does another run of the 1.75X lenses, as that stretches out regular-16mm to be basically bang-on 2.39:1 with no waste. I may even buy 3, pair them with taking lenses and variable diopters to make a 3 lens set, possibly rehoused. The only way I’d ever touch a 1.33X lens would be if it gave a significant wide angle advantage over the Kowa with similar optical quality... which is not an easy metric to beat. Technically the Letus does, I think? But then it’s double focus. 1.33X at 50mm is a safe (if not THE safest) place to start with budget all-in-one anamorphic, so I don’t blame them, but I’m also not very enthused. If they pull off a 25mm, I’ll jump on board in a heartbeat (especially if it is easy to open up and modify with an oval insert) Otherwise for personal fun stuff, the projection adapters still give more character and quality... and if I end up in a more critical situation? Well, there’s an excellent set of Cine Kowas around town that I could just rent.

I’m unclear on how this doesn’t encompass BlackMagic’s BMRAW.... glad that it (apparently) doesn’t? But yeah. BMRAW REALLY needs to start permeating/spreading, or we’re screwed. There has to be viable competition, or the tech will remain artificially out of reach. All things considered, IMO RED has some borderline douchey business practices/models across the board. I don’t doubt the validity of their innovation in this instance, nor the right for them to do business as they see fit (or for people to buy into the hype), but it’s 110% not for me. I’ve worked RED footage in post, and believe me, the reason they’ve defended this tech tooth and nail is that it’s the only thing they have going. Any pro body sensor from the last 5 years would match or even obliterate what I saw out of the RED in terms of noise, sensitivity, dynamic range and color fidelity. That’s not to say the RED was bad... it was good footage, especially in compressed RAW. But ARRI still whoops their (and everyone else’s) butt up and down the street, even in ProRes. I really hope Kinefinity is joined in making RED-adjacent cameras, because there is an ergonomic sensibility to the brick/brain design. Even ARRI has been pushed into making the “mini” variants for this reason. I’d love to se a Panny EVA-2 with the S1H sensor, in a brick body, with BMRAW licensed under the hood.

@Andrew Reid What kind of DR are you seeing compared to the S1H? I’m patiently waiting still for someone to break that Alexa barrier of 14+ stops, but even with RAW becoming pedestrian in the last few years, no camera does yet. The S1H is now a Netflix certified A-camera, which means it is very good... but it still sits right in that 12-ish stop plateau where most all cameras sit (even if it’s a very high quality 12 stop image.) Do you think there’s any chance of a full sensor height 3:2 readout on the Sigma similar to the S1H 6K mode? If you’re in contact with Sigma, put that bug in their ear for sure.

I haven’t, but I’m sure there are still funny rare variants floating around. I’ve been stalking eBay for almost a decade now, and I still occasionally see scopes that surprise me. Theres actually a BIG brother to this scope (CinemaScope Attachment I and CinemaScope Attachment II), and I’ve combined front/rear from each with excellent results. Though the squeeze is reduced to only 1.33X, the angle of view compatibility is massive. The only downsides are fixed (infinity) focus, no variable diopter large enough to cover so wide, and (obviously) weight. Other rear elements I’ve got can make it around a 1.5X squeeze which is more useful for most of my applications. Maximum compatible focal length of the anamorphic front block is inversely related to the squeeze factor resultant from various rear block pairings... this results in a constant maximum horizontal angle of view, regardless of the squeeze factor. The 1.33X combo may work with a 17mm, and the 1.5X with only a 20mm... but the view angle is the same in both after factoring in the horizontal gains of the anamorphic. Thus, combining various front and rear anamorphic blocks may change the squeeze factor, and may increase taking lens compatibility, but the actual maximum angle of view will always be identical to that of the donor scope of the front anamorphic block. If I dare, I might some day combine some different rear groups with my Kowa 16-H to attempt a conversion to 1.5X squeeze, but even at 2X, it remains the widest projection scope out there. When I dug into these B&L lenses I was pretty disheartened to learn of the inevitable balsam separation and how difficult it is to successfully re cement anamorphic blocks. They produce some beautiful images, and if tuned correctly, can be very sharp. I wish some of the modern anamorphic adapter manufacturers would take note... there’s still no substitute for simple glass, simple optical formulas, and just scaling it as big as is needed to make that work even without fancy coatings. Sure it’s heavy, but the big glass just... works.

Yea I LOVE my GH5S, and if the S1H didn’t still have a drunk person inside it running the autofocus, I’d have bought that sucker so fast.... Canon just has AF nailed down at this point. It’s 100 % professionally useable. I wont deny that they get a whole lot of other stuff pretty mix-bag as far as video is concerned. Why every influencer isn’t absolutely SCREAMING at Panasonic to fix their AF I have no idea. Maybe 2020 is the magic year for saying enough is enough? I would almost dare call the S1H the perfect hybrid cine camera, but for the AF. Actually, the Sony FX9 gets a step closer, including good AF and electronic ND... but it doesn’t have that juicy full sensor 3:2 mode. It’s also the first Sony camera in a while that doesn’t make skin tones look like hot garbage. That’s one other thing Canon has down well. It feels like that Goldilocks camera is somewhere just around the corner... full frame open gate mirrorless 4K+ 60p dual native ISO electronic ND dual pixel autofocus internal compressed Raw codec dual analog gain audio inputs with 32 bit float file recording.

If the rear glass is not cracked I’d say those marks are fine. In the future I’d advise using a rear clamp that has plastic set screws though so as to not over exert force on the rear, or you’ll dig into it more, and possibly crack the glass inside too. Not sure if there are infinity only versions, but I doubt it. Most of these lenses have a way to lock the focus (since once installed in a theater for projection you wouldn’t want them to accidentally go out of focus.) It might be that the locking mechanism is seized. Not a big deal if it is truly at infinity, because for any practical purpose, you need a variable diopter to focus anamorphic projection adapter setups. With such setups, you put both the prime and anamorphic at infinity and leave them there.

Yeah but when the Organics become sentient, our entire species will be at risk of eradication!

The physics of focus remain true, regardless of format... however, your main concern will be the possibility of introducing vignetting. The variable diopters are only compatible out to certain angle of view, and that doesn’t change per format either. My advice for large format would be the new Rapido FVD-35A. It is optimized for “normal” angle of view 2X anamorphics (aka 50mm on full frame), but can be pushed as wide as 40mm apparently. (That’s a potential 20mm fullframe equivalent lens for anyone doing the anamorphic math). A quick google and table look-up shows that’s in the neighborhood of a 95 degree diagonal angle of view. Fixed diopters will be cheaper, but will limit your lens to close focus. For photography and certain video shots, that might not matter, but for fully racking focus, it won’t work.

Perhaps. Still, the only thing I would currently shoot on Sony cameras is a zombie flick ?

Hey, look at those lower resolutions! That’s awesome! Oh wait, what does that word “crop” mean? Also, it’s 2019. I thought all the speedbooster debates by people who don’t understand how they work were put to bed two years ago. I’m not rehashing how those work and their benefits again. Also, no way am I treating it like a Sony. AGAIN, I’m pointing out how the P6K is actually extremely similar to the the P4K, WHICH I OWN AND LIKE A LOT. Sony’s cameras are just gross.

+0.3 more stops of DR is definitely worth the extra $1K. Right?

Also, I didn’t think they could possibly update the Pocket and make it MORE of an ugly duckling. Somehow, they managed to do exactly that.

It’s a step down for your wallet, that’s indisputable. I would absolutely dispute any claim that it’s an objectively better camera. Both cameras are EXTREMELY similar. There are subjective reasons that someone might prefer either camera. The question potential buyers will be asking is, “are those subjective reasons important enough to me to justify the higher price tag?” For me, it is definitely not. If I want a camera compatible with EF full-frame image circle lenses, I’ll just get a cine speedbooster for the P4K. It really is that simple from my perspective. I actually see the 6K as little more than a spec sheet bragging number. Seriously, for almost all practical work (that I do), 4K is more than enough. Anything more just means bigger files. If you do work that simply MUST have 6K Raw, by all means, nobody is stopping you. Get the P6K. The difference between APSC and Micro 4/3 is honestly pretty negligible. Any claims of it having less noise or better dynamic range due to its sensor are COMPLETE and utter conjecture. I’ll believe it when I see real tests, and according to all the press per BM, the DR is exactly the same. It is 2019. The concept that 6K APSC versus 4K M4/3 is a HUGE deal radical difference (all else being equal) is honestly not only laughable, but potentially bad consumer advice. They’re just different, and both are a steal compared to anything else in the market. I guess I should apologize for voicing my honest opinion on the pros/cons of these two cameras. I didn’t realize this was supposed to be the blind circle-jerk thread.

Explanation: Bolt this to a P4K cage: https://www.metabones.com/products/details/MB_SPEF-m43-BTB Fullframe EF Cine Mount camera. Better than a normal EF mount. End of story. It just is. The LucAdapter will be the closest thing for the P6K by making it fullframe, but it still doesn’t give you a locking cinema mount. You’re stuck with the bog-standard EF mount on that camera thanks to BlackMagic.

I would argue that with a proper cage that has support for hard mounting a booster, the cine locking EF (or PL I suppose) booster actually makes the P4K MORE of a cinema camera than the P6K would ever be. I don’t care how well-machined a standard SLR bayonet is, a positive locking cine mount is infinitely superior for any real cinema camera work with follow focus units. The Metabones optics are already fantastic, and now they have versions specifically for the thinner sensor stack of the P4K. There are a million things to worry about when doing cinema work other than 6K resolution. Sure, the oversample is a nice perk, but 4K is plenty. Again, I feel like an SLR mount on a mirrorless camera is low-key stupidity. Let me put on a dummy EF adapter! Maybe even one with ND or a booster... but I digress. I prefer the form factor of the ZCam stuff for sure, but their pricing I think is awful ambitious for a new company, no matter how good the cameras are. At the very least, the P6K will change the market’s price tiers for the better

Gotcha! I have no actual optics experience, nor any way to measure the optical power of the lenses, so it is nice to have quantified confirmation of what I was hypothesizing. This means that it is important to start with a reasonably wide-shooting anamorphic for the front optic, and add a rear from a shorter scope to reduce to the desired squeeze ratio and achieve an increase in taking lens angle of view. I’m *almost* tempted to snag the rear group out of my 16-H to see if I can’t make a killer wide 1.5X or even 1.33X. Again, I now have a bunch of bigger 35mm projection scopes, many almost the same size, so armed with this knowledge, the best path to good results is probably using those fronts with 16mm anamorphic rear elements. They’ll be way smaller than the fronts, but it is probably where some of the rarer anamorphics get their design from, like the Möller 30. I suppose 16mm fronts with 8mm/Baby rears is not entirely out of the question either.

I’m really digging good handheld work lately. I shot weddings nonstop for the last 7 years on gimbals, and they just don’t look cinematic to me, even though I’m a seasoned operator. I’m heavily considering a 1-Axis Letus Helix just for keeping good horizon with heavier setups. Full-on 3-Axis gimbals for big rigs are prohibitively expensive and need major ancillary support equipment, but a single roll axis could keep the rig to a handheld/shoulderable size while providing some stabilization to the critical axis. There is also no replacing a good shot on sticks. Gimbals, just like autofocus and other advanced camera technologies, do allow you to get quality results with less effort. But the effort itself is part of the process that forces a certain pace and approach to shooting. Sure, with a gimbal you can quickly achieve any camera angle, any camera movement, instantaneously. But that doesn’t force you to stop and think through the motivation for the movement and angle. You can, but you don’t have to. As soon as the schedule on set is rushed, you stop thinking and just shoot. I prefer tripod these days, sometimes slider for a bit of movement. If I do use the gimbal, it is only when I want a specific shot from a piece of gear that I don’t have on hand (dolly or jib for example), and in that case, I’m trying to precisely mimic only what that piece of gear would do with the gimbal, nothing fancy.

Yeah! Although they’re shorter than original... not necessarily smaller or lighter:

Try this on for size. I guess I need 114mm diopters now, because the 95mm ones vignette:

First off, YES. This disrupts aspects of the market wonderfully... not that all cameras should be just like BM cams, but the major players have been holding back on good, easy-to-use RAW. This lights a fire that has needed lighting for some time. And it adds more Resolve users, which is great for that platform. If you haven’t switched to Davinci yet, what are you even doing? Second though, I still prefer my P4K. I’m planning on adding one of the new positive locking mount Metabones, which effectively makes it a fullframe camera with a real cine mount once I bolt the booster to the camera cage. And even with $700 for the fancy-pants booster, it’s still cheaper than the new P6K. https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1492783-REG/metabones_mbspef_m43_bta_t_cine_speed_booster.html I don’t think I really need 6K... not in 2019. I shot a great short film last year on GH5S that just did very well at LA Shorts Fest, and that was a 2K DCP that looked fantastic. More often than not, I’m looking for ways to soften even the 4K stuff anyway, and my (very good) Kowa 16-H resolves about 4K max at shallow apertures unless it’s very stopped down. Black ProMist, Glimmer Glass and Smoque are all higher on my to-do list than 6K. Probably top of the list though is a full-frame mirrorless that can take the Kipon Baveyes MF adapter and shoot good 4K footage with good dynamic range. I’m after some tasty Alexa 65/IMAX/Ultra Panavision vibes. My hopes are on the S1H or the Sigma.