Sean Cunningham

And they might have over-paid for either the +.5 or one of several other 72mm AT-X close-up filters that are not the one folks really want.  You don't seem to be getting that.

The GH2 was the last GH Panasonic will ever sell me, the last DSLR/Mirrorless I'll ever buy to shoot anything but stills with.  I find nothing appealing about the GH4 or the Sony.  I'll never buy another compressed camera (lossy, h264 or variants), one that tops out at 422 or needs another box to shoot RAW.  BMD has done nothing to sway my interest in their products and these new cameras only solidify my resolve that if I can't have an Alexa it'll be a Blackmagic.  

Stunt shots are not significant pluses.  In virtually any of these cases the SI2K and One Cam are even better and can go into even tighter places than camera the size of a GH2. 
 
I'm talking about the shots composing 99% of all other shots and making films that don't care about putting a camera in a cupboard.  The best films that have ever been made, that might ever be made, were made with cameras that couldn't go in these tight places and, guess what, nobody missed not having a shot from a cupboard, or looking out a glove box, or from behind a steering wheel or whatever gimmick you care to come up with.
 
The DSLR is bad for general shooting and must be kitted out to move right and let the operator see what they're doing, be held in a good position, and often these things are at odds with one another.

People buy cameras for what they can do.  At the level this is priced at, where people have been buying cameras, they haven't been buying cameras almost universally bad, with respect to form factor, but they do it because there have been pretty much no alternative.
 
The DSLR form factor is hideous for anything but taking snippy-snap pictures.  They became useful for more than that despite their terrible design with respect to motion pictures.  They spawned new products designed to work around the faults of using a square peg in a round hole.  The previous BMD cameras were no worse in this respect and better in others but definitely no worse.  
 
Now we're back on the right track.  That flip out screen will be very useful for low-angle, minimally rigged, top handle shooting.  For steadicam.  For in the field review.  Folded up and used with an EVF in a proper shoulder mount configuration, the same as you would have to do for any other camera, and it's an amazing and useful "gimme".  Let's also not forget the HDMI, sensor-less configuration paired with another camera.  
 
It serves multiple functions, or you can fold it away when rigged.  The equally impressive looking Aja CION is $3K more and you have no way at all to use the camera without already having or purchasing an EVF.  Unlike other cameras you don't have to ignore the fact of a mildly useful screen now partially blocked by a battery plate or some dinky little eyepiece now just hanging out like some vestigial limb, both of which will or would have never given you as much use as you'll get out of that 10" screen.

Most prodictions need lights and crews for commercial jobs , I just shot this weekend with a whole new LED light rig like used in 'Only God Forgives' , its superb and quick to rig and small ..and no heat on set - tungsten lights get like a greenhouse on my sets.
 
think of the big picture Andrew - this is good news as others will have to respond ....will we get a new cheaper Red camera soon? - they know how to make them .

Shot this for fun while on vacation in the Florida Keys.  This is the scene right before this woman goes to kill her violent husband.
BMPC RAW/SLRmagic anamorphot
GoPro in the water
 
Would've liked to use my Iscorama but was a little worried about leaving it unattended and in a hot car for days and/or dropping it in the water by accident...
 

Finally finished my short film project "Separate Flow".  Waiting for the right anamorphic and I think the SLR Magic Anamorphot was it.  Very practical to use on location, it worked really well for this project.
 

 
Debated long and hard on using either the GH3 or 5DmkIII RAW.  In the end I went with shooting RAW even though I had a lot of problems, including the camera shutting down at one point.  But it's the flexibility of RAW in post that won out in the end.  In the future I will use AF with the GH3/4 since it's more usable, especially when using a steadicam.

thats what real cameras look like , they are square , boxy and sit on your shoulder,  all 16mm film cameras I ever used where like that, Aaton and Arri
 
'>
 
for me Im quite excited about this camera it has good form factor and on paper loooks great

Canon, Sony, Panasonic...RED...you all just got served.

Woah!!
 

 
Introducing Blackmagic URSA, the world’s first high end digital film camera designed to revolutionize workflow on set. Built to handle the ergonomics of large film crews as well as single person use, URSA has everything built in, including a massive 10 inch fold out on set monitor, large user upgradeable Super 35 global shutter 4K image sensor, 12G-SDI and internal dual RAW and ProRes recorders. Because the sensor and lens mount assembly can be changed, you can choose EF or PL lens mounts, or even a broadcast video sensor with B4 mount. This means you can upgrade to the latest sensor technology in the future and keep your investment in the camera body!
 
EF Mount: $5,995
PL Mount: $6,495
 
http://www.blackmagicdesign.com/products/blackmagicursa

Lights.

" Their existing Cinema and Pocket Camera user base is lost. It’s over. These users will switch to the Panasonic GH4 and Sony A7S"
 
Why?  Do these cameras offer 12-bit raw? Nope.    

The GH2 was the last GH Panasonic will ever sell me, the last DSLR/Mirrorless I'll ever buy to shoot anything but stills with.  I find nothing appealing about the GH4 or the Sony.  I'll never buy another compressed camera (lossy, h264 or variants), one that tops out at 422 or needs another box to shoot RAW.  BMD has done nothing to sway my interest in their products and these new cameras only solidify my resolve that if I can't have an Alexa it'll be a Blackmagic.  

Hi Guys
 
Thought I would share our latest music video that we shot using Kowa anamorphics (40mm, 50mm, 75mm and 100mm PL with ALEXA) and which we used an iscorama and BMCC (2.5k) to do a few pick ups with.
 
Sadly only one of the Iscorama shots made it into the video. Not from lack of quality or it standing out... but just from the story telling side of things we only ending up needing one. I have to say when we were editing, how impressed I was with the combo. It held its own very well against the Alexa and Kowa combo and now plan on shooting more with it.
 
One thing I have always been conscious about with the iscorama is how it would fair on proper sets. I do often worry that its sometimes hard to tell if things are sharp and the focus is stiff making it hard to use a follow focus. I plan on having mine 'Van Diemen Rehoused' in the next few weeks to make it more onset friendly and then will hopefully get more use out of it.
 
The iscorama shot is the night time driving just before he enters the bike workshop. Could upload some other shots from the shoot if anyone is interested.
 

There is another tool that is being, or will be marketed by a professional colorist.  Shian Storm is also, in a more limited way, doing some empirically derived filmstock transformations in his ColorGHear suite.  It may not always be FC but there is a lot of "film conversion" going on, even in professional circles.  Film and the way it renders tonality and color will haunt digital acquisition for a long time to come.  They've yet to build a digital camera that can hold a candle to the best work being done in celluloid even today.
 
Anyway, yeah, people asked for "raw" but people don't ask for the highly imperfect and incomplete log-to-lin setup that's most commonly being used.  There is too much effort spent simply trying to manage up an honest and true rendition of what light the camera saw and the relative values present in a scene.  Getting to an appropriate linear representation so that you can then grade from a place of awareness and creativity, a place where you can make meaningful decisions that are more than just trying to get it to not look like shit anymore, shouldn't be an ordeal, it should just be.  It should be the first thing you see when you look at your footage.  
 
Seeing a meaningful representation of what you shot doesn't mean baking anything in or losing anything in the raw data. 
 
I got my first taste of that swapping over to ACES on this short I'm doing VFX for that was shot on the Epic.  It's shocking how a manufacturer IDT that's universally regarded as "horrible" is still so much better than their own ability to meaningfully render their own native footage to the monitor.
 
Anyway, the type of techniques that make FC possible are what will make mixing multiple cameras from multiple manufacturers on the same film as close to seamless as you will get until hitting their relative limits.

This isn't correct.  You're thinking of something like Magic Bullet Looks.  Film Convert transforms the measured response of a digital camera to the measured response of several actual film stocks.  It's essentially doing a very specific type of transform that you could do in an ACES color pipeline if you had an IDT for a given film stock.  The science being used is extremely contemporary and relevant.  It's the kind of thing that's going to eventually make all this sloppy, subjective "LUT jockey" business that's so endemic to raw photography an unfortunate little footnote of the past.
 
You could do a conversion and then consider this your "look", the same as filmmakers have for a hundred years or more shooting film and having it processed.  In the digital world the result of doing Film Convert is your inter-positive.  
 
If a filmmaker then has more money they could time their film to have a different look, instead of having just a "one light" processing.  That is the step that comes after Film Convert.  FC gives you your IP, now you can give it an artistic grade or not.  
 
They have some very basic controls for doing this but of course a dedicated grading tool will be better.  The ideal solution is to do your conversion and then grade.  Whether that is done is up to the sophistication of the end user, both their technical ability to grade and their ability to make the distinction between the two operations.
 
How it fits into a RAW workflow is another matter.  Their standalone tool, presently, I don't view as anything useful for more than a hobbyist that just wants to play around with it.  It doesn't even process AVCHD footage with sufficient accuracy or the quality you get by using the plug-in for After Effects and doing your conversion in a 32bit float environment.  For RAW you would definitely want to be using the plug-in and not the standalone, letting the host application handle the log-to-lin conversion (of course successful use of Film Convert is dependent on their "IDT" being based on the same linearized data).

indeed.  speed is slightly different (particularly if uniform sensor coverage is important.  Wide open  an f2.8 medium format 80mm lens will usually be twice as bright in the corners as an 80mm f2.8 135 format lens.  the 135 80mm will show around 1 stop of vignette on the edges.  the medium format lens will be a lot less - probably not measurable.
 
I imagine the helios 40 will have almost 2 stops of darkening at the edge of a full frame sensor, though I have not used one, its highly likely.  this in combinaton with its over stretched optics are the reason it looks so beautiful.

just read that link Sean , so it looks like mine is a 1963 model with the plastic ring pre zebra , so 51 years old!!
 
and yes they will be faster on a smaller sensor , so not really f2.8 on micro 4/3 maybe more like f1.7 maybe
will do some tests and see
 
 
this is the one I have , looks like the plastic focusing ring has come off this one on ebay
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Carl-Zeiss-Jena-Biometar-MC-80mm-f2-8-Pentacon-Six-lens-P6-2-8-80-5D-7D-EOS-50-/251487856131?pt=Camera_Lenses&hash=item3a8dd82603

thats the one I have the old one , it amazing to think a 50 year old lens is just as sharp as any L Series modern lens , they must have been very good at making glass in that Zeiss factory 50 years ago !  I imagine alot was done by hand ! no computers to assist!
 
they where made to resolve an image over 2 1/4 inches square - thats a big area to cover with no distortions!
thats about 55mm x 55mm

Not according to what I've read (here's one: Vintage Zeiss MF).  If you're talking about the 80mm.  The older non-MC are supposed to be the ones to get.  That's what was used for the 35mm portions of The Master.

I have recently been playing with a rather ineresting medium format lens.  The Noritar 80mm f2, which i needed to fabricate a mount for due to their being no adaptors manufactured for this exotic beast.  It has gotten the nickname 'The medium format Noctilux'....
 
>
 
as you can see, even wide open the lens is creamy which being sharp enough for its purpose.  due to the 1.5 crop of its image circle (its a medium format lens) the vignette and ca is lost, but the bokeh rendition is still present.  this is likely gonna be fitted to a tilt shift type adaptor as some point.  

Carl Zeiss 20mm f2.8 is a great 20mm - with all the Zeiss goodness!!
 
 
also the Panasonic 20mm f1.7 is a very good sharp small lens

Something to consider while looking at the Jena series is I've read steer towards the Pentacon 6 mount and not the M42 version.  P6 is the medium format version.  Performance is reportedly about twice what the numbers would lead you to expect when paired with a smaller format camera.  
 
Also, it may be better to go for the "zebra" versions rather than the black painted or anodized "MC" version because I've read at least one reference that states the coatings on these later versions suffered from supply problems in communist DDR.  The earlier, larger, single-coated versions are going to have more "magic".  I don't know if this is true for the entire family of Jena glass or just the longer end, or just folklore but the proof is in the pudding AFAIC with the 80mm Biometer.
 
The DSO option sounds like a great alternative if nothing in the 28-35mm range pans out.

I haven't posted here, but I have to say this post bothered me a little bit so I had chime in. I'm a colorist for a living in between directing and editing, I grade Alexa footage constantly and I have to work with everything from that to RED, to DSLR stuff all the time. As much as I love my GH2 and GH3, I had a pretty good suspicion there was no way this comparison would remotely hold up. I let it go, but the latest post seems to be pushing the argument farther. 
 
I've included an example here from the downloaded gh4 footage and the publicly available Alexa footage to illustrate my point, which is, theres a million factors that go into a comparison like this. Glass, codecs, bit rates, resolution, color space, dynamic range and more, but for the purpose of this illustration, I'm just talking about dynamic range, codec, and color space.
 
There is no comparing what an Alexa is putting out in S-log, vs the modes this GH4 footage was shot in. As shown in the example, the first cut of the guy on the bongos is S-log. There isn't a single pixel in that image that is clipping one way or the other. This means in a perfect world I have full control over what i want to make black and what I want white. The Panasonic isn't giving me nearly as much. Whether thats simply the color profile thats on, the codec squeezing it, the quality of the glass, or simply the cameras dynamic range ability, there is simply no way to take a GH4's image to the places you can take an Alexas.
 
The example videos point that out. For the Alexa, it starts as S-log, than kinda normalized start no detail lost yet, then a nice little crushed punchy look, then an extreme s-curve look, than a completely ludicrous version. Of course no one is grading at ludicrous speed that often, but the illustration is that even at that level, the image is tight as can be and nearly noise free. pretty incredible
 
A real test of how strong an image holds up is fixing a broken one, rather than slightly grading a nicely exposed one. Luckily there were a few good examples to use in the supplied link and in those you can see where the GH4 cannot hold a candle to the Alexa. In the spire shots where I tried to neutralized all the haze, the image gets noisy as heck. Even the sky has pretty noticeable banding if you look close or put up on a waveform monitor.  In the shot of that tilts down from the buildings to the people, it grades well, but theres still noise littered all over the blacks. Those same images shot with the Alexa would have had more head room for fixing.
 
Now Im not a hater, I actually love the GH4 is putting out on a well exposure image, like the car. i was actually able to recover clipped detail in the hood before I even began grading, pretty nice for an 8 bit codec! If i could get a truly log like starting point from the camera I'd love to see how far it can be pushed. And given how "bad" the tilt down shot was originally, i was very happy how far i could push it to something usable. 
 
Anyway, I love what panasonic is doing, and it looks like they have another winner, but lets not get crazy here people! :)
 

I haven't posted here, but I have to say this post bothered me a little bit so I had chime in. I'm a colorist for a living in between directing and editing, I grade Alexa footage constantly and I have to work with everything from that to RED, to DSLR stuff all the time. As much as I love my GH2 and GH3, I had a pretty good suspicion there was no way this comparison would remotely hold up. I let it go, but the latest post seems to be pushing the argument farther. 
 
I've included an example here from the downloaded gh4 footage and the publicly available Alexa footage to illustrate my point, which is, theres a million factors that go into a comparison like this. Glass, codecs, bit rates, resolution, color space, dynamic range and more, but for the purpose of this illustration, I'm just talking about dynamic range, codec, and color space.
 
There is no comparing what an Alexa is putting out in S-log, vs the modes this GH4 footage was shot in. As shown in the example, the first cut of the guy on the bongos is S-log. There isn't a single pixel in that image that is clipping one way or the other. This means in a perfect world I have full control over what i want to make black and what I want white. The Panasonic isn't giving me nearly as much. Whether thats simply the color profile thats on, the codec squeezing it, the quality of the glass, or simply the cameras dynamic range ability, there is simply no way to take a GH4's image to the places you can take an Alexas.
 
The example videos point that out. For the Alexa, it starts as S-log, than kinda normalized start no detail lost yet, then a nice little crushed punchy look, then an extreme s-curve look, than a completely ludicrous version. Of course no one is grading at ludicrous speed that often, but the illustration is that even at that level, the image is tight as can be and nearly noise free. pretty incredible
 
A real test of how strong an image holds up is fixing a broken one, rather than slightly grading a nicely exposed one. Luckily there were a few good examples to use in the supplied link and in those you can see where the GH4 cannot hold a candle to the Alexa. In the spire shots where I tried to neutralized all the haze, the image gets noisy as heck. Even the sky has pretty noticeable banding if you look close or put up on a waveform monitor.  In the shot of that tilts down from the buildings to the people, it grades well, but theres still noise littered all over the blacks. Those same images shot with the Alexa would have had more head room for fixing.
 
Now Im not a hater, I actually love the GH4 is putting out on a well exposure image, like the car. i was actually able to recover clipped detail in the hood before I even began grading, pretty nice for an 8 bit codec! If i could get a truly log like starting point from the camera I'd love to see how far it can be pushed. And given how "bad" the tilt down shot was originally, i was very happy how far i could push it to something usable. 
 
Anyway, I love what panasonic is doing, and it looks like they have another winner, but lets not get crazy here people! :)