Sean Cunningham

We don't want focus through like LA7200, that doesn't work at fast apertures or with a shallow depth of field. We need the Iscorama style focussing method of prime at infinity and one focus barrel, no breathing. Agree dual focussing is a deal breaker (for me at least) and have made that clear to SLR Magic. I want them to package this as one lens with the prime and anamorphic focussing as one unit. Focus more important than having it as a stand-alone adapter in my view. Have a Kowa for that and don't use it because of the dual focussing.

[quote name='galenb' timestamp='1353027228' post='21726']
This might be just my ignorance but what's wrong with the LA7200? It seems like it would work a lot better then all these goofy projector lenses?
[/quote]

I agree with you regarding the projector lenses. Dual-focus is a no-go for anything but the most patient of experimental filmmaker. It's for people who want the look more than they desire sanity, if they're actually shooting a film with actors and all kinds of people that are usually, already waiting on camera to be ready without such exotic toys in play.

I'm assuming (hoping) the SLR Magic adapter is focus-through as well. Dual-focus is a total deal breaker for me.

The problem with the LA7200 that this test already shows this adapter is an improvement on is sharpness at wider apertures without a diopter, and in the case of the LA7200 an even more rare, more expensive diopter than the venerable Tokina. I'm not sure what it's lower threshold is but with my Century I can't be tack sharp at any focusing distance open wider than F2.8 without a diopter (which affects FOV).

Premiere CS5 onwards is 32bit processing default. AE 7 onwards I think offers 32bit and linear blending / workspace.

BT601 or 709 differences in 5DToRGB are only applicable in the conversion to RGB and then the only difference seen is a slight contrast change and pinks sliding to orange, blues sliding towards green a bit, but unless you have a correctly converted video to image as reference you'd probably never know the difference.

All the 4:4:4 and gamma nonsense is pointless, really just import into a higher bit depth workspace, denoise a bit and go from there. 32bit Premiere is going to do a limited range conversion of the GH2 source to RGB straight away, same for AE CS5 onwards.

Absolutely no point adding a 15-235 filter to GH2 as thats what it is already, the filter was for 16-255 sources like FS100 and NEX not GH2.

All the 4:4:4 stuff is just interpolation of the 4:2:0 chroma which is done as soon as import into CS5 AE or Premiere.

Using AE or Premiere prior to CS5 is different handling and screwed up conversion to RGB if not careful. Results will differ between those twi versions, what works in CS5 is not necessarily going to look the same as earlier versions.

This last weekend I shot some footage at a local import tuner car show. Because I haven't got my lens splint yet I went with the 14-42mm kit as my taking lens. I have a nice set of Nikkors adapted to my GH2 but walking around in a crowded place with that much weight stressing the camera body didn't seem like a good idea.

All but maybe two shots were at 18mm and roughly F4 which meant I didn't need to attach my Tokina. It's also worth noting I haven't enhanced the footage and this was with currently un-hacked firmware. The very slight softness and chromatic aberration at the edges of frame actually looks quite nice to me. In many ways the results remind me of Panavision films from the '70s and '80s (ie. John Carpenter).

[media]http://vimeo.com/50594617[/media]

...I love, love, love this lens.

This last weekend I shot some footage at a local import tuner car show. Because I haven't got my lens splint yet I went with the 14-42mm kit as my taking lens. I have a nice set of Nikkors adapted to my GH2 but walking around in a crowded place with that much weight stressing the camera body didn't seem like a good idea.

All but maybe two shots were at 18mm and roughly F4 which meant I didn't need to attach my Tokina. It's also worth noting I haven't enhanced the footage and this was with currently un-hacked firmware. The very slight softness and chromatic aberration at the edges of frame actually looks quite nice to me. In many ways the results remind me of Panavision films from the '70s and '80s (ie. John Carpenter).

[media]http://vimeo.com/50594617[/media]

...I love, love, love this lens.

I posted these images to a topic in the anamorphic forum, since it's an additional example of adding grain in post to enhance DSLR video but perhaps even more important is I did not apply any form of traditional sharpening kernal to achieve the improvements in clarity you see here for this Canon 7D footage.

Here are some examples from my most recent project, showing 7D before and after (de-moire, mild tone-mapping for sharpening, simulated high-speed grain from AE, MagicBullet grading)...

[IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/2nsxv1g.png[/img]
[IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/2d9p91x.png[/img]
[IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/2jexyqb.png[/img]
[IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/dm9snt.png[/img]
[IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/z8ffp.png[/img]
[IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/33u75he.png[/img]

...top two scenes were shot with the kit zoom (car interior with the camera mounted via StickyPod) and the bottom CU was shot with the f1.2 85mm L which is an amazing, amazing lens.

Anyway, as I said, I used a tone-mapping technique on the luminance channel only.  You'll see that I wasn't pushing the technique so far as to go for its pseudo-HDR look.  This method not only provides sharpening with a much higher threshold for false-edging than traditional sharpening but by processing the chroma separately and then re-combining it with the luminance channel I'm able to also do chroma-smoothing/de-moire.

Sorry guys, I've been moving and out of town and all sorts of stuff distracting me and haven't been here in a while.

I agree it's more a LCE technique but I attribute that to using it with a small filter size (set by the blur filter applied to the layer doing the enhancement). Larger filters brings out more of a broad enhancement that achieves a pseudo-HDR look with single images. It's essentially the same methodology used in a very specific way. I think the LCE is more of a secondary effect for people trying to create the pseudo-HDR look where in my case it's the primary focus and broader tone enhancement is, more than gravy, but still very minimal.

I made the connection to Tone Mapping myself, and perhaps in error, after picking up a book on HDR photography and reading their chapter on achieving an HDR look with a single exposure.

The above images were created with four layers in AfterEffects. Three of them are duplicates of the comp and the fourth is my grain layer. I chose to render out a loopable clip of my hero grain settings because that ended up being faster than computing the grain filter every frame. YMMV.

The top copy of the comp contains my chroma filtering and the chroma portion of my color correction. Depending on the footage I'll either do a horizontally bound blur of only a few pixels or median filter which smooths the chroma sub-sampling in any non-raw footage. With the 7D footage I found that I got the best results by actually doing a median filter. This filtering also took care of the moire and noise that was most evident in the fine, blonde hair of our lead actress. The blending mode for this layer is COLOR.

The next layer down is where the LCE/TM techniques were used, on a luma-only copy of the comp. This layer is essentially comp'd with itself internally using a gaussian blur technique like was outlined above. The method I went was based on a technique I found for building a high-pass filter in AfterEffects since there wasn't just a drag and drop version of the filter like in Photoshop. The blending mode for this layer is OVERLAY.

The next layer down is just a luma-only copy of the comp. The effect of these three together is all the contrast enhancement happens where our eye actually picks up on detail and edges, in the luma content. The net result is contrast and details are enhanced without muddying or adversely altering colors and potentially stronger manipulation of colors.

The film grain layer I've used on top or below the color layer, with a blending mode of ADD, SCREEN and OVERLAY. You get subtle variations in the final look based on your grain source so I don't think there's a "right" answer here it all depends on the look you're going for. In the case above I used OVERLAY. I wanted most of the grain to be visible in the mid tones. This helped to dither the sub-sampled, filtered chroma and make it feel as organic as possible.

I posted these images to a topic in the anamorphic forum, since it's an additional example of adding grain in post to enhance DSLR video but perhaps even more important is I did not apply any form of traditional sharpening kernal to achieve the improvements in clarity you see here for this Canon 7D footage.

Here are some examples from my most recent project, showing 7D before and after (de-moire, mild tone-mapping for sharpening, simulated high-speed grain from AE, MagicBullet grading)...

[IMG]http://i47.tinypic.com/2nsxv1g.png[/img]
[IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/2d9p91x.png[/img]
[IMG]http://i49.tinypic.com/2jexyqb.png[/img]
[IMG]http://i50.tinypic.com/dm9snt.png[/img]
[IMG]http://i48.tinypic.com/z8ffp.png[/img]
[IMG]http://i45.tinypic.com/33u75he.png[/img]

...top two scenes were shot with the kit zoom (car interior with the camera mounted via StickyPod) and the bottom CU was shot with the f1.2 85mm L which is an amazing, amazing lens.

Anyway, as I said, I used a tone-mapping technique on the luminance channel only.  You'll see that I wasn't pushing the technique so far as to go for its pseudo-HDR look.  This method not only provides sharpening with a much higher threshold for false-edging than traditional sharpening but by processing the chroma separately and then re-combining it with the luminance channel I'm able to also do chroma-smoothing/de-moire.