QuickHitRecord

Oddly, I found myself drawn to the imperfections of the GH4 in the test, which has never stood out to me at all. Interesting.

The Meikes look very good. I even considered buying a set for my work camera before I sent with the Sigma Art primes. But I am definitely looking for something cheap and cheerful for my old GH1.

I've never owned any of these lenses but I am curious about building a cheap, 3-lens set for MFT (something like a 18/25/50). This would be for casual shooting on my GH1. What are people's experiences with these lenses? Are there any good ones (or lenses to avoid)? At this low price point, I can deal with some softness, CA, and weak corners, but some of these lenses seem to display terrible field curvature issues, so any lens suffering from that is a no-go for me.

@Matt Kieley The shot of the woman on the couch at 1:07 in the first video is really nice. And it looks like there may have been a couple of other shots from the same film as well. Do you recall what lens you were using?

The GH1 is plenty for storytelling. Dynamic range is a challenge but I find that I prefer the look to most modern cameras. Here's a test (not by me) that did a good job of showing the why the GH2 (with the same sensor as the GH1) creates a much more emotionally resonant image than the GH5. At least to me:

On 6/22/2022 at 10:48 PM, kye said:

It's like there's a satisfaction from getting results that are better than they should be.  A thrill about 'cheating' perhaps?

This. It's more satisfying to get a lot out of a little than a little out of a lot. And this applies in a much more profound way when you're just shooting stuff solo, for fun.

It becomes, "Look what I was able to capture -- wow!" versus "This is all I was able to do?"

Of course, it all changes in the context of a time-sensitive/high pressure paid shoot, when you need all of the help you can get.

I was way off. A testament to modern phones, or possibly how much footage can be disguised if it's softened and grained out. I did notice the IBIS in some of your shots, which lead me towards the GX85 speculation.

Nice work! GX85?

Me, or the OP? I liked his grade too.

For mine, it looked terrible OOC -- it always does with this camera. I just tweaked it until I got something I liked. I think I used FilmConvert on this (probably the second Vision3 option). Heavy grain does wonders to cover up an image that's been pushed beyond its comfort zone. And then I think maybe some flicker and film dust over top to help cover it up even more? I'm pretty sure that was it.

@PannySVHS Thanks. This one was one of my favorites too. She wrote the words and I shot the visuals, and then I did a same-day edit -- it never had a chance to overstay its welcome.

The FZ-47 isn't equipped with wifi at all. I was able to get into the service menu once in the hopes of switching it over to a 50Hz/PAL camera (currently, it can only record 29.97, but I wasn't successful in doing that either. If there any avid camera hackers here, it would not be difficult to source an FZ47 to experiment with!

Great to see another FZ47 video! I like your treatment of the footage a lot. It looks different than just about everything else (obviously CMOS cameras, but it also stands apart from any of the HVX/ZIU/etc crowd too).

Here's an earlier edit without Topaz:

The image quality is riddled with problems, but I still find myself drawn to it. I agree with @PannySVHS; the video on this camera would have been a much more compelling feature with a higher bitrate. I wish this camera had been one of the Lumix bodies to be hacked back in the day.

4 hours ago, herein2020 said:

I don't know why, but with all of the EF lenses I have tested so far, it is not possible to change the AF speed when racking from far to near or vice versa. The speed setting is there but it is greyed out.

I have control over AF speed with my Canon 24-105mm f4 ii on the C70. Don't know about the first version of the lens though.

24 minutes ago, Matt Kieley said:

Octopus Cinema Camera actually posted yesterday about a side project they're working on using their software with the Raspberry Pi camera.

Pretty cool! I had forgotten about that project. I'm glad that they are still out there. I checked their demo footage and it looks great.

I went back to the Apertus homepage too. There two updates in the last year, and the most recent was five months ago. Maybe there's more going on than I realize, but they seem to have lost a lot of momentum.

4 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Yes, we had a nice thread about this camera. It´s cool to see something like that. I didn´t check their vimeo channel for months. I just did. It has not changed since then. So interested to see how it goes.

Sorry for the redundant topic. I ran a search for it on this forum but didn't see anything. Maybe they weren't calling it "Cinepi" yet.

For anyone who wants to learn more about this project, here is the development thread: https://forums.raspberrypi.com/viewtopic.php?t=296776

Someone has been working with a Raspberry Pi high quality camera module to make their own 1/2"-sensor open source, raw-capable cine camera:

Placed into a 3D-printed body, the components reputedly only cost $200 (this probably assumes that you already have a monitor of some kind). The demo footage is surprisingly good:

3 hours ago, Nikkor said:

Are there any large sensor cameras with ccd chips that record video beside the f35?

There aren't that many. Off the top of my head:

• Sony F35 - Super35
• Sony SRW-9000PL - Super35
• Sony Genesis - Super35
• Digital Bolex D16 - Super16
• Ikonoskop A-Cam dII - Super16

And then you get into 2/3" CCDs, and there are a ton of those. Here's a good place to look for the Sony models. On the Panasonic side, there were the HPX and Varicam bodies. Toshiba, JVC, and Ikegami also had 2/3 CCD cameras, but they were mostly standard definition.

There were a handful of 1/2" CCD camcorders, mostly from Sony as I recall.

1/3" CCD sensors were mostly found in fixed zoom lens cameras like the HVX200, FX1, Z1U, DVX100, Canon XL/XH cameras, and some of the JVC GY cameras. But 1/3 sensors are pretty small.

Compared to today's mirrorless cameras, these cameras were mostly very large and meant to be operated on shoulder or tripods. The smallest and most manageable of the bunch was the Digital Bolex, which now goes for around $7K used.

The Sony F55 is a MOS sensor with global shutter, not a CCD camera.

If you'd like to have a small CCD camera to try out, I'd recommend the diminutive and inexpensive Lumix FZ47 (FZ48 in the UK). It's fixed lens and can't record in 24P or 25P, but it does shoot in 1080P and the 1/2.3" sensor is larger than any of the 1/3" cameras. And the image stabilization is surprisingly good, which is useful for the ~600mm equivalent zoom. Here's some footage I shot:

I personally love the camera, but I wouldn't say that the grain is good at all. If you freeze-frame the footage, you'll see a ton of temporal ghosting and macroblocking. But in motion, it's one of my favorites.

And here are some of my photos with it (JPEG only, the camera does not shoot RAW): https://distanceandelevation.com/blog/2021/8/9/bandontoportorford

1 hour ago, BenEricson said:

I brought 10 rolls of 250d right when BH stocked it.

That was smart! I wish I had purchased more than one roll. It looks like B&H are sold out again after less than a week. Last time they were without for at least six months.

18 minutes ago, BenEricson said:

Film is the absolute best though. No contest. The amount of life even a static shot has when shooting 16mm is unbelievable. The perfect amount of grain, detail, and color.

I love film too, though certain stocks are too grainy for me. Now that it's finally back in stock after months of waiting, I just bought my first roll of 250D. Now I need to find something worthy of $150+ for 2.5 minutes (and it's a test roll, since it will be my first time using my new Kodak K100).

From other tests I've seen, 250D is the ultimate, perfect grain character.

2 hours ago, webrunner5 said:

I think the original Canon C100 has about as clean of output there was. Sure 1080p but..

Here are some C100 (i) tests I did that give an idea of the grain (download for a less compressed experience):

5 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

I also liked 5D Mark II ML RAW in 2K. Very digital Bolex like at ISO 1600 especially with a black and white grade. 5D Mark III was a bit too smooth by comparison to the older one.

My 5Diii with ML Raw suffers from dancing green and magenta blocks. It's unchanged between ISOs 100 and 400, so I always shoot at 400. When I'm not pixel peeping or trying to bring up the shadows too much, I'm always happy with the overall image. I haven't used a 5Dii yet but I really liked some of the 50D stuff I was seeing back in the day.

20 hours ago, Django said:

R6 has pretty filmic luma noise compared to other R series. C70 has been proven in underexposed tests to not only have a much lower noise floor (thanks to DGO sensor) but also a more filmic noise with no horizontal patterns and low chroma noise which immediately scream digital. Fuji XT series I also found the noise pleasing.

I haven't gotten my hands on an R6 yet (and may not, due to overheating), but I saw a side-by-side comparison with the older EOS-R and the grain was MUCH nicer.

And the C70 has the best noise/grain of any Canon I've used. I am very pleased with the noise up to ISO 800. At 1600, I can start to see just the faintest hit of vertical FPN. But 800 is plenty. And it's much better than the C200, which had horizontal FPN even at ISO 200 when shooting in CRL.

12 hours ago, independent said:

If you're into the Red One, you already know the answer. Komodo. 6K 16-bit redcode raw and global shutter will give you the most detailed, color-rich, film-like moving image. 

I had a shoot with a Komodo and my R1MX last Fall. I really liked the Komodo for the most part. I wish I'd had it for longer so that I could have compared the two cameras, but the grain seemed very pleasing and well-controlled.

But there's still something unique about the original MX that I didn't see in the Komodo. And it only cost me $3K for a complete build with batteries and media.

9 hours ago, TomTheDP said:

The Alexa obviously is great. Great underexposed, pleasant noise pattern.

Yes, the Alexa is very good in this regard.

4 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

Pocket 4K in Cinema DNG was up there, before they nurfed it. I still have my original firmware!

Interesting. I'll have to look into this further. I did a shoot with the 6K and remember it being a bit too noisy for my taste. But Blackmagic is all over the map. The BMPC was the worst I have ever seen. The BMMCC was pretty decent.

It seems like pleasing grain is an often unsung benefit of higher-end cinema cameras, though I am secretly hoping that someone will tip me off to a consumer-level sleeper.

This is clearly a subjective question. To me, pleasing grain structure is well-defined, tight/small noise with no fixed patterns and as little green and magenta as possible. But please share your observations, even if your criteria for pleasing grain/noise is different.

For me, I'm really liking what I'm seeing from the Red One MX. Unsurprisingly, none of my other recent or current cameras (C70, C200, EOS-R, 5Diii with ML Raw, G85, or EM10iii) comes close. It meets all of my criteria for pleasing noise/grain. But I'm also curious if there's anything smaller that does well in this area.

51 minutes ago, kye said:

285g, 193g and 83g.

Wow, Kye. I have no idea how you're achieving the second two. If we're basing this on weight, then those numbers are going to be tough to beat! One of the guidelines I'm setting for myself is that I can't buy anything new just for this challenge. I have at least a dozen cameras cameras already and don't need any more. But nothing I have is that tiny. I can't wait to see how you're doing it.

Good thread, Kye! Did you continue to experiment with disassembly?

Someone posted over on MFLensess:

Quote

... below 65% RH spores don't germinate, below 55% RH already growing fungus goes dormant

With that in mind, I bought an inexpensive but highly-rated hygrometer. The maximum humidity over the last 24 hours or so is 47%. I'll keep an eye on it but perhaps a dry cabinet is not necessary here.

Last night, I did a partial assembly of my Kern Switar 10mm 1.6, which was my favorite lens to become infected. Following a YouTube teardown, I carefully removed all of the elements, putting everything into an ice tray to help me with sequencing. When I got to the element with the "fungus", I was surprised to see that it looked like a very long piece of fuzz. It was probably an inch long in total. The end of us it was sticking straight up at me, as if the element had been holding it down. To remove it, I used a pair of tweezers and just pulled straight up. It came up in one piece! There were also two other similar pieces, though they were shorter. I'm not even sure that this was fungus after all. Maybe just some nasty dust? In any case, it needed to come out because even if it wasn't fungus, it could have become a food source for some. After the removal, I blasted the assembly with my UVC light for 5 minutes and then reassembled.

Everything went so well that I decided to try to do the same with an old Kino Precision lens. There was no video for this one but I decided to see if I could figure it out. Bad idea. The rear element group came tumbling out all at once, and I have no idea of the original orientation of the elements. Also, I got all the way down to the aperture blades, and then when I tried to reassemble it and add the layer back in over top of the blades, it messed them up. I could never get them to sit properly again. This is maybe the third lens this has happened with and I felt bad about it. But then again, we're talking about an infested lens with a stuck focus that I bought for $20. It's not like it had a long life ahead of it.

I've been doing some more research. It turns out that UVC light cannot typically penetrate the glass of a lens, so the 254nm UV source like the light I ordered will kill surface microorganisms but won't be able to get inside of the lens. I've read that the ideal UV wavelength range you want is in the 300nm - 330nm range, which I think may put it in the UVB range (I could be getting this wrong).

The filter company B+W owned by Schneider put out a product called the UV-Pro a couple years ago, which is allegedly a 300nm source. But it never went on sale on B&H or most of the other major retailers, and there's no info about it on the Schneider website. Maybe it was a flawed concept that was quietly killed, or Schneider was too concerned about the liability of people blinding themselves or trying to cure themselves of Covid that they decided to discontinue it. Either way, it looks like it can still be purchased on eBay or DigitalRev.

Here is a test that doesn't tell you much about the tool's ability to penetrate lens elements:

What I'd really like to see is a lens with fungus opened, swabbed, UV treated, and then opened again for a second swab. That really would tell us everything we need to know.