richg101

Nice project guys.

As a 'rama user I might just be interested in this modification.  Though unfortunately my 'rama tends to only see use when setting up FF58io's of late :( - i think it needs to come out to play more!

Please consider these requests:-

1. incorporate a rear section that is made in two parts (the rear most part removable so user has option to allow the optic to protrude out the back slightly for use on lenses where seating the iscorama deeper into the front of the taking lens.  In effect the rear most part would be a threaded tube of 15mm length or so that can be taken off if required.   Additionally, the rear most portion could be interchanged with a donut type cup with the same mating thread for use when rigged and positioned in front of regularly changed primes.  - if the iscorama could be slid back and fourth on the mattebox rail support, and butted against compact primes etc, the rehousing will be great for hire outs.

1b.. definitely provide a removable lens support leg allowing coupling to rails(to allow sliding back and fourth for prime changes).  hiring something like this to a bunch of muppets on set who have never handled a iscorama would be a worrying prospect imagining them doing taking lens swaps over and over again all day. 

3.  maybe machine primary rehousing from ABS to shave off some weight?  As nice as the metalwork is, It would be nice to avoid adding any more weight onto the filter thread of taking lenses if possible.  No amount of body strength is going to save the 'rama if it is dropped due to a failure of a filter thread.

4. a lovely addition would be to have the focus mech non rotating.  The 150degree turn for 3.5ft-inf would be a dream.  if the diopter no longer rotated during focus, even better!!!  

xxx 

colour science is a myth.  just another thing for people to talk about on forums.  Tweek the wb or do slight curves, problem solved!

i own one, and would say running full frame is not an option unless you're locking down a tripod with a wide shot, and willing to process with anti rolling shutter post work.  rolling shutter is very prominent in handheld fast paced stuff.  in aps-c mode it's useable, but it's full frame mode where the real selling point of the cam comes into it's own..  speed booster and aps-c maybe?

They're resuscitating the corpse.

If Kodak wants to live they should enter the digital age, otherwise it's getting quite sad pushing that obsolete old technology for a couple of people in hollywood. 

It's opinions like these that make the format obsolete.  It is only recently that 35mm film has seen a close match in resolving power.  65mm film has no equal, and won't do for many years.  It's an expensive format, but don't tell me the ridiculous budgets on crap movies like Prometheus couldn't have accommodated the costs.  These 'couple of people' in hollywood are about the only ones making anything of artistic value at the moment within hollywood.  Prometheus would have probably been good if Ridley had been under pressure to make the film stock count.

That said, I contacted Kodak requesting I have a rep contact me about purchase of 1000ft of 65mm film about 2 months ago.  I got no reply.  Assuming they're in trouble you'd expect any custom is good custom!     

I'd interject that the 1.7 planar is a very very good lens.  However, the f1.4 version is marginally better.  Sod the new zeiss, get the contax 1.7 or 1.4.  the 1.4 is twice the price, but the money is well spent...

Benefit of the 1.4 is that you close it down by half a stop and the vignette is marginally less than the 1.7.  also, running 1.7 wide open + speed booster will result in more purple fringing than the 1.4 closed slightly on the speed booster.

Also, re. the mitakon lens turbos...  the lens retainer springs are of the 'split pin' style, so the actual spring is made from brass - not a springy material, and starts to loose it's tightness through regular lens changes.  the Camdiox m43-ef version has proper stainless steel spring retainers so maintains its coupling better.

Optically they're all the same.  mechanically, drastically different!

zhongi/lens turbo split pin: '>  - see how graggy it is?

camdiox stainless spring: '>  - way nicer.

here here.  I rarely see anything uploaded to vimeo which really commands the need for perfection in the acquisition dept.  I suppose a lack of moire is great for a moire test.    

What seems to be drastically forgotten in this thread is that the d810 is a 36megapixel stills beast that also shoots video.  Just like the d800 and a7r.   Until there is the capability to read the full 36mpx sensor and downscale the 8k? feed, the video will always have flaws.  The fact is, if it's an improvement over the d800 and a7r (which both deliver great video considering the 36mpx sensor is making things very hard for the cameras).  Both d800 and a7r pretty much match the 5dmk3 in terms of internal (to card) h264.

Ultimately I find it mad that anyone is seriously attempting to pull this camera apart in video terms, particularly when comparing it to vastly inferior cameras in the stills dept.  It's a flagship full frame photographic camera which needs a 20k£ medium format back (and costly medium format lenses) to better it.  Nothing that shoots really good video also shoots stills half as good as the d800, a7r and the d810.

had a play, and even the low bitrate downlaod files gave enough headroom to get smoother highlights when grading the untouched s-log.  simple curves gave more highlight information than the non s-log.  Technicolour couldnt make this stuff look nice.

 ultimately, nothing cinematic would ever be shot like this.  there would be fill light.  this type of material (a fat woman talking about something political (or about vegan food) has no need for wide dynamic range anyway.  

I think the main point this topic makes is that shooting wide dr is pointless unless the subject material demands or benefits from it.  Shoot Neutral creative style and leave the s-log till it's needed...

lovely article. I hope you re affirmed the demand for a 10bit to sd card paid firmware update for the a7s to kanta!!!....:)  They won't do it I am sure, but if they offer it 1yr down the line in the successor to the a7s this will be incredible.  4k is null and void IMO.  working with the A7s's  1080 xavc-s is a dream...  giving us 10bit true xavc 4.2.2 would be even better!, and the new sd cards will handle it i am sure. 

see if panamoz will ship to you.  cheapest I've seen

Just got my camera from Panamoz after some fiddling with bank transfer (paypal no go for non-british accounts) and a friend in England helping me out. Super happy with all the money I've saved that I can invest in other things like extra batteries.

 

And thanks Terrence for describing how to change the menus into English!

For hand shooting (non rigged), the battery grip is a really nice addition to the setup if you're looking for additional gear to spend with the saving you've made.  it brings the camera to the perfect height to sit on your shoulder and the evf sits at perfect eye level.  This shooting position has been my go-to since having the a7r and i now do the same with the A7S.  gret to limit rolling shutter induced by micro wobble:)

I said i wouldn't get an A7S based on my irritation at Sony for they lack of delivering good enough video quality on the a7r and a7 - at the time I felt it was on purpose to make the A7S more appealing and more likely for me to upgrade from my A7R - which i couldnt afford to do anyway.

I then saw the camera advertised for £1400 shipped (£700 less than on the sony website!!!) and decided it was time to invest in something that I could realistically use for showing lens performance (for Dog Schidt Optics purposes), since the A7R hadn't come up with what I had hoped for in video terms.  I wouldn't have bought it if it weren't £1400 and a piece of equipment that can be claimed against earnings, and even so, I will still be struggling for a while after paying for it on the credit card.

What I will say is I 100% empathise with Andrews somewhat flippant disregard for other cameras since using the A7S.  It is justified.  It's a marvel having such dynamic range on tap.  In a system that is so user friendly.  Which doesnt need rigging or silly evf's added.  It doesn;t feel real to me using this camera and seeing imagery I am used to seeing taking up 2-5gb per minute, and it's doing it in 300mb/min!, and doesnt need transcoding to a editable format for workability on my 2 year old hackintosh.

Ultimately you should buy a camera that fulfils your requirements at the time.  If something new comes along after you decide on a camera it doesnt mean you can no longer use your outdated (in blogging terms) equipment.  Being gear heads we all fall fowl to the desire for the newest thing...- and if it upsets you, make it a rule to not read reviews of new gear otherwise you'll get caught up in the consumer side of things again.   Instead pop out for a few hours and shoot something.    

Again what do you think about stabilisation issue? Any suggestions to solve shake efects when you havno tripod with you.

Anyway Andrew your  post is fantastic :) Right now I am going to make test

The handling (with very good evf) allows a 3rd point of contact (your eyebrow).  this alone is better than any electronic image stabilisation imo.  If you use the battery grip it brings the camera to the perfect height to rest the base on your shoulder which gives even better stabilisation.    

A long video for extremists and geeks who like wasting 26mins listening to other geeks talking about cameras and lenses.

It's actually worse than I thought.  There are only two FE lenses with optical image stabilization.

 

Michael

the third point of contact (your eyebrow) while shooting with an A7S nullifies the importance of IS in my experience.  Personally I find IS is the single best way to make video look like video, and less like cinema.  As are native lenses from the range.  Grab some zeiss, olympus, canon, nikon etc from 35mm up to 135mm and you;re sorted.  Full frame means a 35mm is as wide as you need to go in most instances.

Though a great addition, I'd be very wary of taking advantage of the longer recording times.  I wouldnt dream of using the pocket camera for longer than 20-30mins without a turn off and cool down!  They get damn hot.  When a 64gb card is full I know it's time to give the camera a rest before boards start distorting and fractures appear on solder tracks.

the  44mm sensor width is 12mm less wide than true 645 ( which is 56mm).   that's the same reduction in width that we get between full frame and aps-c.  The sensor is closer to full frame than it is to medium format.  rubbish

I'd hazard a guess and say the A7R and high quality full frame glass will out perform this with its mediocre pentax glass available in this mount.  The marginal sensor size and pixel number increase is pointless if you cant fit lenses capable of delivering such resolutions. 

sorry to butt in, but I keep seeing people talking about problems with colour science, yellow tint and other garbage.  here's what i got with the a7s using awb: 

no grading.

correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't see any colour issues here.

arrived.  all good

just had a ups tracking number.  

use a credit card rather than bac's.  the extra security is worth the £100 extra.  if there's a problem i'll get mastercard on their ass

just gone for it man

Though very impressive technically, I actually find the footage looks quite unpleasant in how unnatural it looks.  I can't put my finger on it but I guess I dislike the look in the same way I dislike the full spectrum uv modded camera images. 

I'd have loved to see the footage graded to show how our eyes see things.  I'd really like to see some nature work done with this camera.  It seems to look over digitised with manmade light, whereas a dusk woodland scene (exposed and graded to mimic how our eyes adjust to very low light) will probably be where this camera comes into its own.

Highlight recovery looks great! remind me of C300 ability to pull back the super white...

I have a feeling what we're seeing here is the qt gamma problem showing its ugly face again.. when avchd (and probably xavc s) are played back on premier on a mac, the recovery is simply being corrected (changing outputs from 15-235).   Rather than extra information in the hot highlights actually being brought back.  Though i hope I am wrong.    

Looks quite soft to me.

i think you're seeing the results of a poor lens in combination with a lack of contrast.  since very few of the shots capitalise on the full frame sensor aesthetic this adds to the lack of zing.  Just about every aspect of that test seems to fall short in terms of showing the camera being used within its limits or showing its strengths.  I imagine a canon 550d + 18-55 kit lens would deliver pretty much what we're seeing here.  

Put that awesome 55mm zeiss lens on there, and show us some exciting landscaped with a bit of dynamic lighting and i think this camera will sing.

Come on sony.  Send the camera to someone who'll show us something cool!