Ian Anderson

It's quite incredible how the goalposts have shifted again because of this news. After NAB I was fairly certain that I'd be waiting in line to pick up a BM Pocket Camera as a B-Cam to an FS-700, but this gives me real pause. I can use the EF-glass that I currently use on the Sony camera so there's no need to buy m/43 lenses, it's shooting full frame which is desirable for me, and I can repurpose the shooting gear and grip from when I would shoot with a 550D.

There's heaps going for it, but a determining factor could simply be cost. For the price of a 5DIII body alone you could pick up a Pocket Camera along with the very lovely looking Panasonic 12-35mm. The pocket camera shoots easy-to-edit ProRes as well so there's hardly any ingest time, which is both a cost saving for your client and a time saving for you which means you can shoot more stuff.

Am very excited to hear of this though, the ML team deserve profound recognition for what they've been able to achieve here as well as in the past.

I've been puzzling over these new Blackmagic cameras the past few weeks, but now I can see that the pocket camera could be a useful addition as a B-cam to anyone's setup. I shoot on an FS-700 and love the image I get out of it, but trying to be quick & handheld, stealing shots where you can sometimes be a bit tricky as I have it fairly rigged up.

The Pocket camera I can see now has a definite application for people shooting run and gun, where you just might need to get in with a crowd of people and nick off some shots fast - pretty much what Brawley was doing here. But over something like a GH3 or a 5D it'll shoot in a nice edit-friendly format so it won't add on any extra time to your workflow when it comes to edit.

As I say, I was really unsure about it's use but this film clears everything up for me now. Also, that Panny lens comes out pretty well in this doesn't it?

That guy's moustache...

I saw this and immediately thought my DR-680 would have to soon make room, but yes if the H4N pre-amps are anything to go by then it's probably safe for a little while yet. Battery performance seems very impressive though at the very least; 20 hours on 4 x AAs?! Are these military-grade cells they're using?

Footage please!!!!!!!
:D

So, just come across this pic on twitter:

https://twitter.com/danielogarcia1/status/321090242746654721/photo/1

I guess there'll be more information tomorrow, but this seems like quite big news.

Although it begins with an L, Leicester is hardly London. However, I came across these guys at BVE and they seemed to know their stuff:

http://www.lensrepair.co.uk

Very much a specialist type of service though so I'd expect a pretty hefty quote from them to disassemble and reassemble a cine lens. If it's a stills lens you simply want cleaning, then Fixation are supposed to be kings of London for that sort of thing (though they mostly do Nikon and Canon), but failing that there's a cheap place I went to get some old Nikon AIS lenses cleaned that looked like they'd been found buried in the desert. It's called Camera City and it's on Little Russell Street (I think) by The British Museum. It did take the fella a while though to get it done (about 4 months truth be told!), but he only charged me about £350 to clean a 135/2 and an 85/1.4 so can't complain really.

Yeah, what Angenieux is it? If it's the 25-250 I'd love to see it in action. Heavy though eh?

Hi Toby,

Thanks for your advice. I'm definitely leaning towards the Kinotehnik purely because of the ease of mounting. Am a little worried about the size of the loupe on the front of it though, I think the Cineroid is a smaller eyepiece but again I'd have to find a suitable mounting solution.

Also, it's so close to NAB now, I may as well hold out in case anything snazzy turns up (Red Rock MicroEVF maybe?).

Thanks!

Hi Hans,

Thanks very much for your reply. Can I ask, do you use a top or rod mount for your Zacuto EVF? And it's solid as a rock on there? I hear expanded focus doesn't work from the FS700 (for any EVF even), does the Zacuto one have any similar sort of feature for checking focus?

Gotta say though, that RedRock EVF that you've found would be the ideal thing for me if it was up to scratch. And available too, obviously!

In a recent post Andrew touched on something which I think could be missing in the low-end film-making marketplace, that of a discreet eyepiece-only EVF. Off the top of my head I can only think of the Bomb EVF for RED as an example of the sort of thing I mean.

I'm currently looking at options for an EVF for my FS700 that will allow me to use a shoulder rig, and whilst I like some of the features of offerings by the likes of Zacuto, Alphatron and Kinotehnik the size of them along with the loupes put me off a bit. Am I just being ultra-fussy here or does anyone else share the same view?!

I'm probably going to ride it out until after NAB before pulling the trigger on something, but if anyone had any suggestions or any experiences they could share with EVFs for FS700's or similar I'd love to hear them.

Thank you all!

Here are all the pages I've found that mention FS700 pp's. There's surprisingly few!

Abelcine

http://blog.abelcine.com/2012/09/18/sony-fs700-scene-files-from-abelcine/

Alister Chapman's maximum DR pp

http://www.xdcam-user.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=47&t=1097&p=1647#p1647

'nLOG'

http://noahyv.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=24&Itemid=29

Some settings Frank Glencairn used at some point or another (!)

http://blog.domisljije.si/2012/04/05/fs700-footage-specs/

Have you tried any of these out?

Picture profiles are still a bit of a dark art to me, so I've just been following the lead of those above who know a lot more than I about what each individual setting does! So far I've shot with nLOG and it came out alright I guess!

It would be wonderful though if Sony teamed up with Deluxe, Technicolor or similar to produce a Cinestyle-like pp and LUT for FS700 users. It would be a great compromise to make up for a lack of S-LOG.

Just happened across this thread which does a shootout with a bunch of zoom lenses to test their ability to retain focus:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?268682-Sony-NEX-FS100-parfocal-lens-shootout

The Canon 24-105 does pretty well, but the Sony kit lens 18-200 seems to come out best (although it isn't constant aperture...).

It's not easy this lark is it?

The 24-105mm F4L is definitely not parfocal nor is the 24-70mm F/2.8L nor is the 70-200mm F/2.8L IS II. I was using all three lenses on my 5D3 yesterday & it would have been really useful to me for the shoot if they were parfocal but they are not. The only other Canon zoom I have is the 16-35mm F/2.8L & I have no idea if that is parfocal or not as the zoom range is very short & the lens is so wide that most everything is in focus most of the time anyway.

Yup. The Tokina 11-16 is supposedly parfocal, but being parfocal for 5mm of focal length isn't anywhere near as useful as being parfocal on a standard or telephoto zoom range.

Andrew mentions that in his experience the 24-105 appears to be parfocal whereas others don't share this view. What could be the difference here? Can a lens' ability to retain accurate focus through its zoom range be effected by its age or extended use I wonder?

mmmm, the guy is VAT registered too, I could pick that up for about £4000, very interesting!

So funny that this should come up, I just bought my FS700 from the very same seller! Would definitely recommend him if you're thinking of pursuing it.

Oh rly? That sucks. There's a trade show coming up in February in London which will probably be a good chance for me to test it, just on the slim offchance that the rocker on the FS700 handgrip might possibly make the servos work a little harder then.

Cheers Mondo!

Thanks for your responses fellas. It can be a real issue with solo/run and gun situations as you've pointed out. Is the 18-200 Sony lens that came with the FS100 parfocal PGRE? I'm also thinking about that servo lens that's now available separately. I think it's the same optical design as the one you're talking about. It's a shame it's so slow though...

Thanks for telling me your findings with the 24-105. I'm still tempted by it, even though it's not parfocal...

I wonder if anyone has any experience with Nikon zooms (especially on NEX bodies)? Are they blighted in the same way as a lot of Canon glass? From that link, it looks like the 24-70 Nikon is good to go.

Actually, I've just worked out that if you put the Speed Booster on the 24-105 and then the normal Metabones on a 70-200, then you've got f2.8 coverage from 24mm-300mm - all just from two lenses!

Still doesn't get me any further with my quest for a decent parfocal lens mind!

Yup, I am probably asking the wrong crowd here as I have noticed primes do come up in conversation more than zooms. Photographic glass did all used to be parfocal back when they were also all-metal construction and built like artillery shells. I think you're right that varifocal design has taken over for most that's out there, but there's a lack of clarity in this aspect throughout the web. Some say all Canon glass is varifocal, some say just their L line is parfocal, but what everyone seems to agree on is that no-one really knows!

There is such a gap in the market I feel for a decent standard zoom lens that retains its focus throughout its range. An affordable super35 constant aperture parfocal lens is probably a bit of a pipe dream, but perhaps there could be something for M43 (not that that helps me much!)?

Mind you, with the SpeedBooster + EF->E Mount adapters, and using that one lens you can effectively cover 24-158mm, which is a pretty impressive and lightweight run-and-gun set up really. Imagine if you had two of those lenses, the adapters could just live on them permanently!

Cheers Andrew for your comments. 

Cheers Andrew, that really is the best advice there isn't it? Trouble is, I'm such an eBay dweller I can't bring myself to buy brand new! I'll just keep an eye out for any used glass flying around town then.

In the meantime, would love to hear of other DSLR-lens users experiences with zoom lenses that they've discovered to be parfocal.

Thanks all, this site is a veritable font of knowledge and I look forward to hopefully hearing of others findings!

Hi all,

Long time lurker, first time poster.

The title of this thread says it all really. I've been using the Canon 17-55mm and Sigma 50-150mm lenses a lot on my 550D assuming that the old trick of zooming into a subject, focussing, and then crashing out wide would give me a nice sharp image to shoot with. But it's only recently that I've noticed particularly with the Canon that the image seems soft when I do this. I've never had any of my glass in for service so perhaps that would solve my issue, but really I'd like to invite anyone on the forum to post their findings with regards to zoom lenses that maintain focus throughout their range.

With the new Speedbooster adapter soon available in the UK, I'm looking at the Canon 24-105 being a potentially wonderful partnership in the making with my recently adopted FS700, but I worry that it's not parfocal.

Also, if anyone has any recommends in London for lens servicing, I'm all ears. Or eyes I guess, as this is a forum isn't it?

Thanks everyone.