Wulf

​Phone-sized image circles are typically a lot less than 2/3" these days!
Four things limit the ability to arbitrarily lower the reduction ratio of a focal reducer:
1) Inability to get really close to the sensor due to shutter, filter pack, mechanical junk, etc..
2) limited space on the master lens side due to a short working distance of the master lens
3) Image quality requirement
4) f/0.5 ultimate speed limit for any well-corrected lens
In practice, its possible to go down to 0.5x for certain special applications, with an aperture as large as f/0.66 or even f/0.63.  In the case of the Blackmagic Pocket, the extra space and smaller sensor permitted 0.57x with great quality even at f/0.74, but all my attempts to get a smaller ratio resulted in unacceptable aberrations.
In your example of a FF-2/3" reducer the magnification would need to be ~0.25x.  So, an f/2 lens would be reduced to f/0.5, which is the fastest speed allowed by physics.  For various reasons a focal reducer capable of 0.25x at f/0.5 is an unattainable goal.  You might be able to get 0.25x at a slower speed, so long as the attached lens has a very large working distance (e.g., telescope objective etc.)

​They should focus on color.

Dear jeff cb radio. I did review the ursa mini 4.6k and alexa mini. Watch it again and make sure you have the audio on. It is there. At about 3 min in.

naturalized the skin tones more in this version also made the DB footage look so much better!
 
 
 

Because I find it funny.
And you'd have to know me to appreciate the context of why I find it funny. 
If you don't, then you won't. 

​Werner says you are not allowed to find it funny about the context of the heavy look on the camera skintone test to obscure the results - which should not amuse you.  

How can I be amused when the cold blue deepness projects into the void of the horizon and reflects back nothingness? 
Here on the edge of this urban wilderness, we ask ourselves, are we more or less than this visible spectrum?
Spinning like a dancer.  Like photons; never existing but always existing  
Yet, the dog continues running alongside his master. Day after day for hundreds of miles.  

https://vimeo.com/128428344
Thanks Werner for coming by!
better skin tones below:
 
 

Don't get me wrong, Ebrahim, I just did the unbelievable, switching from N to C... but only for the c100MKII, and only for video, I had to add. Got sick with the handling of the Nikon DSLRs. Ironically, I have a ton of Samyang, Nikon and Zeiss glas, in between a lot of fast primes, and exactly ONE (1) fuzzy cheapo-fanplastic Canon zoom, the 18-55.The last one I bought second hand just out of curiosity, because I had not planned to invest in Canon lenses (zooming/focussing the other way as Nikon lenses...).and guess what ... -- this F*** little zoom is my most valuable lens for the C100 at the moment!When I tried to focus manually I had a lot of false peaking with my trusty primes; even with the VF loupe I was too much struggling for sharp content. That changed the moment I tried the AF. Probably a game changer? At least for any steadycam/gimbal work, where you didn't want to touch the body. Yes, the new 50 is a steal.  Unfortunately  we are allmost sure like Jimbo said, that face detection and auto iris are not supported, just like the 17-50/2.8 ... so, no free lunch. and no reason to invest.  :-( 

​Call her D810.
:-)

​Call her D810.
:-)

​Call her D810.
:-)

From what I have read from multiple sources the 40mm STM and this new 50mm STM do not enable face-detection AF on the C-line cameras. A real pity =(
I'm currently invested in the m43 system for my business but have been researching the C100 Mark 2 for a potential new A Cam. It looks like a fantastic machine.
However... the one thing that I currently see as a weakness for the Canon C-line cameras is... the lenses. I know you must think I'm crazy, people are always singing the praises over Canon's incredible lens line up, but I just don't see it for their Super 35mm sensors. I either have to buy very expensive L lenses that have focal lengths and image circles designed for full frame, or sharp EF-S lenses that have plastic build quality, un-cinema-friendly zoom/focus rings and very uninspiring aperture ranges.
If I spend £4000 on a camera, I want an awesome standard zoom lens that uses all the features the camera is offering. I want f/2.8 throughout the range (so I can gain the advantage of the Super 35mm sensor!), I want 24mm full-frame equivalent at the wide end, I want a beautifully smooth zoom and focus ring so I can operate old school, and I also want OIS and all those sexy AF options at my fingertips so I can nail more shots on the fly.
Maybe I want too much? =)
Anyway, I love the image I can get from my GH4, and I love my Olympus 12-40mm lens. It's a real swiss army knife of a lens with its clutched hard-stopped focus ring, great zoom ring, constant f/2.8 and that wonderfully handy minimum focus distance, and the whole package weather-sealed. Okay, no OIS, but it does everything else perfectly and no problem sticking it on my small Glidecam HD1000 for stabilised shots.
Anyway, sorry to jump on your thread Ebrahim. I do like your posts, I just worry you are too deeply in love with Canon sometimes and she blinds you with marketing ;-)
Canon still have some work to do before they get my hard-earned money. Strangely at the moment it's the lenses that are the biggest sticking point for me.

Extremely ironic they've got a video about "Family without borders" yet the camera can't switch between PAL and NTSC!!! Arrrgghhh
 

My earlier essay on this topic.

We live in strange age. We are being overloaded by images of different kinds every minute or even seconds. We live in a world which is being mediated or put in Baudrillard term - the world is being simulated. The capitalist' democracy made all gear (cameras, recorders, cellphones with cameras) available to the great number of people. It might sound like a dream for all those artist they struggled to get their gear only a dacade ago. Thus, it is not suprising at all that so many people try their hand at film-making these days. But this great number of people engaging in moving images can be in some ways counter-productive as well.
The recent digital revolution changed the film industry on all levels. You do not need to buy a filmstock and pay for its developement anymore! You just buy a memorycard and you can record as long as your memorycard is capable of. You do not have to be worried about unaccurate exposition and unprecise framing. You can easily fix it during editing or simply reshoot the scene again and again until you are satisfied with it. You can change the sensitivity of your "film" by pressing a button. You have immediate preview of your footage. And so on. It is clear that all these new improvements help film-makers to cut down a budget of their film. The same regards the distribution circles. That means film-makers today do not have to fight for their place on silver screen at cinema. In the age of internet we can easily distribute our films on-line and share them with friends and new audiencies. We can say that since digital revolution to produce and distribute a movie has never been easier and cheaper. And one would expect that these new conditions will have wholesome influence on young amateur cinema. But unfortunately instead of more progression on the field of moving images we can encounter doldrums and seal off form of young cinema.
These problems are not new and unknown to filmmakers' community. In 1959 Jonas Mekas complained about young cinema of his age. He argued that those films are made with money, cameras and splicers instead of with enthusiasm, passion, and imagination. Even though film cameras and splicers are not being used anymore as they have been replaced by digital cameras and computing video editors, the lack of creativity and enthusiasm is still(!) striking. As in 1959 we can encounter that young aspiring film-makers are only preoccupied with gear instead of with a creativity and search for new ways of expression. I do not dismiss the importance of technique and its aesthetical influence and importance on film’s image. But the shorts of today’s young film-makers could be described as over-technical and over-professionalized. One of the cause of this problem is wrong inspiration. All these young film-makers try to imitate the “big” cinema. This imitation of hollywoodian aesthetic is wrong because it blends two absolutely different approaches to cinema. The most powerful weapon which amateur film-maker posses is its freedom because he is outside of traditional circles of production and distribution. Unfortunately most of them do not realize this fact and try to break in or imitate these circles. And so they are raping theirs own film roots and independency. This whole approach is not only wrong but idiotic as well. In a case of “big” cinema the following words of Guy Debord are relevant more than for any other human activity: "The spectacle is capital to such a degree of accumulation that it becomes an image.” Put it in another words the capital is the main source of hollywood aesthetic and intersection of the whole process of making a movie. Money is primary concern of Hollywood, not the creativity and search for new ways of expression. It is well known that Hollywood has traditionally been mediocre in its form. While so-called Off-Hollywood cinema, avant-gard, independent and amateur film-makers were experimenting with film forms. One of the reason is "because we can” and they do not give in the dictate of capital and public acceptance. Freedom and need to create must be the primary motivation of independent film-makers. But all the camera panning, over-stable shots, sliding, flawlessly pure image and seamless editing which are being used so often by young film-makers create polish and slick films and this aesthetics has nothing to do with freedom. It is based on false and artificial aesthetic of Hollywood cinema. Such a form adopted by young independent filmmaker is imprisioning him in corrupt world. It is smoothing the edges of his very unique way of seeing a life. From a free and independent film-maker he has become just a worker of cinema who is not fulfilling his true inner vision but the expectation. One does not have to be Stan Brakhage or be in pursuit of destruction of every possible convention to call himself an author. This approach would not be good either. The most important attribute of film-maker is to be aware and genuine. Thus it is crucial to avoid “making”. The only right way is to film.
Jonas Mekas was calling for new generation of film-makers, and I’m calling the new generation to stop “making" and begin to film. To pursue their inner and sublet feelings and visions.

This thread doesn't address one of the greatest issues of choice vs. creativity - which is partnership vs. control.
For the last year or so, I work work work with macs and digital... but my creative work, my play? Film, 60's era metal cameras, an enlarger and lith developer.
Every step of that process means working within the confines of the medium. Particularly lith printing, which is very hard to replicate across 2 prints, and is packed with "ghost-in-the-machine" oddities based on chemistry and temperature and the fact that every print you make changes the chemical composition of the developer. You simply can't "control" any step of the process with any sort of totality, from exposure to final print, like you can with a digital camera and Photoshop.
But once you decide you are a "partner" with the media, the game changes. Why do we make partnerships? Usually to add unique strengths which we don't possess or aren't remarkable at, to our creative, business, romantic, or fun pursuits. When you allow chance and surprise into the process, its like being handed a very active and very able muse.
I shot about 200 frames, digital, of a nude for a friend who wanted to get a sense of "how she looked" in that scenario. I shot 3 or 4 frames with an old Minolta rangefinder, and one of those just had lots of the mojo I want from a shot. Printing it was work - to get those tools to sculpt the print into what I wanted, while making room for the oddities of the process and making them work together. It's probably my favorite bit of creative output this year. And those things inform my "controlled" work as well.

To be fair, I haven't tried their pasta sauce. 

Well, got this way and switched my D800 to a D750 last week, as stills are sometimes very important for me. It looks like a very captable b-cam for my video stuff, too.
Still too early for giving detailed feedback as my PC is down atm. But careful about the DX cropmode, I think it may suffer on the smaller D750, while perfect only with the D810. That said, I would have preferred the traditional semi-pro bodydesign instead of this more enthusiastic plasticfantastic.  Otherwise I am very satisfied atm, even ISO 12,000 didn't look too bad. DR is fine, sharpness is ok'ish, but Colours... are g r e a t (as usual with Nikon I might add). Lack of focus peaking is cured with a loupe, with helps also for stable  shots. Aliasing? Never ever. Moiré? hm, only when you really want to produce failures, but you have to try quite hard, like shooting jeans with a macro lense, so in RL no problem, too :-)
IQ in stills is hard to beat... state of the art.
btw, this is only personal, but while I have serveral pound of fast AFD und AFS glas in primes and zooms, I prefere more and more the look and the handling of ol' AI-S lenses for my moving pictures (mostly slower, but dirty cheap and with a lot of mojo; I did not shoot video 'crazy wide open' anymore).
 
edit
@ .DigiEd: Do it!!
the d700 was a very very fine cam in it's days, buuuut ... you will be suprised, I promise you.

​Was the PixPro also marketed as a professional level video camera?
To tell you the truth, for my own good, I need to stop reading or watching any more YT comparisons from Inquisitive. I wasn't having any emotions before, but that hatchet job does piss me off.
When I saw how good that UNHACKED GH2 footage looked on my 50" plasma and how poor he made it look on YT....

Yeah, that dusk shot of San Fran is pretty much what scares people about this camera.  Oh well. 

At the end of the day, the video IQ from the EM5II is inferior to similar cameras from companies like Sony and Panasonic.  The thing is, it's not a disaster.  It's got moiré, that's kind of the worst thing to say about it.
And if you want to minimize moire and roll off those higher frequencies in your image, there are very simple ways to do it.  Just read what that Brawley guy advises.  Easy.
Do I think the EM5II should have better IQ in 2015?  Yes.  Is it going to stop me from being productive with it?  No.  I'll do just fine and so will thousands of other owners.
The Canon T3i has moire too.  Didn't stop this guy:  http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/8116-short-film-shot-on-canon-t3i/
Ah, perhaps I'm pissing in the wind here.  Arguing about IQ seems to be many a camera hobbyist's dedicated pastime.  Actually using the camera in creative ways?  Maybe not so much.

I recently released a short film I shot entirely on a Canon T3i. I feel like the era of 1080p h.264 DSLR's are over but thought it'd be cool to share how they can still create great images. 
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RjOk5-aeTzQ

​Ok Inquisitive, it time to fess up.  We know that you are the head of the global Olympus video fan boy club -the Olympinati, who is engaged in a global conspiracy to secretly convince the film making world that Olympus is the king of video with the same if not better resolution than the GH2/3/4 but with much superior stabilisation that they just can't live without.  If you succeed, Panasonic and other companies will have no choice but to put IBIS into all their cameras and in the process they will throw away their highly detailed, moire-free images and will plunge the world into the next video dark age.......

Well the one on the left is the EM5 and the GH2 on the right.  I only did what I wrote which was not much.  Here is the file out of camera for both.  I did discover the EM5 is very flat and the GH2 has a lot of contrast in comparison check the tree trunk in the shadows towards the end and than look at it after my changes. You should be able to view it at 1080.
http://youtu.be/XUEjQOIHvIU