The Chris

1 hour ago, TheRenaissanceMan said:

Indeed. The problem is that ZEs require electrical contacts to control the aperture, and ZFs focus "backwards." Contax Zeiss are the newest Zeisses for DSLRs that have aperture rings and focus the correct direction. Plus, the coatings are a little less contrasty, which helps preserve DR and a more "organic" look for video. 

I only shoot Sony and M43, electronic adapters and focal reducers are readily available to control EF apertures. YMMV. Sorry, I don't know what organic means when it comes to digital video and I've never seen any quantifiable evidence that lens coatings will impact DR. If you have measurements that demonstrate otherwise, I'd be interested in seeing them.

Cheers

Lots of A7s picture profile threads here and on DVXuser. Cine 4 and Autumn Leaves will give you nice results with the full ISO range.

Smallrig has lots of rod clamps with threads in between the rods, looks like any generic small ballhead plus a clamp would do the trick. Personally I'd go with a small arm so you can articulate the monitor as needed.

IMO the A7s would make a pretty good doc camera, a lens like the 24-105 could cover pretty much anything you'd encounter. I've used mine with the 24-105 for ENG type stuff. Set all your custom buttons to video functions to reduce menu diving. APS-c mode is sharp and extends your lens range.

I'd consider one of the Sony XLR mic attachments, you can have two sources of audio if needed, so you don't have to fiddle with swapping plugs with a lav and shotgun.

Good luck.

3 hours ago, kidzrevil said:

@mercer I'll look into that dude, I got my eye on the 85mm f1.2 the 50mm f1.4 and the 28mm f2. Footage from the contax lenses look good ! You used it on a 4k body ?

There's a giant Contax Zeiss thread on reduser. The German versions of many lenses show what's regarded as ninja star bokeh while the Japanese versions do not. Something to be aware of, I personally can't stand the ninja star look, so I've always bought MIJ lenses. Supposedly the MIJ versions have updated coatings too. The other drawback for me is 6-bladed apertures on most lenses, Zeiss moved to 8-blades with the ZE/ZF's and many can be found for less than the C/Y versions without worries of internal fungus and dust.

They're fine with 36mp stills on the A7r, they're more than up to the task for 4k.

One lens for me would be a standard zoom, 24-70/2.8, the Nikon Bourne f/2.8 zoom, or a good copy of the 24-105L on FF - or the equivalent on smaller sensor. 

If you're talking one FL, it'd be a 35/1.4 for me. 

2 hours ago, sanveer said:

hahaha. True. But also, all sliders don't have that curved trajectory. Most of them at straight, so that's asking a lot. 

What this can't do is replicate the movement when you have objects in the foreground because the lens is stationary, so no sliding out from behind objects and such. I think that's what Phil was talking about. 

With IBIS you can do slider like movements and take advantage of the parallax effect and stay in 4k. I don't think I'd ever use the in cam feature, I'd just go handheld for the better visual or do it in post. 

Just my opinion. 

On April 29, 2016 at 5:44 AM, Ivanhurba said:

Granted, it's just the last quarter, but it's a stark contrast to the ones Canon had. Really nice seen them nailing it. Specially the offset of compacts and camcorders with better results in high end cameras. I guess at some point the big two will have to take notice of the big fat elephant who just took the 'drink me' potion.

http://www.sonyalpharumors.com/new-sony-financial-report-significant-operating-income-increase/

Sony now includes its medical division in Imaging, Canon, Olympus and others do not. From the report:

"In addition, the medical business, previously included in All Other, is now included in the IP&S segment as a result of a change in the Corporate Executive Officer in charge of the medical business. "

Those numbers don't look all that great next to Canon. But the SAR guy obviously doesn't bother to read the report, he just goes for clickbait. 

On April 25, 2016 at 0:40 AM, IronFilm said:

It could be priced higher, US$2K or even US$2.5K for the 4K sensor in the Terra body.

A lot of us are really liking the concept of this smaller form factor of the Terra body. If they could squeeze in the 4K sensor into that as well, many of us would be perfectly content with that image. 

And a low low price is what would get many of us to take the plunge on ordering from overseas a camera that is seen by many (unfortunately) as a fringe player. And then the success of that is what will lead to people taking the plunge on ordering the higher value products from Kinefinity.

I'd be all over a Terra 4k at $2500 with the EF mount. Pair that with the two Sigma f/1.8 zooms and a small lens for gimbal work, damn...

4 hours ago, eleison said:

 

But yet, share holders are willing to give Tesla a high market cap.  Say what you want, investors as a whole believe in the company.  In one of Tesla's latest press release, telsa blames themselves and their "hubris" for not meeting their production numbers.  When has Canon done something similar and followed through?  Canon is spinning in it's press releases.  That's not a good sign.  After a while, it might actually believe it's own spin. It might already have.

 

 

Remember the dot com bubble? Plenty of speculative investment that now isn't worth the paper it's printed on. Canons profits are real, the only people making money off Tesla are traders that bought last year when fires caused shares to nosedive to $140 and are now selling them to suckers at $250. There's nothing in their business plan that says profits are coming in the next couple years, at some point a lot of people are gonna get hosed

Bash Canon all you want, but again for the first three months of this year they've made a better profit than Tesla has in its entire existence, and this will be the case for years to come. Cars aren't the endgame for Tesla, it's what goes into them - that's why they've invested far more in the Gigafactory than the auto plant. 

Theres no shame in admitting you're wrong. Apologies if I've been harsh, but you have no clue what you're talking about. 

3 hours ago, Andrew Reid said:

You are in the running for the biggest Canon apologist on the internet at this rate.

Hmm, electric cars. No profit in those he says!! Bit of a sweeping statement and very wrong indeed. You haven't noticed the future direction of the market, a bit like how Canon didn't notice the future direction of the consumer camera market for about 10 years and now here's the payback.

My prediction - in the future Apple and Telsa will make as much profit from selling electric vehicles as Ford.

And it isn't just the disruptive newcomers, the whole car industry is in on the act, gearing up for their own mass market electric vehicles.

Electric cars wouldn't even exist if manufacturers weren't forced to by the uptick in government mandated fuel mileage standards. EV's can't even reach 1% of total auto sales, the future isn't inefficient/costly/heavy batteries it's equally large/expensive charging stations, sales figures clearly reflect that. Sales in the U.S. would be far less without a massive tax credit, here they're being propped up by government subsidies.

But please show me what EV manufacturer makes a profit selling them? Everyone but Tesla sells them in the U.S. to satisfy CARB mandates, and nobody is selling them at a profit, Nissan and GM have both admitted they're losing money on EV's, and the rest are half assed conversions of petrol cars to get the credit for mileage standards. Tesla is bleeding cash, they burned through about $1.5 billion last year and lose over $4000 on every car sold. 

I've seen even the future for Tesla, its bankruptcy when the cash reserves runs dry. Cars will quickly become what the Mac is for Apple if the Gigafactory ever reaches capacity, a segment with a small/loyal customer base, but not critical to survival. 

You read it here first. 

And Canon is still the first company to produce a 4k DSLR, seems like everyone else is playing catch up. 

38 minutes ago, eleison said:

 

I think a good company would be more straight forward.  Look at Tesla.  When they communicate with the press, they have the bad and the good.  For example, they say that they delivered X number of cars, LOWER than what they promised.  But they will deliver more cars in the future because they have learned from their mistakes and will improve the way they will build cars. Canon would be smart to do the same thing.  For example, canon can say they really didn't make that much money last quarter.  HOWEVER, they have done research and found that people want X type of cameras/products.  They will now build X type of cameras and products to please the public and to increase revenue.  This will NOT happen for a while because canon is out of touch with reality.  Being out of touch, does not instilling confidence among their shareholders.  Expect the stock to trend down even more.

 

If You Don't Cannibalize Yourself, Someone Else Will - Steve Jobs

 

Canon needs to innovate, or they will continue to die.  market segmentation no longer works...

Tesla is a misguided comparison, and their reports read just like any other, all roses and rainbows despite the fact they can't actually sell cars at a profit. Cars are a money pit, and they likely will never be able to make a profit selling them. To produce them in significant enough numbers to make a profit means a large increase in production costs. Their losses would be much worse if Toyota hadn't essentially gifted them a shuttered factory.

Canon has been profitable for over a decade and will still be profitable going forward - they also own about 40% of the digital camera market. Tesla has never made a profit and sells fewer cars in a year than Toyota sells in just two days, they're a tiny niche brand using cars to showcase their battery tech - so they can sell batteries and associated systems to others. They're never going to make a profit selling cars because of economies of scale, development costs are high, when you sell in small volume you don't move enough units to recoup costs. The money is in the batteries - that's why Musk built the Gigafactory.

Tesla makes no profit, its selling all its cars at a loss, its burning its cash reserves, and its stock sells for $250 a share. Canon makes a measly $360m in one quarter (more profits than Tesla will make based on forecasts for another couple years) and its trading around $30. I know which stock I would buy (hint - its the one with the better price/earnings ratio).

Tesla looks like a dot-com bubble/burst company that will sell off most its intellectual property (cars) to a Chinese conglomerate and just make batteries in a few years.

7 minutes ago, eleison said:

 

Sooooo.. Lets say my salary is $85,000 a year.  That's my salary working for ABC corporation.  However, this year I make only $52,000...  Yes, I still "made an income"... but that's 39% decrease in income.  If someone took away 39% of your income, would you worry about your job??  Would you worry about the state of the business you are in????

In any case, I don't really care (that much :).  I'm just here to gloat.  I use to be a canon shooter.  They made me wait for 3 years, stringing me along.. hinting they would make a product that I would like to buy/afford.  Too late canon.  I've moved on.  We need a dead pool.  How many years or quarters can canon survive???  Canon is dying..  Slowly, but surely especially as a camera company for the masses.  After all, they are "diversify away from consumer cameras"..

Annual income didn't decrease by 39%, your financial ignorance is detrimental to whatever point you're trying to make. Canon is still the most profitable camera company on the planet, not sure what you're gloating about really other than the inability to read a financial report.

Its always funny to read comments on financial reports from people that fall into one of the following categories:

1. Commenting on the analysis from a website that doesn't understand financial reports
2. Commenting on comments based on the above
3. People too lazy to actually read the reports, and just comment on presser summaries or stories like the Reuters report in the OP
4. People that did read the actual financial report and still don't know what the hell they're talking about

Imaging is only about 1/3rd of Canon's overall business model and as it acquires other businesses (such as the Toshiba Medical Division it recently bought) that ratio continues to shrink. As Jimmy mentioned, quarterly reports are just a snapshot of a small period of time, and unless you take the time to read where the cash is going and expenses not related to selling devices (like acquisitions, investments, retiring debt, and so on), along with understanding the impact of the declining Yen - you're talking out of your ass. Canon (like most Japanese companies) is getting hit hard by the way the government is handling the value of the Yen, not long ago the exchange rate of 125y = $1 was considered a crisis situation, Canon is using 113y = $1 in this report.

Because some seem to ignore the obvious - Canon reported a profit of over $360 million in its slowest quarter of the year. Imaging sales are down by just over 10% in terms of revenue.

20 hours ago, mercer said:

So, I decided on the stand alone version. Even though the plug in seemed to make more sense, I just couldn't stand the sluggish workflow. Thanks for everyone's input. I learned a lot. 

So the standalone version is faster? Thinking about getting FC myself. 

Wifi card?

1 hour ago, wwjd said:

Those who DON'T enjoy 3D are often vocal about it.  But, there are thousands more that love 3D and are looking forward to the advancement of movie tech from 100 year old frame rates.  3D still sells very big (or it would have stopped years ago) so it will continue and probably grow.  FINALLY more big names are all over HFR.  It's coming.  Evolve or go extinct.

3D grosses have declined over the last few years, accounting for just 14% of the overall grosses in 2014. The market has spoken, the fad is dying. It's a niche market compared to 2d and it's fading, just like those goofy 3D TV's. 

3D anything = nauseating and unwatchable for me and many others. This will be a specialty thing at best, like IMAX. 

Ambitious, but unless they already have a working beta prototype in final testing right now in order to sort all the image and software bugs, no way it ships this year. Instead of taking deposits to fund development they should have gone Kickstarter, but that would require footage, which means this is probably vaporware at this point.

Getting all the hardware and software to properly integrate is no easy task. Blackmagic actually has experience producing cameras and hardware, and they still can't come close to meeting any date. As we've seen, many features are introduced well after release with FW updates.

The Bolex guys miss their planned ship date by well over a year after their Kickstarter campaign ended IIRC. And the development process was already well underway at that point. The complexities of getting all the finishing touches right and sorting all the bugs really slowed them down. 

I think one of the more established players beats them to market in the next year or so - effectively killing this before it's finished. 

On March 29, 2016 at 9:28 PM, fuzzynormal said:

Yeah, something is certainly off with the blacks.  I'm hopeful that a little digging with settings and/or a firmware update will bring things more in line with "normal."

https://www.dropbox.com/s/co1kumkhdfgjrnt/TEST.mov?dl=0

Do you remember the ISO with any of these shots? There's a real lack of high ISO samples. I love the look, but I'm hoping to see more high ISO shots before taking the plunge.

2 hours ago, DPStewart said:

Yeah...and we have them... But that really doesn't hep much for using the NX1 for stills. I grew up shooting manual film cameras...but you still miss 90% of the shots you can get with a stabilized auto-focus lens. Without this my NX1 is of MUCH LESS value to me.

Plus, the "S" series lenses can provide some of THE BEST video auto-focus of any video camera short of a Canon C300 mk II. And sometimes that DOES make a difference on a shoot.

 

The fact that there are so few of the S"S series lenses available at all on eBay USA and that the lowest price I saw last week at all was $800....that shows that there in fact IS a pretty strong demand for these lenses...and it's going to get WORSE once the NX1 owners all find out that production of them has stopped and they realize they can;t put off the purchase any longer.

In the last few weeks you can count the number of 16-50's sold on two hands, hardly a large demand, and a few sold in the $750 range. This will be a $500 lens in 6 months. There's no rush because there are plenty of new lenses available and you can buy brand new ones from Asia where it's still being sold. Some are listed higher, but anyone that pays $1000 for this lens is an idiot. There's no demand because they're easy to find. 

15 hours ago, DPStewart said:

With fewer lenses out there than NX1 bodies - I'm worried it's going to be the opposite.
If you happen to NEED the auto-focus or IS and want the "S" series lens...I could see them selling for twice retail because there are so few of them out there. Maybe 1 for every 10 bodies sold.

That would assume there's a strong demand, which isn't the case. Also, they're still available new in Korea. Prices without new bodies are only going to decline as the NX fades away. 

4 hours ago, Marco Tecno said:

Too bad. I have most nx lenses and some of those I was able to get for decent/good prices. But it's so sad to see such a great system slowly disappearing w/o a formal announcement.

NX is far from being a great system. The NX1 was great, and the S lenses are nice (though large) but the rest of the lens lineup is weird, not very video friendly, with lots of gaps at common FL's and the flashes suck. The other NX cameras fall short of the promise of the NX1. It was a great start, but not much of a system. 

11 hours ago, fuzzynormal said:

Well, I can post a few shots from my upcoming gig, but it'll be basic work stuff, not test stuff.  

I don't do focus tracking, however.  It doesn't seem like something a manual-focus-guy like me is going to mess around with.  I don't trust it.

We'll see if it overheats.  Haven't tried to stress it yet.  Shooting only 1080, it doesn't seem likely, but we'll find out.

Thanks, even just frame grabs would be cool. The Cinema 5d review says it gets messy above ISO 1000. I haven't been able to find higher ISO demos. 

1 hour ago, fuzzynormal said:

Not that I know of yet. Yes, punch in focus would be great.

However, I will attest that I'm able to pull focus using the EVF.  Oddly, the peaking only works before you start rolling.  Once you're in filming mode it shuts off. (needs firmware fix)  But, again, grabbing focus is possible just by eyeballing the EVF image.

If I get any worthwhile images from the track tomorrow morning I'll post the source files for pixel peeping.

 

Any chance you can post something through the ISO range to judge noise? Any overheating? Also any chance you could post something showing focus tracking? I'm so close to getting one and just attaching a Z-finder to it like I did with the 5d2/3. Thanks in advance. 

You need a dual channel system with a receiver that accepts two signals at the same time, sorry I missed that one as well. You have fewer options, this is what B&H carries:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/search?atclk=Receiver+Type_Dual-Channel&ci=15419&N=4291086004+4293345056

If you need more you'll need additional systems. When I shot news we had two of the Azdens on each camera, so 4 people could be mic'd up at the same time. 

Two new Blackmagic cameras that will feature amazing specs and "will ship in August."

I'm already mentally prepared to preorder and then wait for a year for it to actually ship based on previous experiences. 

Been using the Sennheiser ew100 G3 for the last few years, got the lav, the handheld and the handheld adapter, all are great with the XLR plug or the 3.5mm straight into the cam.