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That's interesting... I never really thought about it but it makes sense. When I think Day for Night, I always think Jaws but after looking at some stills there definitely is a lot of grey in the shots as well. I shot an impromptu short film years ago... well it was actually a scene for a larger film that I attempted to turn into its own short film but I needed a Day for Night establishing shot of a cabin... for other reasons, the short ended up being in B&W and that ended up being tremendously helpful selling the Day for Night effect. Which brings me to my next point... I have been so spoiled by shooting raw. I aim to get my WB close in camera, but it's so easy to correct in Resolve's Raw Panel, that it doesn't really matter... I don't know if I can go back to a traditional compressed codec. Even when I originally had the Micro, and shot ProRes, I used 4500 as a middle ground and I would just correct it in post. I wouldn't do that now that I know better, but ProRes is beefy enough that I didn't have any issues. If I were to shoot on a compressed codec now, I really think I'd shoot mostly in B&W. In fact, if I ever get a second camera... a GH5... or whatever... I'd probably use it as a B&W only camera. There's an old saying amongst editors when they couldn't get a cut to match... "If you can't solve it... dissolve it." I use a similar saying when it comes to color... "If it don't look right... try black and white." 😎 Those guys at LGG are either professional colorists or aspiring professional colorists. When you devote yourself entirely to one discipline, you're going to get really good at that one discipline and learn a ton of tricks. A lot of us end up being Jacks of all Trades, out of necessity, and as Jacks of all Trades, sometimes we need to choose our battles. Oh I know... my whole film is basically shot with available light. I have a few shots at the end of magic hour that have been giving me trouble. As I said before, with raw it's a bit easier because I can adjust the color temperature but getting the tint right has been a chore. Sometimes I'll just scrap the shot. I'm usually chasing the light anyway, so the shot probably wasn't that great to begin with since it was often rushed. To the original point about AWB and working without it. I stopped using AWB once I moved away from Canon to Panasonic. But you can use AWB to see what's "supposed" to be right and then adjust your Kelvin temperature until it matches... but more often than not, your eyes will tell you what's what and it will be damn close. Once you figure out how each camera and sometimes lens affects WB, then the Kelvin temperature becomes second nature.

Thanks! We were walking to a location one shooting day and an impromptu shot came up, rather than extend the monopod, I stuck it inside the pocket of my hooded sweatshirt and that worked a lot better than my laziness thought it would... the tape measure pouch was bought the next week at Home Depot.

It seems that a lot of people have love or hate for the lens. In a lot of ways, the lens is infuriating. On occasion the WB will seem off with this lens, to the point that I set daylight WB at 5000 instead of 5600 sometimes. And you're right it does veil wide open, but the contrast can be added back nicely in post creating a soft, contrasty haze instead of a low-con veil that some vintage lenses have. Some of the older Zeiss lenses have this too... maybe it's micro contrast? I think Olympus OM Lenses will forcefully mount on Nikon cameras too.

Obviously, even available light has a color temperature but yeah I get what you're saying. There's an old trick where you use a low color temperature and a polarizer or ND filter to shoot day for night. It makes the image look like moonlight. So I am sure there are plenty of tricks and effects professional cinematographers know to obtain quick looks. I didn't mean to imply that it always is. I know I would much prefer DPAF than manually pulling focus to track my actors. My shooting ratio would probably be cut in half... or more. But honestly, I'm surprised you aren't experiencing color shifts using AWB with your Panasonic. Canon always had pretty good AWB but with Panasonic I rarely had good results. The presets were pretty accurate though. With that said, I loved shooting Shutter Priority and AWB with my XC10 and FZ2500. In fact, I often said that shooting with those cameras was liberating and felt like point and shoot filmmaking where the equipment got out of your way. You're just such a proponent of manual lenses that I assumed you shot full manual. But shooting fully manual becomes second nature and lets you choose what you want to prioritize in a shot and it really only takes a couple seconds to decide and set.

First I'd like to say that I appreciate that the Lenses sticky thread is now it's own Sub-Forum. It really allows members to post more specific topics and it allows readers to ignore topics that may not be useful for them. With that said, @noone had a great idea creating a topic with one of his favorite lenses... so I figured I'd follow suit with one of my favorite lenses... Nikkor 35mm 1.4 ai-s As I started writing this brief, real world review, I realized that this lens represents a larger story of me as a filmmaker as it chronicles the highs and lows of my life since I started shooting my film... So what started as a brief review morphed into a much longer story. If you don't have the time or inclination, stop now. For those that are still interested... here we go... I love fast, wide angle lenses. They offer shallow depth of field while allowing you to get close to your subject. And a fast 35mm straddles a wide angle FOV and a normal FOV making it almost the perfect full frame, focal length for my style of filmmaking. This is my second copy of this lens and truth be told... I've almost sold this lens a half a dozen times over the past year. My first copy I bought when I started shooting my film. I had a simple game plan... the Canon 24-70mm f/4 IS lens for daylight and the Nikkor for lowlight. Here are a couple frames from the first shots I took with the lens for my film. For some reason I decided to go a different route for my lowlight shots and bought a Canon 35mm f/2 IS lens. In most ways, the Canon is a better lens, but it lacks the charm of the Nikkor even if it did match my zoom a little better. At the time, my film was moving along at a steady pace, so I decided to keep the Nikkor for a different, upcoming film... Well... Life had a different plan, like it often does, and some unforeseen medical issues in my family slowed production to a near grinding halt. With those medical issues came some unforeseen financial issues and I was forced to sell a bunch of lenses. For a brief time I thought I'd be forced to sell my camera as well, but I luckily made it work. Before I sold the Nikkor, I decided to take it out for a final spin. Here are a couple frames from that last day with the lens... By this time, I was also forced to sell my Canon zoom and my Canon 35mm f/2. Over the next 6 months I raided my closet to test any and every lens I had that could work for my film. Luckily, during that time, I found a Canon 28mm 1.8 listed on eBay "For Parts" for peanuts. Needless to say, I won the auction and found another one of my favorite lenses born from need. For the next 6-8 months, the Canon 28mm 1.8 lens became the only lens I used to shoot my film and at the time, I couldn't be happier with the results. But I still missed my Canon zoom and my Nikkor 35mm 1.4. Last year, I came into a little extra money and immediately sought another copy of the Nikkor and after a few weeks, I found one. With the extra money in my account, I took the opportunity to test a bunch of lenses I couldn't otherwise afford but always wanted to try. I tested some beautiful lenses but being a hobbyist, I needed to contain my obsession and build a couple logical lens sets. I used the end of my sporadic shooting days to test a lens. My method was simple, use my main actor as a model in the same locations I was shooting my film. Here are a few frames from those tests... After hours of deliberation and footage, I finally realized that I don't change lenses that often and I grew to like the idea of a single POV, from a single lens, as if the lens' FOV represents an invisible narrator's eye. I used my feet to zoom and put together a simple rig consisting of a closed monopod with a tilt head and a tape measure pouch clipped onto my belt. The bottom of the monopod fits snuggly inside the tape measure pouch giving me a stable image with a handheld-like flexibility. During these tests, I realized that I had way too many lenses and could easily shoot a short film a month, for well over a year, and never reuse the same lens... What was I thinking?! I am just a hobbyist with no delusions that I will make the next great indie film. This was getting out of hand. So I set up a final round of testing and narrowed down my keepers to a grand total of 5 lenses with the only "set" consisting of my Canon FD 50mm 1.2 L and my Canon 28mm 1.8. At the time, I even contemplated selling the Nikkor 35mm 1.4 one more time to keep with my minimalistic utilitarian approach. But after some careful thought, and some good advice from some other EOSHD members, I decided to keep it. Although I was still unsure if I needed the lens, after a recent go at some of the footage with my mediocre color skills and my crappy monitor, I came up with these frames from one of my test shots... Although, I realize that none of these shots are particularly spectacular, but each one represents something I like about cinematography and tells a story about my life over the past 3 years. Sometimes the gear we buy is more than just tools for the stories we tell... they become part of the story... part of the journey. Maybe I am being too sentimental but when I look at these perfectly imperfect images taken with a perfectly imperfect lens, I remember the moments that brought me from then to now and what I learned during that process... This lens taught me that my equipment is better than I am. I learned that I don't have to shoot everything wide open and that I probably shouldn't if I ever want to pull focus on an actor walking. I learned that some lenses have a vintage look when wide open, but when stopped down can look crisp and modern. But most importantly, I learned that I need very little to make a movie and gear is the least important. If you're interested in a more technical review, I recommend Ken Rockwell's review of the lens. He gets into the nitty gritty of the characteristics of the lens. I feel he's a little too hard on the lens but everything he writes is dead on accurate... https://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/35f14ais.htm For me, I can sum it up in one paragraph... The Nikkor 35mm 1.4 ai-s lens has a warmer tone and when shot wide open, the images are dreamy, a little soft with a ton of coma on the edges. Stop it down to f/2 and it cleans up a little. By f/2.8 it's like you're using a different lens and that lens is as sharp as a knife. It's like having two lenses in one with both being sharp enough with a bunch of character. So there you have it... thanks for reading.

Re: ProRes ... most productions (TV shows and films) that shoot on an Alexa... shoot on ProRes.

I bought it for ProRes, so it isn't crazy to use it for that. You get a lot more card space shooting ProRes as well. But I already own a raw camera, so the raw video on the Micro didn't mean so much. Kelvin temperature is pretty simple. Set it to the temperature of your light source and you will be damn close. Sunlight is 5600 Kelvin. Artificial light is around 3200... depending on the type of bulb. This is good for you. You're too talented to set everything to Auto all of the time. 😎

Idk if you can do a custom WB on the Micro, so I just always used the Kelvin temperature. Since navigating the menus can be a chore on the Micro you can set it at 4400 for raw 3:1 and then change it up or down as needed in post. Even ProRes files are hefty enough to give you some wiggle room in post, but it's probably best to get it relatively close. But you can keep it simple... 5600 for daylight and 3200 for artificial light. You can also shoot your grey card and then temporarily crop to just the grey card, in post, and adjust your WB until the dot on the vectorscope is dead center on the cross... uncrop and voila perfect WB.

Remember that the FD lenses we're discussing have aspherical lenses in them. So there is a nFD 50mm 1.2 without an aspherical element and then there's the nFD 50mm 1.2 L with an aspherical element. The non-L lens isn't supposed to be anything special and it's probably no better than the FD 50mm 1.4... the 1.4 is a great lens.

Stills on a 12mp camera... you have some nerve. Lol. It just goes to show you that the stills MP war and the video resolution war isn't really that important. I've had a couple Sony cameras and the AWB was never really that accurate. The presets were much more accurate. You shoot concerts, right? Have you thought about doing a music video? That 24mm and the a7s probably sees in the dark... it definitely opens up some creative opportunities. I imagine you can get a decent image just using the dashboard lights in a car?

He invades and exploits people's personal space, even forcing scared women to run around him and then charges between 300 to 2500 euros for a print... hahaha. art...

I love the 3rd one. Are those frame grabs or stills? There's something about the original a7s color that I like. It screams indie film to me. I didn't know that about the older version having more aperture blades... interesting. I desperately want a 24mm 1.4 lens and the only one that makes sense for me is the Samyang/Rokinon. I already have the Canon 28mm 1.8 which someone will have to pry out of my cold, dead hands. The Sigma gets good reviews but then I'd feel compelled to buy the Sigma 50mm... which I don't need... especially since I adore the Samyang 50mm so the 24mm could make the perfect two lens set for me. I just can't seem to find one for the right price.

Great shots!!! As you know, I have the FD 50mm 1.2 L and it is one of the best 50mm lenses I have ever used. Even wide open it is pretty damn sharp. I'd love the 24mm but the prices on them are just obscene. I guess the endless comparisons between the aspherical S.S.C FD lenses and the K-35 lenses, combined with the low supply of on the used market, have inflated the price. If you think the nFD versions are expensive... look at what people are asking for the earlier S.S.C models that the K-35s are rumored to be modeled after. The question is... how long can 30-50 year old lenses command such high prices?

No worries. Sometimes I wonder if ZachGoodwin is a real boy or a character someone has created. With that said, I'll play along... I think the point of the "hometown" documentary was supposed to be a simple assignment to get you working on a quick and small film. So, I wouldn't worry too much about the demise of the project. But if there is a business or even an interesting person that would allow you to make a film about them and it intrigues you, then go for it. I think the greater point you need to think about is that a filmmaker needs a film to make to be a filmmaker. I always thought you wanted to be a narrative filmmaker, so why not spend your time making 60 second short films? Write it, cast it, shoot it and edit it. Then wash, rinse, repeat. Good luck.

Like art, topics like this are so subjective that they usually don't end well. I usually try to avoid such topics, but I will add... if you think you're an "artist" or creating "art" you probably aren't one and aren't creating it. The greatest artists of all time were passionate craftsman first and let history decide if what they created was "art." As far as this specific photographer... I know if some drunk looking homeless guy stumbled in front of me and flashed a picture of me or my family I would think he's a pervert and not an "artist." With that said, his work is interesting, but the same effect could be achieved with different equipment that doesn't require him to invade people's personal space. Just my opinion.

Dang, I haven't really been following the development of this product because I don't own either cameras, but after skimming the manual, this is pretty effing impressive! With the lens database, and your product, the Pocket 6K has just become a lot more interesting to me. Unfortunately, I'm a ways off to a 6K upgrade, but if I get there, you can count me as a customer. Just curious, how does the calibration and your product work with zoom lenses?

But those 3 stops allows you to choose where you want to use that extra dynamic range.

I really like the look from the FS7. I'd probably go a different route if I had that kind of money. I just recently saw an amazing video shot with the FS7 and a Samyang 24mm cine lens... I'm really interested to see more from the FX9 and its little brother.

Idk, I love what Sage is doing, but there's more to an image than just the color science that just can't be replicated with a color space transform. There's a reason why the Alexa is King and has held the throne since its release and no 4K, 6K or 8K camera has dethroned the beautiful 2.8K image from the Alexa. With that being said, the Ursa is an amazing camera and seems very capable for the way you intend to use it. It's definitely a smarter buy for your purposes. In fact, that and your X-T3 is probably all you would ever need.

They're not necessarily Plastic Fantastics, but I think every single one of those lenses represent the point of this thread... inexpensive glass that pull a lot more than their weight. So, yes please do the test if you have the time. I personally love the Zeiss Jena Tessar... if I could only find a copy that isn't mechanically unsound... so I'd be interested to see how it fares up against the Planar. Speaking of the Zeiss Jena 50mm 2.8, I wonder why nobody has made a modern Tessar?

Another one of my favorite Plastic Fantastic lenses is the Nikon Series E 50mm f/1.8. When the Series E lenses were released, Nikon was chastised for their poor build quality. But in comparison to today's lenses, they're built like tanks. About 6 months into filming my movie, life took a turn and I went through a rough patch that's really just beginning to smooth out. Unfortunately, that rough patch forced me to sell all of the lenses I was using to shoot my film. I dug deep into the gear closet and pulled out the Nikon 50mm 1.8 Series E. This is the result of that test... In some weird way, the rough patch I went through was a blessing, it forced me to look at my film in a different way and eventually led me to probably my favorite of Plastic Fantastic lenses... the Canon 28mm 1.8. I've posted plenty of shots from that lens, so I won't bore anybody with them, but that is one lens I will never sell. By lens metrics, it's not even that great of a lens, but its rendering oozes character and mood. In my opinion, it's probably my favorite lens of any lens I've ever used. Canon has a few Plastic Fantastic lenses. I would love it if Canon came out with a budget friendly cine lens lineup using these lenses' formulas in proper cinema housings.

Haha, I hope so. I soooo want to like the FP but I'm on the fence about it so far. I almost feel I need to wait for it to drop significantly in price before I'll give it a go.

This thread is for all of those cheapie, plastic lenses that shouldn't be as good as they are. There are a few well known lenses that carry the moniker proudly like the Canon 50mm 1.8 and 40mm 2.8, or the Nikkor 50mm 1.8 D. But there are some lesser known lenses like the Tokina 19-35mm that have a cult following and are often referred to as a "Plastic Fantastic." The first lens I will mention is the Canon 24-85mm f/3.5-4.5. For the price, it shouldn't be as good as it is. Here's a sample frame from the 5D Mark iii with ML Raw... I have a few more on my computer I'll add later today. Do you guys have any favorite Plastic Fantastic lenses? Please share and upload some sample videos or video frames.

Yeah I think between the Ursa and the Arri Classic, the Ursa is probably the smarter buy but man that Arri image is nice. Now if the Amira was in that price range... I'd definitely go with the Amira.

To add to my previous comment... I think this is the problem with cameras over $2500. For only a bit more you can get an S1H. And then at $4000, for only a bit more you can get a C200 or a Red Komodo or an EVA1 or an FS7 or an Ursa Mini Pro. After that price bracket it's a big jump before you get to a camera that has a significant jump in specs and even then, it may be worth bypassing those cameras to rent a Red or an Alexa.