Reputation from mercer

mercer reacted to kye in New travel film-making setup and pipeline - I feel like the tech has finally come of age October 25

Going back to the GH7, one thing that surprised me on the trip was the GH7 + Voigtlander 42.5mm F0.95 + Sirui 1.25x anamorphic adapter combination.
When I saw that the Sirui was under USD300 / AUD500 I was stunned as anamorphic was something that I had dismissed as simply being inaccessible to me - too expensive / difficult / complicated. I ordered it immediately.
When my tests revealed it was quite happy paired with the Voigtlander F0.95 primes shot wide open, I decided to take the 42.5mm on the trip with me as a creative experiment. The FF horizontal equivalent for the 17.5mm and adapter is 28mm F1.5, which is interesting but I'm not a huge fan of the 28mm FOV, so I chose the 42.5mm lens to pair with it, which gives an equivalent of 68mm F1.5. It's a longer lens for street shooting, but will give me some distance to work with (useful for a rig that is as large as this combination) and will give some great shallow DOF too.
Here are some sample frame grabs from the night markets in Xiamen Island, China.

When I used it in Hong Kong I found the focal length really came into its own. There were so many layers and so much movement, the best shots are just a confusing mess without the motion that helps you identify what is going on. Here are some more minimal frames.

I have pushed the grade in these very heavily. Loads of contrast and vignetting and a strong application of Film Look Creator too. The Voigtlanders are soft wide-open too, adding to the look.
IIRC these images were shot with the lens stopped down a bit (I'd forgotten my ND filter!) so it can be quite well behaved.

It has sent me down a rabbit hole of looking at how to get a more vintage S35 / FF look. More on that later.
My mini-review of the Sirui is this:
It's very affordable It's large and heavy, but build quality feels very good and seems to have tight tolerances It's sharp It doesn't flare much at all, even shooting in the streets at night I only saw flares on a few occasions when the headlights of a car hit the lens just right The focusing mechanism is a joy, I used one finger to focus it for a lot of the time I was using it The bokeh is surprisingly cats-eye / swirly, and doesn't have that strong a vertical stretch (at 1.25x it's only a mild squeeze factor so that makes sense) It has a bit of coma with bright lights If you like what you see above, I'd recommend it.
I started off thinking that my bag was very heavy and not taking this combo next trip would be a good way to lighten my luggage a bit, and on the trip home was thinking that I'll take it everywhere and just pack less clothes.

mercer got a reaction from kye in Vintage anamorphic adapters in 2025 October 16

@maxJ4380 love this shot.

Nice color and sharpness. I like how you used the fence rails to add an even tighter window into the frame... especially with how busy the frame is...
A window into chaos.
It also looks like a frame right out of Yellowstone.

mercer reacted to maxJ4380 in Vintage anamorphic adapters in 2025 October 15

First time in ages i got away for a few days and did a road trip out to a little country town i like to visit.
Full discloser, never really considered myself, much of a cleanliness or sterility freak 🙃. However i am liking the sirui 1.33 24mm. Probably mostly for the convenience it brings. Its not 1.5, 1.6 or 2x, and i think the anamorphic effects are kinda tame compared to those other stretches i mention.

I liken it to stepping stones i think, little bit different to what you'd normally see but not as jarring as 2x ( although jarring might be too strong an adjective). It will flare and do the blue streaks as well but i find the blue streaks to be less intrusive compared to what you see on youtube. I suspect the first prototypes steaked quite a lot in youtube videos, no idea if they toned them down. My experiences has been their abit more subdued.

The anamorphics guy Tito Ferradans has a vid on using oval cutouts in sirui lenses. I'd probably try something like that next. If i wanted a look that was closer to 2x Its taken a while to figure this lens out and i expect i still need to do more with it to realize its potential.

The whole sterility / cleanliness thing, is of course subjective. What you may like, i may not and vice versa. I personally don't find cleanliness and or sharpness objectional in a lens and i recently bought a lens with a whole lot of yellowing going on that most wouldn't buy.
I think the sirui and the other modern anamorphic lenses bring convenience to anamorphics. Buying a vintage anamorphic is much like travelling down a rabbit hole. Theres lots of things to add on and sometimes that can take a while to sort out.
Its my understanding that 1.33 are geared towards crop sensors and the bigger stretches for full frame ? of course you can mix and match, if you so desire.
i'm on mft format and i think 1.33 stretch adds enough of a difference for me. i also suspect a 1.33 stretch is a good start, if your looking to dip your toes in anamorphics and have a crop sensor camera, but dont want to travel down a rabbit hole.

mercer reacted to kye in New travel film-making setup and pipeline - I feel like the tech has finally come of age October 9

Tianluokeng Tulou clusters, Fujian Province, China.
These buildings have a very thick outer wall of earth and a 3-5 storey inner wooden structure that houses dozens of families. The structure is designed to be stable during earthquakes and secure against bandits. The oldest if the ones we visited was built in 1796.
These are just with a quick grade, mostly Resolve Film Look Creator. The DR in the scene is extreme, and while all the required info is in the files, I'm going to have to go heavy on the power-windows when I grade these properly.
Grabs from GH7 + 14-140mm zoom.

Grabs from iPhone 17 Pro shooting Prores Log with default app.
The Prores HQ Apple Log files grade really nicely, have heaps of DR, and are great to work with. The DR isn't quite as much as the GH7, but it's more than enough for these scenes. These were graded at a different time to the above GH7 shots so probably don't match.

All-in-all, the iPhone well and truly punches above its weight when you take into account it's pocketability, the size of the sensor, and the incredible range in focal lengths. Imagine how much you'd have to pay to get a lens that can do 13-200mm FF equivalent FOV and has exposure levels between F1.78 and F2.8 across the whole range.

mercer reacted to kye in New travel film-making setup and pipeline - I feel like the tech has finally come of age October 5

Here's some more grabs.

mercer reacted to kye in New travel film-making setup and pipeline - I feel like the tech has finally come of age October 5

I started this thread by talking about the GH7, but I think the iPhone 17 Pro has also come of age (for me at least).
My goals for using this is to keep it in my pocket, be able to shoot super quickly using the default camera app, and focus on the compositions and capturing the events in front of the camera while it does all the auto-everything required for a good quality capture.
First impressions and thoughts from a few weeks of using it.
4K Prores HQ files in Apple Log 2 look great and are a joy to work with in Resolve (see examples below) All the lenses seem to work well and even up to the 8x 200mm are completely usable hand-held, and if leaning your hand against something the 8x is almost locked-off It records 6 channels of audio, and they appear to all be independent and available in the NLE (see image below) which might(?) be useful in difficult situations where there's wind noise in one or one channel clips etc? While recording Prores Log the default camera app shows you the log image and doesn't have an option to apply a LUT, so although it's a great way to be sure you're recording LOG, it's hardly ideal. Hopefully they fix this in an update. Audio channels in Resolve:

Some frame grabs from out the hotel window in HK. Bear in mind these were shot with the default camera app, through multiple layers of tinted glass, and have had a film emulation grade put on top of them.
1x 24mm camera:

8x 200mm camera:

with a bit of sharpening:

with too much sharpening (unless you're a "cinematic Youtuber"):

1x 24mm camera (ignore the reflections in the window):

8x camera:

8x camera with sharpening:

and in terms of DR / latitude, here's the 1x image brought up ~2.5 stops:

I haven't tested it in low-light yet, but to me, all this essentially means that the camera is sufficiently technically capable that I can shoot with it without feeling like the technical factors are overly restrictive. This is incredibly impressive, given that even cameras like the GH5 needed you to pay attention to their limits in some situations.
For the first time I feel like if something happened to my 'real' camera and all I had to capture a trip is my phone I wouldn't feel like I'd stuffed up. This is the first trip I haven't packed a backup camera body, which has given me the ability to pack a couple of extra lens options, thus 'upgrading' the GH7 rig as well.

mercer got a reaction from Davide DB in Nikon Zr is coming October 3

That would make sense. Why would Nikon buy Red, introduce RedCode Raw into a camera and trick everyone by using NRaw and calling it RedCode? Seems kinda pointless. I am no expert in coding, but wouldn't it make more sense that Nikon had to implement R3D into the "language" that communicates with their processors. So R3D was reconfigured slightly. Just a guess, but has anyone tried to rename the R3D files as NRaw... I would guess that it works.

mercer reacted to Andrew Reid in Nikon Zr is coming September 12

So is NRAW really REDCODE or is REDCODE really NRAW, I am confused now.

mercer got a reaction from ntblowz in Nikon Zr is coming September 12