BabsDoProd

The Olympus camera sounds like another solid 4K M43 camera but I think it's high time for an 8K M43 camera to come out. The Sharp 8K camera was really cool when I played with it at NAB some years ago and rumors say the Bosma 8K G1 is the same camera but there's no RAW output and it's a little pricier than anticipated. As it stands, I haven't seen anything much better than the Blackmagic Pocket 4K in terms of a M43 camera and the Panasonic GH6 does have some nice feature bonuses. While I'm sure the Olympus is a nice step forward for M43 photography, the video features still feel like the "same-old, same-old".

With "Avatar 2" I made a post on REDUser about it complaining about the unique aspect of the film jumping back and forth between 24fps and 48fps when action scenes came up and declaring that it was jarring. There was a bit of discussion about it but based on other reviews and articles it was clear that it was a widespread problem. Had the whole film been HFR then that would be one thing but not switching back and forth. You also have to remember that with HFR, just as people can have when looking at old school video camera stuff in 60i, there are people that are so sensitive to the video motion that they get motion sickness. Those complaints have happened every time they've tried to do a HFR project. 24P has also been chosen as our main cinematic frame rate because most people can tolerate it for long periods of time unless someone goes back to doing wild shaky cam like in they did in the early 2000s. There is also a bit of a sensory overload the higher in frame rates we go and, in my opinion, many times the footage loses sharpness and that "magical" cinematic feel just goes away as motion blur gets compromised and the smoothness of the HFR takes over everything and becomes too apparent. I admit, it does look cool to crank things up and film in 120p, even on my RED One MX in 2K mode, but I can't see a reason to film that way for every project or to turn on the TV and see mostly 120p content, it's just not right for everything.

I think Fuji could do well with making a GFX digital cinema camera body at this point and add the processing for full sensor readout for 8K. The only limitation I could see is the rolling shutter, however, other cameras have been made with plenty of rolling shutter and they still did well. However, if they could tame the rolling shutter somehow then I'm sure such a camera would be a hit.

If I didn't have to worry about rolling shutter performance, I would aim for a Full Frame sensor that films in 8K at least up to 24P (true 24 or 23.98). I would put buttons on the camera rather than a touch screen but not so many that it gets confusing, we're talking a record button, a joypad style navigation button, menu button, and then add at least five custom buttons around the camera that are fully user assignable. I could see adding control wheels and such but that's more for a stills camera as a video camera is basically set up ahead of time and sits on those settings forever in the menu aside from gain/ISO or ND. Full size HDMI output, dual USB-C (in case of recording on 1 and power on 2), if there's room for it then two full XLR ports or at least mini-XLR, and a 3.5mm jack. As for sound, it needs to be at least as good as a Zoom H4N and I don't know if 32-bit is affordable for integrating it yet but at least 24-bit/96khz sound. The camera has to be mirrorless mount and it would most likely be L-mount since that can be added without too much fuss compared to the others and you do at least get some sort of AF that way without resorting to a dumb mount solution. Dual card recording would be ideal to have in there and rollover for extra long recording would be helpful. For the screen, I keep seeing nice screens these days that are 5" and especially 7" for not much money at all so incorporating one of these screens would be an easy choice as it just needs to be nice enough to see what you're doing and if it's not too complicated to put a flip out hinge together for it, I wouldn't mind a nice 7" fold out screen to make sure I get my 8K image really sharp and focused. With a 7" screen, you can tell that size isn't a factor for me, it's going to end up being more of a box version of the Blackmagic Pocket cameras but not too far off as we just have to accept that camera cages are a thing and that helps to customize it to the user so that's roughly what I would aim for, just keeping it simple. The Fuji XH2 could be some inspiration for the 8K factor but it all comes down to what sensor can be used to make that happen for FF8K and not have some of the downsides like heavy rolling shutter or dynamic range limitations but I don't think a lot of sensors will have that problem these days and going forward.

That's really strange that the H.265 of the A1 is coming out ahead of Z9's NRAW! Now that internal recording has been tested, what about testing the external RAW of the A1 against NRAW and the external 8K of the Z9 to see how that measures up? Also, despite the issues present, how do the clips hold up in post? Perhaps there's some attribute to NRAW that can be fixed in post correction? Lastly, could there have been any kind of setting on the Z9 that could have altered these results?

Hey, everybody, I've been researching different anamorphic options for a project and while I really love my SLR Magic 2X and Rangefinder combo setup, I can't really use that on my Rokinon Cine DS lenses or other lens options I'm looking at which are simply too large for a 62mm thread adapter. Going with some of the indie anamorphics like Sirui and Great Joy could be an option if more of the lines are available by the time we get ready to film but I have some ideas for certain special optics so I looked at the adapters landscape of 2022. Out of all of them which are typically 1.33x or 1.5x, the closest alternative to my SLR Magic 2x seems to be the Letus Anamorphx 1.8x Pro. Looking around online I can't really get much of a consistent use case example from the lens and even the 2021 indie film "First Date" didn't seem to use the lens to its best abilities. There are reviews of the 1.33x and 1.33x Pro which kind of give an idea of what to look for but even with that, I have no idea how the 1.8x Pro compares or even if it might be inferior to the 1.33x Pro. So, does anybody have any experience with the 1.8x Pro Anamorphx? Anyone using a different flare model than the usual medium flare style? Any help or advice would be appreciated!

I've thankfully been in a rather dry environment and luckily kept my lenses in a clear storage case so if I'm tackling fungus it's because it was there in the lenses I bought online or locally in antique shops and occasionally a flea market or garage sale. If you look at my Instagram @zackbirlew you'll see some lenses I've taken apart and cleaned as well as my slip ups that led to damaged glass and broken lenses, thankfully not too many! My strategy is to keep each lens individually contained in a clear container with a push in locking seal or a clear screw top tupperware container (Ziploc brand or equal) with a silica gel packet. This helps isolate the lens from others and keeps it sealed dry with the clear case letting in enough light to scare off fungus. However, DIY lens cleaning is an entire skillset and research heavy practice that needs to be developed and you'll still run into lenses that are a shot in the dark as to whether you'll be able to take them apart and fix them back together properly. It's also an investment since you need to figure out all the tools and certain techniques and gotchya tricks involved but it is amazingly fun to do once you get going! This past year I've taken in a camera collection on top of my own and there may be another one coming from a family friend so I have A TON of lenses that need cleaning and maintenance as a lot of them are fungus infected or just dirty with dust from use and I'm going to be filming each lens cleaning and, if necessary, repair as I go through them. I'm currently trying to wrap up VFX post production on my first feature which has taken forever to get off the ground, long story, but the lens videos will be one of my weekend projects for the Babs Do Productions Youtube channel going forward. One thing to note is that you don't always need to take the lens apart to get the glass out, normally a lens spanner or rubber lens wrench will be able to remove retaining rings around the glass so you can get at the glass elements and the aperture blades if they need a wipe. Also, certain lenses simply require just the few screws of the lens mount ring taken off and others require a certain number of things to be taken off or even twisted apart, it just depends but I can say that older manual lenses are the easiest to do as they tend to be metal tubes holding glass and retaining rings in place. Most importantly, get some of those soft rubber or foam bead shelf liner rolls at the hardware or decorating store to lay down while you work on lenses as lens glass likes to slip out of your fingers and you don't want them falling onto and hitting or rolling off the table.

Yeah, we have built up sets of different lenses over times, love Konica Hexanons and Minoltas! I'm also finding out about Pentax K lenses but they're strange in that I don't see much difference with M42 Takumars for the main focal lengths, however, I much prefer the locking K mount to the finicky M42 mount. I'm looking at selling off a bunch of stuff as we just have too much, still got to categorize and clean some up after coming into possession of a large camera collection on top of our already too big personal collection, not sure where we'll be selling as of yet. It does hurt that the Ursa 12K doesn't have a mirrorless mount as there's so many cool lens sets to adapt that people haven't discovered yet!

Okay, I tested the lens out and it turns out to be a dud! To start, the lens had dust inside it from the factory which was a shocking quality control issue and I would have to send it back nonetheless. Still, I wanted to test it out and I decided to test right away with how wide I could go with it. While I could get a sharp image out of the adapter with every lens I tried, it became very apparent that the lens would be a hassle to use on set with lens changes between shots. The workflow with attaching the lens is the main hassle that slows you down because it’s supposed to screw onto your lens and then rotate to position but, in practice, this is quite difficult as the lens is wound so tight that you often accidentally unscrew the lens and it is made worse with added tedium when using step rings. About pulling focus, the double focus wasn’t too bad and the lens was a little forgiving if you were off slightly, however, this sometimes meant you weren’t one hundred percent sure if you were in complete focus if you had to eyeball focus in the field. Ideally you would line up both the lens and adapter in the same focus position but sometimes you may have to adjust and set things quickly in an awkward camera position so I could see this being a problem and a case where you couldn’t always use this lens as your sole anamorphic adapter. As a side note, you could somewhat get away with leaving the 65 adapter’s focus in place at infinity or nearest and focus just the taking lens but it’s limited and is a much narrower margin than I had hoped. Some may complain about the added heft of the adapter but I didn’t mind as the best thing SLR Magic did was put a squared off tripod foot on the lens to help for easy calibration and stability. Calibrating anamorphic adapters during attachment is one of the hardest parts about using such adapters as you can easily be slightly off and end up with oddly skewed footage if you’re not careful. With this adapter, it was actually very easy and simple to do as long as you didn’t accidentally unscrew the adapter from the lens while doing it, of course. Despite having a large rear element with 82mm filter threads, the lens coverage is no better than other anamorphic lenses with full frame use requiring 80mm and up. I even tested it with Mamiya 645 lenses and it was like I had expected with 80mm being the minimum when accounting for a Kipon Medium Format Speedbooster. Using no Kipon Speedbooster you could say that the Mamiya 645 45mm and 55mm work but with the crop factor on full frame there’s no point. The anamorphic image was the worst part of the lens. The 1.33x squeeze of the lens never felt right, unlike my old Panasonic LA7200 or Century Optics 1.33x, and I can confirm some reports I read where the squeeze ratio shifts around when focusing the adapter. On top of that, it seems like SLR Magic did everything they could to take out the anamorphic look of the lens, flares so muted that you could almost say the lens doesn’t flare, bokeh that’s barely squeezed or distorted to the point it’s about as round as the taking lens, and the undependable squeeze ratio makes for one of the dullest anamorphic adapters I’ve ever tried. Overall, I wanted to love the 65 adapter but it was a real disappointment. I really do enjoy SLR Magic’s 2x anamorphic adapter and wished that they would just make a larger diameter version of that for use with bigger lenses and even wider lenses on full frame. I would also say that SLR Magic needs to make matching rangefinders for their anamorphic adapters, if not incorporate them into the design for easy single focus use as this double focus issue is most likely a deterrent to their anamorphic products. Most importantly, I can’t stress enough that SLR Magic needs to get away from the Micro Four Thirds and APSC standard and focus on products designed for full frame as those smaller formats can go up but larger formats can’t go back down for the most part. Unless something better comes out, I’ll probably have to rethink my anamorphic lens options for my next projects and end up with a more limited range than I had hoped for.

Alright, didn’t get any answers so I’ll have to find out on my own, just placed my order! I’ll let you all know how it goes.

Hey, everybody, has anybody tried out the big SLR Magic 65 1.33x adapter (currently $900) and experimented with using it for full frame use? I’ve only seen a few videos that talk about having to go into APSC mode but that seems to be more for the lenses being used, mostly the new Fuji zooms, but I haven’t seen much about trying to make it work for full frame. Even if it’s working under projector anamorphic rules (ie. 50mm or 85mm and up only), I would like to know if and how it works out. Also, I did read one review that the squeeze ratio can change focusing closer than infinity but how far could you get with leaving the adapter focused at infinity and adjusting only the taking lens? The old Panasonic LA-7200 was designed for Mini-DV cameras but it works just fine on larger formats and the same goes for various wide angle and telephoto video lens adapters so I can’t imagine the SLR Magic 65 would be somehow limited to just APSC as an add-on lens. Any help or advice would be appreciated!

Hi, everybody, I'm looking at getting the SLR Magic 2X anamorphic in the near future and with my experience using other anamorphics, I know the recommended ratio of 50mm and up on APSC and 85mm and up on Full Frame are a little flexible with all the lens options out there. My question is has anybody done any tests with smaller wide lenses to see if any of them work? Some candidates I've looked at are 49mm filter thread options like the Pentax Super Takumar 35mm and 50mm lenses and the MIR 37mm lens. I know there's still surprisingly not that much out there about the SLR Magic 2x but any help or advice would be greatly appreciated.

You know, I see people trying to do this all the time but unless you're on M43 or a 1" sensor vidoecamera or something it just doesn't work most of the time. Anamorphic adapters like these don't lend themselves to being used at F1.4 or faster, they're not optically built for that. High end cinema anamorphics are and that's why you see ones with fast aperture ratings. For adapters, your best results are F4 and up and F2.8 is the most practical wide open aperture I would recommend but depending on the adapter you're using that may or may not be a stretch. The big projector lenses like the Hypergonar Hifi 2, Zeiss 63 2x, and Moller 63 2x must be at minimum F8 to even get some semblance of focus. Diopters help in this regard but really your mileage may vary there. Looking back at all the literature on cinematography and various back issues of American Cinematographer, when it comes to anamorphics, even the professionals were rating F4 and up (albeit in T stops which are a little different but roughly the same) and that was only if they wanted bokeh in the shot, otherwise it was often F8/T8 they were filming at. To help with this, we have cameras now that are great in low light and show stoppers like the Sony A7S help out tremendously and really lends itself to anamorphic filming by letting you cleanly boost the ISO so much. Honestly, if you're wanting wide open blurry bokeh images in anamorphic, you either need to basically go full telephoto like 100mm and up, use diopters to focus closer and adjust your focus plane, settle for 1.33x adapters like the Panasonic but lose a little of the anamorphic 2x look, or use a Cinemorph filter (which, from what I saw at the movies yesterday, I think they might have done in "John Wick 2" for a low light scene).

Actually noticed I got mixed up with the 8Z, I actually meant the B&H as the screw on adapter best suited to accompany the 16H. With so many models and variations it's easy to get confused about which is which lol! As for the 16H look compared to other Kowas, it should be very similar, as was said it's really just the element size and adaptability for APSC and full frame, they all work but some better than others, hence the bigger 16H, 8Z, and B&H being so sought after. Another correction, the 16H doesn't have orange flares, I misspoke, it flares blue as well but it's a warmer less blue color that mixes with the source light more than the SLR Magic which tends towards blue colored flares much of the time. It's different looks and depends on what you're after and what you like.

I've been acquiring anamorphics and these two have been high on my list. I bought a 16H when it was advertised as an 8Z, not bad either way and I got a GREAT auction deal on it so a win's a win. The 16H has warm orange flares and the SLR Magic, from the reviews and videos I've seen, has more modern blue flares. That right there is already divisive amongst anamorphic fans and it also comes down to taste as well, which some have already mentioned with artistic preference in terms of flare quality. I prefer blue flares so the SLR Magic is fine with me but I haven't tested one yet so I don't know what it's like working with it and what my lens choices are. As for the Kowa 16H, it's really handy and the size compared to the big boy projection lenses like the Hifi 2 or something makes it a dream to work with. Paired with the SLR Magic rangefinder, it's a really great and completely practical solution but you're still limited to the 85mm and up on full frame and 50mm and up on S35. To note, I wouldn't use it as a run and gun handheld solution as, whether paired with the SLR Magic rangefinder or not, it can be a wonky setup. In that case, a straight screw on anamorphic adapter like the SLR Magic would be much more capable. Even so, matching those warm orange flares with anything else can be a challenge and, coincidentally, the most practical companion to the Kowa 16H would be the Kowa 8Z as you could hard mount that with a thread adapter. It's expensive either way you go but no matter what you buy, definitely have the rangefinder, it makes just about any anamorphic adapter setup just work. I'm going to be making a video about anamorphics sometime in the near future, I'm still planning it out and debating what to include and the SLR Magic 2X is high on my list, I just wish there was more information and real examples on it as just doing a basic search online there's very little out there and makes me wonder if not a lot of people are using it.

Hi, everybody, after getting some really good deals on a Hypergonar HiFi 2 and a Kowa 8Z recently, I've been really happy with the possibilities for anamorphic filming. However, one lens that was always in the list was a Zeiss 63 2X projector anamorphic and after looking around I didn't really see a dedicated discussion about it and whether it's any good or not. Heck, I didn't even see that many videos online that have used it. So, I missed out on one recently and the only thing that held me back was whether it was actually any good or if it was going to end up being a waste of money and time. I've heard nothing but good things about the HiFi 2 but now owning one, I can see that it really is a very big lens and the focus distance almost makes it impractical for me with interiors but it is a really nice anamorphic so I wondered if the Zeiss might be the same in this regard. For people who own one or have owned a Zeiss 63 2X before, what can you say about it? Is it a big lens like the HiFi 2 and, if so, will a 70-200mm support ring fit it too? How's the focus distance? How's the sharpness and image quality compared to other anamorphics? Can the SLR Magic Rangefinder fit on it? Overall, is it practical? One other thing that always kind of made me want one too was that it just sounds cool to say that we would be filming with "Zeiss anamorphics" but more of a wink-wink kind of way you know? Any help or advice would be greatly appreciated!