BTM_Pix

Today might be an interesting day as apparently in a few hours time Viltrox will be announcing that they have now officially joined the L Mount Alliance.

Good news for L mount owners  in general but particularly so for those with an S9 as some more size appropriate (and low price) primes should become available.

Had a fun time trying out my X-M5 micro cinema rig on a low budget, 3 day music video shoot last week. No overheating or issues of any kind shooting 6.2k prores raw in open gate mode to an Ninja V+. Insane what this little guy can do for an $800 purchase (body). 
 
 

Although it's not exactly what you're looking for, I'd have to second the Nikon Series E lenses. They truly are remarkable little lenses. I haven't been able to find a good copy of the 35mm 2.5 but the 36-72, 50mm and 100mm are nice little lenses, especially the size of the 100mm. Also the older non-ai lenses are pretty spectacular as well. One lens I hate to mention because it does get such bad reviews is the 35-70 3.3-4.5 ai-s lens. It's tiny and a lot better than the bad reviews give it. I mean, it isn't great, but there's something very Nikon in its not greatness.
Another zoom lens I love, which I assume you're familiar with is the Canon FD 35-105mm 3.5. This lens is ALMOST parfocal. Obviously constant aperture. Internal zoom. Fairly compact. I've had a few copies over the years, then end up selling it because I didn't use it too often, regret it and seek another one. My most recent copy I put on the Sigma FP and here's a sample of it at 105mm wide open...

 
No mind-blowing image by any means, but fairly sharp wide open and I like the way it handles the highlights. Of course it's a mess in direct light... as I found out last week during a shoot. However, there are rumors that Canon considered putting the L badge onto it because they were so happy with the lens.
As far as primes, other than the Nikons, the Takumar lenses are a personal favorite of mine. I've heard people argue that the 28mm 3.5 is one of the best 28mm lenses they've used. I haven't used that one but the 35mm 3.5 is excellent.
I've used a couple of the wide angle Tokina lenses from the late 70s, early 80s and they were decent, but I think they were f/2.8 lenses. Obviously you could get a cheap Neewer fixed ND to pop on the lens and leave there to give you that slower stop and to protect the front of the lens. Also check out the old Vivitar lenses, I have a set of mostly Tokina made ones in the m42 mount and I have always been very fond of them. The image instantly feels like an old 70s made for TV movie. I'm probably going to sell them though, not because I don't like them, I just have too much stuff and really need to scale back.
I guess you could also look at some of the older Zeiss Jena lenses... even the MF ones would give you the slower apertures you were looking for wide open.
Great thread! Wish there were more threads like this on here like it.

If you want a vintage set from the same range that are pretty uniform and readily available then the Nikon Series E are worth a look.
They are available in the following focal lengths.
Prime Lenses: 
E 28mm f/2.8, E 35mm f/2.5, E 50mm f/1.8, E 100mm f/2.8, and E 135mm f/2.8. 
Zoom Lenses: 
E 36-72mm f/3.5, E 75-150mm f/3.5, and E 70-210mm f/4.0. 
Obviously, no wider than 28mm may or may not be a deal breaker for you personally.
The zooms are one touch such was the fashion at the time but are good performers.
As I say they are all from the same range so are more matched than having to pick from this and that branch of, say, CZJ etc.
You can get them for an average across the set of around £75-90 per lens plus budget £10 for each F to EF adapter.
Plenty of examples to peruse here
https://www.flickr.com/groups/1032976@N23/pool/
If you can stretch the budget, the Contax Zeiss range is compelling but for 1/3rd of the price the Series E range is a decent option.

The cupboard in question

The cupboard in question

Turns out I had the Makinon in a cupboard all along and will also give it a go.
Some of these old zooms have terrible 1.5m+ minimum focus distances or rely on an awkward to engage separate macro mode, but some have the macro mode on the main focus ring and some are even par-focal. The Exakta 28-70mm F4 MC Macro (made in Japan with 62mm filter thread, and mine is an M42 mount version) in particular stands out for me, nice vintage look, nice size and weight, ergonomic to use, decent optics and distortion, covers GFX 100 well, especially in square 1:1 aspect for stills or 16:9 for video, and focuses down to 1:3.2 macro with one turn of the main focus ring (no funny separate mechanism to contend with).
The best for flare is the absolutely pre-historic Voigtlander Zoomar 36-82mm F2.8, think it was the first ever zoom lens for SLRs, the distortion is absolutely insane at 82mm but if you stay between 36-70mm it has a lot of cinematic goodness. 

This offer is only for the UK.
The SFU-2 software key provides RAW over HDMI for the S5ii as well as V-Log and waveform monitoring for the original S1.
This offer from Panasonic is quite a bit of a drop from the £160 that it usually is and it’s available here for an undetermined amount of time.
https://store.panasonic.co.uk/upgrade-software-key-for-lumix-s1-dmw-sfu2gu?___store=default

And now due to the overreach of the online safety bill in the UK, the government are determined that they will be in the room with us.
With regard to the look, have you got anywhere local to you that has featured in a programme/film that you like ?
Might be an idea to take a screen grab, put it on your phone as reference for framing and basic time of day and see if you can take some footage to get anywhere close to emulating it.

Yesterday I played around with FLC and grading some clips from Korea and the GH7 and 14-140mm.  I plan to do a range of tests around settings for softening / sharpening / adding grain / other texture treatments in post, but YT compression is pretty diabolical so I'll need to do quite a number of upload tests to see what settings in Resolve get you what result on YT.  I also went much bolder with the colours too, thinking of Gawx.
This was a first attempt just to work out the ballpark of where to start.
Probably the immediate takeaway is how the grain is quite different per shot, despite it being applied evenly to all shots.
Here is a comparison between the timeline in Resolve, the 42Mbps h264 4K export, and the 12.6Mbps h265 4K YT download.
Shot 1 - Resolve:

Shot 1 - Export:

Shot 1 - YT stream:

Shot 2 - Resolve:

Shot 2 - Export:

Shot 2 - YT stream:

Shot 3 - Resolve:

Shot 3 - Export:

Shot 3 - YT stream:

Impressions:
I'm told that film grain is most noticeable in the mids and shadows, so the distribution is consistent with film, which partly explains why the first image has less noticeable grain as most of the image is quite bright or quite dark.
The sky shot seems to have lots of grain as it's a flat surface in the right luma range, but it seems that more grain is retained on the YT stream because there is less movement in the frame for the compression to cover.  Whereas on the street scene the grain is considerably reduced despite having similar darker flat surfaces.
I didn't apply any softening to this video, so the sharpness is direct from the 14-140mm -> GH7 5.7K to C4K downsample -> C4K 500Mbps Prores 422 -> 1080p timeline image path.  The 14-140mm isn't tack sharp but it's not too bad.  I've noticed in the past that grain can make images look sharper than they really are, but in this example the grain combined with the compression probably softens detail as a net result.  I will definitely be exploring this relationship more.  Film is known to have a sharpness of >1 at its maxima, so having some sharpening applied seems appropriate.
Overall it seems to do a pretty good job capturing the grain, here's the next frame from the YT download so you can compare what is grain and what is detail and texture in the scene.

@Tulpa
If you are buying from scratch and don't have a lot of lenses etc in a particular format that you want/need to use then I'd be looking at this camera too.
It is smaller and lighter than even the very compact GX-80/85.

Compared to the bigger MFT offerings in the G and GH series then it is even more of a stark difference in form factor but it is also dramatically cheaper.
Video specs, it shoots 4:2:2 10-Bit and has the open gate mode which for this sort of expedition might well be beneficial to you as you can more easily reformat the footage in different aspect ratios for social media etc.
It has the colour profiles for ease of use but it also shoots in both flavours of F-Log so you can roll your own look.
Lens wise, it has not only got a huge back catalogue of native lenses (a lot of which have stabilisation) and are plentiful on the used market but it also has a lot of fast compact 3rd party lenses like Viltrox which are available at the sort of prices we all remember MFT lenses being back in the day !
Obviously, it has the larger sensor too....
The "downsides" would be considered to be the lack of IBIS and having what appears to be a vague degree of weather resistance - I couldn't find any definitive answers on that one.
The lack of IBIS may well actually prove to be a blessing in disguise if the camera is going to spend any amount of time on the handlebars while you traverse over what for large chunks of the journey will be less than smooth surfaces. Wear and tear over three years will be bad enough without throwing the fragile mechanisms into the mix.
There is a reason why shows such as Top Gear went with the IBIS-less GH5s (although I'm not sure if the story of show wanting to use the GH5 minus it was actually the trigger for Panasonic to make that version is apocryphal or not).
Whatever way you go, I'd spend some research time on the best shock mounting options as it will be a point of failure for any camera that you go with over that period of time.
As for the weather sealing...
Back in the dark distant past when I was a professional sports photographer using battleships like the D3/D4/D5 etc they could take a hammering but as soon as the rain/sleet/snow became a bit too much none of us were taking that chance that they were immune to it so out would come the covers for both the bodies and the lenses.
Think Tank make good ones but they are all designed for bigger cameras rather than the X-M5 so on a more prosaic level, these are cheap and cheerful at less than £11 for a pack of four and won't take up much space.
On a trip like this when you are likely going to encounter very real weather, I wouldn't take any chances with the weather sealing rating vague or otherwise of smaller cameras.

@Tulpa
If you are buying from scratch and don't have a lot of lenses etc in a particular format that you want/need to use then I'd be looking at this camera too.
It is smaller and lighter than even the very compact GX-80/85.

Compared to the bigger MFT offerings in the G and GH series then it is even more of a stark difference in form factor but it is also dramatically cheaper.
Video specs, it shoots 4:2:2 10-Bit and has the open gate mode which for this sort of expedition might well be beneficial to you as you can more easily reformat the footage in different aspect ratios for social media etc.
It has the colour profiles for ease of use but it also shoots in both flavours of F-Log so you can roll your own look.
Lens wise, it has not only got a huge back catalogue of native lenses (a lot of which have stabilisation) and are plentiful on the used market but it also has a lot of fast compact 3rd party lenses like Viltrox which are available at the sort of prices we all remember MFT lenses being back in the day !
Obviously, it has the larger sensor too....
The "downsides" would be considered to be the lack of IBIS and having what appears to be a vague degree of weather resistance - I couldn't find any definitive answers on that one.
The lack of IBIS may well actually prove to be a blessing in disguise if the camera is going to spend any amount of time on the handlebars while you traverse over what for large chunks of the journey will be less than smooth surfaces. Wear and tear over three years will be bad enough without throwing the fragile mechanisms into the mix.
There is a reason why shows such as Top Gear went with the IBIS-less GH5s (although I'm not sure if the story of show wanting to use the GH5 minus it was actually the trigger for Panasonic to make that version is apocryphal or not).
Whatever way you go, I'd spend some research time on the best shock mounting options as it will be a point of failure for any camera that you go with over that period of time.
As for the weather sealing...
Back in the dark distant past when I was a professional sports photographer using battleships like the D3/D4/D5 etc they could take a hammering but as soon as the rain/sleet/snow became a bit too much none of us were taking that chance that they were immune to it so out would come the covers for both the bodies and the lenses.
Think Tank make good ones but they are all designed for bigger cameras rather than the X-M5 so on a more prosaic level, these are cheap and cheerful at less than £11 for a pack of four and won't take up much space.
On a trip like this when you are likely going to encounter very real weather, I wouldn't take any chances with the weather sealing rating vague or otherwise of smaller cameras.

@Tulpa
If you are buying from scratch and don't have a lot of lenses etc in a particular format that you want/need to use then I'd be looking at this camera too.
It is smaller and lighter than even the very compact GX-80/85.

Compared to the bigger MFT offerings in the G and GH series then it is even more of a stark difference in form factor but it is also dramatically cheaper.
Video specs, it shoots 4:2:2 10-Bit and has the open gate mode which for this sort of expedition might well be beneficial to you as you can more easily reformat the footage in different aspect ratios for social media etc.
It has the colour profiles for ease of use but it also shoots in both flavours of F-Log so you can roll your own look.
Lens wise, it has not only got a huge back catalogue of native lenses (a lot of which have stabilisation) and are plentiful on the used market but it also has a lot of fast compact 3rd party lenses like Viltrox which are available at the sort of prices we all remember MFT lenses being back in the day !
Obviously, it has the larger sensor too....
The "downsides" would be considered to be the lack of IBIS and having what appears to be a vague degree of weather resistance - I couldn't find any definitive answers on that one.
The lack of IBIS may well actually prove to be a blessing in disguise if the camera is going to spend any amount of time on the handlebars while you traverse over what for large chunks of the journey will be less than smooth surfaces. Wear and tear over three years will be bad enough without throwing the fragile mechanisms into the mix.
There is a reason why shows such as Top Gear went with the IBIS-less GH5s (although I'm not sure if the story of show wanting to use the GH5 minus it was actually the trigger for Panasonic to make that version is apocryphal or not).
Whatever way you go, I'd spend some research time on the best shock mounting options as it will be a point of failure for any camera that you go with over that period of time.
As for the weather sealing...
Back in the dark distant past when I was a professional sports photographer using battleships like the D3/D4/D5 etc they could take a hammering but as soon as the rain/sleet/snow became a bit too much none of us were taking that chance that they were immune to it so out would come the covers for both the bodies and the lenses.
Think Tank make good ones but they are all designed for bigger cameras rather than the X-M5 so on a more prosaic level, these are cheap and cheerful at less than £11 for a pack of four and won't take up much space.
On a trip like this when you are likely going to encounter very real weather, I wouldn't take any chances with the weather sealing rating vague or otherwise of smaller cameras.

@Tulpa
If you are buying from scratch and don't have a lot of lenses etc in a particular format that you want/need to use then I'd be looking at this camera too.
It is smaller and lighter than even the very compact GX-80/85.

Compared to the bigger MFT offerings in the G and GH series then it is even more of a stark difference in form factor but it is also dramatically cheaper.
Video specs, it shoots 4:2:2 10-Bit and has the open gate mode which for this sort of expedition might well be beneficial to you as you can more easily reformat the footage in different aspect ratios for social media etc.
It has the colour profiles for ease of use but it also shoots in both flavours of F-Log so you can roll your own look.
Lens wise, it has not only got a huge back catalogue of native lenses (a lot of which have stabilisation) and are plentiful on the used market but it also has a lot of fast compact 3rd party lenses like Viltrox which are available at the sort of prices we all remember MFT lenses being back in the day !
Obviously, it has the larger sensor too....
The "downsides" would be considered to be the lack of IBIS and having what appears to be a vague degree of weather resistance - I couldn't find any definitive answers on that one.
The lack of IBIS may well actually prove to be a blessing in disguise if the camera is going to spend any amount of time on the handlebars while you traverse over what for large chunks of the journey will be less than smooth surfaces. Wear and tear over three years will be bad enough without throwing the fragile mechanisms into the mix.
There is a reason why shows such as Top Gear went with the IBIS-less GH5s (although I'm not sure if the story of show wanting to use the GH5 minus it was actually the trigger for Panasonic to make that version is apocryphal or not).
Whatever way you go, I'd spend some research time on the best shock mounting options as it will be a point of failure for any camera that you go with over that period of time.
As for the weather sealing...
Back in the dark distant past when I was a professional sports photographer using battleships like the D3/D4/D5 etc they could take a hammering but as soon as the rain/sleet/snow became a bit too much none of us were taking that chance that they were immune to it so out would come the covers for both the bodies and the lenses.
Think Tank make good ones but they are all designed for bigger cameras rather than the X-M5 so on a more prosaic level, these are cheap and cheerful at less than £11 for a pack of four and won't take up much space.
On a trip like this when you are likely going to encounter very real weather, I wouldn't take any chances with the weather sealing rating vague or otherwise of smaller cameras.

It certainly is, thanks for doing that.
Much appreciated.

I just remembered that the 17mm F1.4 has a strange filter thread size I don't have an adapter for, so I went with the Voigtlander 17.5mm instead, plus I also did the Voigtlander 42.5mm as well.  I took stills on the GX85 so you can see the full sensor readout, and the SOOC images below are the actual images from the SD card and 7.9MB each so pixel pee to your hearts content if desired.  I even remembered to set the taking lens to infinity and focus with the adapter!
Voigtlander 17.5mm at F2.8, no adapter, SOOC:

Voigtlander 17.5mm at F2.8, with Sirui 1.25x adapter, SOOC:

Voigtlander 17.5mm at F2.8, with Sirui 1.25x adapter, de-squeezed (0.8x vertical size adjustment):

Voigtlander 42.5mm at F2.8, no adapter, SOOC:

Voigtlander 42.5mm at F2.8, with Sirui 1.25x adapter, SOOC:

Voigtlander 42.5mm at F2.8, with Sirui 1.25x adapter, de-squeezed (0.8x vertical size adjustment):

Hopefully that's useful.
I took a shot of something round last week and pulled it into Resolve and rotated it 90 degrees and lined it up at 50% opacity to test the squeeze factor, which turned out to be just under 1.25x, but I suspect this might change depending on the focus distance.  I don't know if it might also change with the taking lens, but I'm probably not going to do extensive testing on all my lenses.  Also, for my purposes, it's meant to be a controlled degradation so nailing the squeeze factor for all focus distances isn't a high priority.
Let me know if you want any other tests, some of these are pretty quick to do.

Here at a camera store in Berlin we have the 3 musketeers.
2012 vintage RX1R OG, the one without the AA filter.
It's very nice and I can't understand why it only goes for $900 used. Because it's got a much better lens than the Leica Q.
No red dot though.
RX1R II, the one with the tilt screen, phase-detect AF and pop-up EVF. It also shoots 120p, albeit no 4K. It also has a further innovation - the AA filter can be switched on and off.
This was Sony when they felt they needed to catch up with Canon and Nikon by really pushing the boat out. 2014-2015 vintage Sony. The $2000 mint condition used RX1R II is reasonably rare but when you do find one, it's still cheaper than the Leica Q OG and closer to the Leica Q2 in terms of image quality.
The pop-up EVF is mechanically a thing of beauty and offers a big field of view. Although without a rubberised eye cup, it isn't the most ergonomic or comfortable.


So to the new one, the one with the 10 year gap.
Sony have made sure to price it so that nobody buys one, which is good because they want you all to buy E mount lenses.
Just to summarise the street prices:
RX1R: $800-900 used
RX1R II: $2k used
RX1R III: $5100 / 4900 euro
The lens is identical to the previous cameras.
Which is fine to be honest, but I had more issues with the AF in macro mode on the RX1R III vs II. Weird.
I also dislike the finish and build quality, doesn't feel as premium. It feels a bit like the A7CR. Not great and nowhere near a Leica and the RX1R II also feels more premium. I do prefer the buttons though on the new camera, they are raised for a more tactile feel.
Gone is the pop-up EVF, in place of it a smaller standard one. The resolution of the live-view feed is better, but the overall optic is worse and more pokey.
Gone is the articulated screen. Which is a really weird one.
In comes a fatter battery - very welcome.
4K is there with no crop in 24p/25p... However, there's no IBIS or even OIS, which is a downer.
The AEL button has changed to an AF-ON... Again a welcome change, because the first two models had no back-button AF at all. Well done Sony.
So if you're looking for a full frame compact, the first two models are a steal.
I got the RX1R II again.
I regretted selling it the first time out!

Yeah, I have a bunch of M42, but none wider than 28mm as it's all FF vintage.
I'll grab some shots.

Sirui first light....
I'm not 100% sure I've done everything correctly, so take these with a pinch of salt.  Also, the Sirui has a vND on it but the normal shots don't, so that might account for the WB and polarisation differences.







The advice I heard was to set the taking lens to infinity and then focus with the adapter (single focus setup) but the AF on the taking lens seems to work just fine and Uncle ChatGPT says that setting the taking lens to infinity is more likely to be an optimal setting rather than the only setting that will work.
Here's a shot where I set the adapter to minimum focus and then focused closer with the taking lens..  I don't think it's properly focused though, and the bokeh isn't squished much at all, so this is probably quite far from optimal settings, but also possible.

Obviously I have a lot of testing to do, but if I can still use the AF to fine-tune the focus then that's even better as I can sort-of zone-focus with the adapter and then shoot quickly with AF like I normally do!
Overall though, a very promising start..  despite it being so big and heavy!!

Do you have those clips that I did with it?
Because I’m fucked if I can find them anywhere !
I’ve got some frame grabs from them (with the base then the different ARRI LUTs applied) when I was moaning on here about the warpy IBIS on the S5ii but not the actual clips.
Not that they are a great loss to the world !

Nice is doing a lot of heavy lifting there.
But if people don't mind log shots of mainly grey buildings under grey skies in Salford then have at it !

Do you have those clips that I did with it?
Because I’m fucked if I can find them anywhere !
I’ve got some frame grabs from them (with the base then the different ARRI LUTs applied) when I was moaning on here about the warpy IBIS on the S5ii but not the actual clips.
Not that they are a great loss to the world !

I was on a very, very slow internet connection this morning so YouTube was loading in instalments.
It loaded the titles but the thumbnails were a long time coming and it’s interesting how much more appealing a lot of the videos were to me when just looking at the title but how much less so they were when the thumbnails eventually loaded.
I’m probably missing out on a great deal of good content by my inner “oh fuck off you absolute tit” dialogue when I see the content creators stupid gurning shock faced bullshit.
Whether the narcissism that infects so many of them would allow them to just do a content relevant thumbnail is the big question.
I can hear the ”But the algorithm makes us do it” whining from here.

I was on a very, very slow internet connection this morning so YouTube was loading in instalments.
It loaded the titles but the thumbnails were a long time coming and it’s interesting how much more appealing a lot of the videos were to me when just looking at the title but how much less so they were when the thumbnails eventually loaded.
I’m probably missing out on a great deal of good content by my inner “oh fuck off you absolute tit” dialogue when I see the content creators stupid gurning shock faced bullshit.
Whether the narcissism that infects so many of them would allow them to just do a content relevant thumbnail is the big question.
I can hear the ”But the algorithm makes us do it” whining from here.

An update on my testing.
I was thinking about what I wanted - something low quality in the optical path to dirty up the image a bit, and then it struck me - what I want is a cheap wide angle adapter!  Then I remembered I had bought one years ago and went and found it and gave it a go.
It's too small for most of my lenses (it's 52mm but most of my lenses are 58mm) but is a cheap 0.45x wide angle adapter so I shot some quick tests.  Here are some direct with/without comparisons to give an idea of what does.  These are all SOOC so ignore the incorrect WB settings and mismatched exposures etc.  All lenses are wide open.
GX85 + 14mm F2.5 without adapter:

GX85 + 14mm F2.5 WITH adapter:

Very interesting and definitely makes the image wider.  If I use a zoom then I can match the framing and we can get a more direct comparison.
GX85 + 12-35mm F2.8 at 12mm without adapter:

GX85 + 12-35mm F2.8 at ~18mm WITH adapter:

GX85 + 12-35mm F2.8 at ~25mm without adapter:

GX85 + 12-35mm F2.8 at 35mm WITH adapter:

Very interesting results and in the direction I'm going for.  As a proof of concept it definitely has promise, but I'd need to buy one correctly sized of course.
BUT, then I put it on the TTartisans 50mm F1.2 and fully wide open (of course!) basically all hell breaks loose!
GX85 + TTartisans 50mm F1.2 without adapter:

GX85 + TTartisans 50mm F1.2 WITH adapter:

It's obviously not rated for F1.2 lenses!!
The bokeh is also heavily modified too, which the above images hint at, but check this out....
GX85 + TTartisans 50mm F1.2 without adapter:

GX85 + TTartisans 50mm F1.2 WITH adapter:

These are the sorts of things you can't do with plugins, so this is what I'd be chasing real optics to do.
However, the most interesting thing about a wide angle adapter is that it's basically a speed booster, so you get more light into the lenses and you also get a wider angle of view, which means that to get the same angle of view with the adapter you can use longer lenses, which can give shallower DOF for a given f-stop.  Double bonus for MFT!
So, I ordered the cheapest 58mm wide angle adapter I could find, and ordered the cheapest vND I could find to fit it (as the fronts are larger than the rear which makes it larger than my good vND.
Oh yeah, and I also watched a bunch of reviews of anamorphic adapters and after seeing the prices (wow!) I just ordered a Sirui 1.25x anamorphic adapter, which is the cheapest of the bunch by a long shot.  I'm not really that interested in the streaks but the softening and edge distortions should be great, and it's also like a horizontal-only speed booster so will let me use longer lenses for the same FOV.