Julien416

46 minutes ago, mercer said:

Oh I know about lenses and rabbit holes. Sadly.

I'm thinking the same thing about the Rapido housings. The goal is to have one set up I am happy with... or maybe two... one 16-S/D and one Cinelux... shit... it's already starting. 

Do you know if Rapido has any plans to make more of their lens jackets?

Oh I have three of them and planning on buying some others already. I know the feeling. 

As for the taking lens housings, Jim is probably planning some others but I am not sure which ones. As of now he has already a nice selection with contax's, voigtlanders and Russian usual suspects (jupiter 9 and helios). 

4 minutes ago, mercer said:

Btw, is there much of a difference between the 16-D and the 16-S?

They are essentially the same lens bar the housing. It's a very fine lens, really, tack sharp and purple subtle flares. Pair it with an 85 and it should look really good. 

Also, it's a rabbit hole, like all lens collecting, the lens you do not own is always the one you need. 

Go with the rapido housings, they will make your life easier and make those clumsy projector lenses almost professional looking. Unfortunately they do not have housings for your 100mm. 

Kowa 16 d and s are very fine lenses. But they won't cover a wide field of view. They will be perfect for a 75mm anamorphic in S35 coverage (100mm in FF) . Not less unfortunately. 

As for the kowa 1.5. They are rare and very expensive : there are a couple available on ebay right now. They are in the 2500 dollars range unfortunately. They are great lenses though.

But x1.5 or x2 is pretty insignificant. The limiting factor is the single focus unit that brings additional vignetting. You can go as wide as 60mm in FF (40mm in S35) with a x2 kowa, but the limiting factor will be the single focus adapter. And both the rectilux and rapido adapters will only cover around 50mm in S35 (75mm in FF).

An 85mm setup sounds like a good option for you. Rapido has a 85mm contax housing, just pair it with a cinelux with rapido housing and a FVD 16 and you're good to go. It's a pretty modern look, no dreamy veiling flares and no stupid distortions. 

Anamorphic would be a game changer and a welcome addition. 

@Kimwatson pulled off the dreaded "my issue has been solved" with a spam link on the anamorphic forum. He is one of them. 

Hi, 

@nicholas123 looks like a good client for banning. 

24 minutes ago, heart0less said:

There is just so many things one could know about all these adapters.. It's a deep, dark pit..

I tried to stay up-to-date for about a year, but then I realised it doesn't help my creativity in any way.
That's why I decided to keep it simple (one cheap scope) and be done with it.

( :

Anamorphic is a rabbit hole.They're all different. Some flares in pink/yellow/amber/purple/magenta/blue. It's hard to just stop at one. So I collect them. Put them in cheap housing (rapido ones) and use them accordingly to my daily's mood. You can pair them with different taking lenses, modern ones, vintage ones, and make odd combination that flares and looks very differently. It's a endless search for the perfect combination that - of course - doesn't exist. It's a called a hobby I guess. 

In a way, projector lenses are almost more fun than big cinema lenses that we use on set. Sometimes I wonder if I shouldn't put a few grand in just one of them and be done with the endless search for the perfect anamorphics, then I remember that cine lenses tend to flare in blue (Pana, kowa, lomo, cineovison, technovision, atlas, etc.) and I come back to my projector lenses.

To go back on topics, I just watched the Tom Antos video about Sirui. It looks really poor at least on the anamorphic side of things. It's sharp, indeed, but flares are too saturated and they're not even horizontal which could be the result of bad alignement. It also flares way too much, probably because while looking almost spherical on the bokeh and distortion sides of things. The Vazen 40mm looks a million times better. Too bad it doesn't cover S35, otherwise I would have taken the plunge already.  

Honestly, the spamming is getting out of control here. The sale section is basically unusable right now. Same for the anamorphic forum which is constantly spammed with Vietnamese bots. 

I know moderating a forum can be tedious and after so many years I understand the lack of motivation to go through every single posts. But if @Andrew Reid is no longer motivated to do it, he should just name a moderator and be done with it. This forum has tools to instant ban a spammer. But you need to use them...

Back to the S1H. Thinking of getting rid of my GH5s in favor of his full frame sibling.

To the s1h owner my question is : how about the dynamic range? Did anyone actially test it? Been looking at the YouTube usual suspects and nobody seems to have tested it thoroughly. Is is that much better than the gh5s especially in the highlight department? 

Thanks in advance. 

13 minutes ago, TurboRat said:

Can't you use the lut on the GH5s? I just don't use it during filming on my GH5s but I still use the lut via Premiere. You still need to adjust it but it still works fine. Same experience if you use it on GH5 footages.

I do ! It's already a big upgrade compared to the original color science and I love it. Just curious to unleash its full (Alexa) potential once/if the gh5s version arrives eventually.

12 hours ago, RCV said:

DUDE,  people only paid for the Gh5 lut not the S! I dont recall Alex having a preorder for the S version. There shouldn't be anything to complain about. 

  You used the word "entitled" in an earlier post. That's how the likes of you sound on this thread  - "Entitled" for "Good money"

It's beyond ridiculous. Like Jeremy said, Folks probably  don't understand what goes into this.

Let's Allow the genius to create, refine and continually develop the Luts in PEACE

You sure know how to level up the conversation. I seem to remember writing perfectly balanced messages always stating that I was mostly happy with my purchase, but I was regretting that Alex had made somewhat vague promises of new versions (like the GH5s one) even though he had no spare time to make them or maybe because they were too complicated to make accordingly to hiw own deadlines. If you want to paint me as a villain to simply state that promises should be made carefully in order not to disappoint costumers, then I will be happy to take the blame.

Meanwhile you can keep quoting me with out of contexts words and painting me as an ignorant fool while knowing nothing of me and my professionnal background, describing things with hyperbolic terms that adds absolutely nothing to the debate, and act as the useful idiot to trolls while I was having a perfectly balanced conversation with @Sage that brought me everything I needed to know about the future of its superb - but arguably pricey - lut.

Don't dude me mate. We didn't raise pigs together.

I would actually consider it very cheap if it was actually designed to work with my gh5s. Once again, I am fine with it and would buy it again but, as a customer, I don't understand why me and some others have to justify ourselves to outsiders for just reminding past promised deadlines to Alex. 

Anyway, Alex's answer is fine to me. He is trying his best. Just what I wanted to hear. 

That's not the point. When I bought the lut, based on sage messages I was under the impression that the gh5s version was about to be released. I am not going to trace all the messages stipulating it as it would be a tedious and useless task. But Alex even mentioned to the people buying it with the gh5s in mind to add it in the ordering info. And here we are more than a year later. 

Honestly the lut as it is is still very useful even for the gh5s and I love it. Yet I am effraid that Alex has made a lot of promises that he hasn't fulfilled yet. I am OK with that, I took a risk and I knew it and once again, I am 95% OK with the lut as it is so I'd still buy it again. 

But I do not agree with the "it's a one man R&D, cut the guy some slack", he is charging good money for just a lut and it comes with responsabilities and people should be entitled to ask what's going on. 

I guess the once planned GH5s version has been scrapped since then... I bought your lut thinking it was about to be released. A year and a half later I guess I was wrong. 

1.33 is so incredibly useless when it comes to the anamorphic look though... Underwhelming honestly. Still, it shows that most so called pro anamorphic lenses are propably overvalued by a huge margin. 

65mm won't be wide enough for typical establishing shots. However I've always found 75mm to be the sweet spot for anamorphic. I see myself using it 75% of the time on my shootings. 65 mm isn't that far from that focal length. 

But if I had to get only one lens, it would be a 50mm. You could shot a whole movie with that one focal length 

Depends on your taste. But I'd go for a 50. 40mm really is too short for close ups. 

Plus, I find the atlas 40mm really soft and not that great bokeh-wise. 

With a rectilux HCDNA, the widest you can go in S35 is 50mm in 1:2.39. So one should probably be fine with a 35mm in micro 4/3

I'v been told they're mostly going after the Nikon Z6 and Z7, so I guess it shouldn't be too long. They told me a former version of the firmware could push 4K120, but it has been removed for some reason.

4 hours ago, Avenger 2.0 said:

Early April Fools?

Nope. The guy using it is a first hand acquaintance. 

There are two iterations being tested, one with a 45ish megapixel sensor and another one with 75 or 100 mpx. It's vague I know, but I absolutely can't remember, I am sorry. 

I think it shouldn't be that long. I know someone who is a Canon tester photographer and he is currently testing a Canon mirrorless camera that ticks all those boxes... They even have prores raw through hdmi. The price though is yet to be discovered. And the release date as well. 

28 minutes ago, HockeyFan12 said:

I love the Varicam's image but is it 4:3 or 17:9? I'd think you'd prefer FF for the Panavisions (cropped on the sides of course) unless your S35 sensor were 4:3. I do love the look of those lenses. Aren't they PV mount or do they come in PL mount now?

Varicam is 16:9 but it has an anamorphic mode that puts the 4:3 crop around the size of the GH5 open gate sensor. In 4K.

The problem with legacy anamorphics on the LF is that the pixel density doesn't change, so no 4K. We are stuck with the good old 2.8K, hence no Netflix . Of course, the varicam is really not a perfect solution as it's a crop mode, but I have used the panavision AL in anamorphic mode on the varicam with great success for some very dark scenes where we needed the 5000 base iso. Loved the look, and managed to match them with Alexa footage without too much hassle.

As for the Pana lenses, they only come in PV mount unfortunately. I have almost tried them all. They really mean business, it's really addictive. In France they are not THAT expensive. Probably a lot cheaper than renting them in L.A.

2 hours ago, HockeyFan12 said:

That's really interesting. I remember loving the look of the Revenant (not my favorite movie, but I loved the cinematography), but feeling that a lot of subsequent Alexa 65 shows were a little more clinical and boring. Bandersnatch I thought looked good, but might as well have been Red or something.

The revenant wasn't shot entirely in Arri 65, IIRC the majority of it was done with regular alexa's. As far as I am told, the sensor on the LF is exactly the same sauce, they just stick two of them (3 for the Alexa 65). Maybe it's the added resolution that bothered you.

3 hours ago, Laurier said:

I don t think that much of an issue, they are many options available both modern and vintage, available already and rehousing solution for those have already been here for years
Even the alexa 65 use rehoused mamiya 645 glass for the Arri DNA set ,and people are fine with it, vintage cinema glass also breath, much more than modern glass .
For FF/vistavision you can get old cooke double panchro, panavision glass, leica R glass, russian glass ect....

Well, let's say that in spherical there MIGHT be a lot of FF options... But when it comes to anamorphic, which represents a fair share of the professional productions, there isn't that many options. Old anamorphics covering the 29/30mm of FF 4/3 aren't that many I am effraid...  

Of course many of us will be forced to use LF if we want to bring the arri look to Netflix, but as much as I love the Alexa look, I think I'd switch to Varicam instead of letting go my precious Panavision anamorphics that won't cover LF...

The problem lies in the lens selection. DP want textures and look, and there isn't so much choice in vistavision for now. I am pretty sure everyone and their mothers will soon rehouse all the old FF glasses available to give a nice selection. But the sad truth is that it will solely be stills glasses, with all the caveats they bring (breathing for one). And in some particular case, like anamorphics, the old and legendary glasses will still be only available in S35.

The folks at Panavision told me Arri was about to come up with something new in the S35 segment. I said "4k?", they answered "Higher".  I guess we'll see;

Let's hear about anamorphic modes and rolling shutter ?

But even in the current state, it's kind of tempting. However getting it in Europe looks like an adventure of its own so I guess I'll pass until they have proper distribution.