eatstoomuchjam

Happy holidays from me as well! My holiday plans are spending time with family for Christmas and then flying to Sao Paulo before the New Year to spend a couple of months escaping Minnesota Winter. Wish list? To spend next year making better use of all the gear that I already have, planning to shoot my first feature - hopefully I can get the script written while abroad and everybody's happy enough on the edit for the short (that will become the 10-15 minutes of the feature) that they'll gladly come back for the rest! As for gear, I'm theoretically set, but we'll see how prices are on C80's once they hit the used market - and if the hoped/wanted trip to Namibia works out, debating the finer points of renting vs owning the GF 500/5.6 and how irritating it would be to travel with it vs the 250/4 and 1.4x tc which I already own and cropping from 100 megapixels (rent vs own also to be determined by availability on the used market and pricing there)

£1600 for a GFX 100 is absolutely bonkers. Congrats on the great deal! If you can get a good deal on the GF 100/2, you should strongly consider it. It's one of my two favorite portrait lenses of all time for any system (the other being the Summicron-M 90mm f/2 asph (which also covers pretty well on GF, just without autofocus)).

When I read about the Canon frame guide cost, I figured there was probably a business opportunity for somebody who would print custom frame guides on static cling film or something similar.

Yes. The Steelsring adapter is also great, but they haven't updated the firmware in a while and there are occasional fuck-ups with it - like the Canon 40/2.8 in photo mode on my 100 II kept going to minimum focus and just staying there (if I turned on autofocus, manual focus worked fine). Worked fine in video mode, though. I should see if they ever updated the firmware on the Techart. I have one around here somewhere and I stopped using it when other adapters got PD support and it didn't. Maybe they finally fixed that. Any time you're curious about whether a given lens will cover the sensor on a GFX, btw, there's a community google spreadsheet which is pretty comprehensive. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1uxvvpxJ9QVFFyh0pW2rs9KBmUW9vlh-d-VnbcLDCTn8/edit?gid=0#gid=0 I was just looking at it again and realized that the FD 20mm f/2.8 actually covers the full sensor. Now I have to check if I actually have that one (I think I do?)... could be a fun look on the GFX. But if you want a 24mm EF lens that covers, I think your only option will be one of the PC/TS lenses. They have huge image circles. Won't be an f/1.4, though.

FWIW, the Canon EF 40mm f/2.8 seems to be the most popular cheap/light/small lens to pair with a GF body. Autofocus works great with Fringer and there's no hard vignette - and it's nearly a full stop faster than the Fujinon 50/3.5.

I had no idea that a stacked sensor was required for a company to take a format seriously. What a pity that Fuji don't take their medium format system seriously. 😉

Don't Sony take APS-C seriously? It seems to me like the FX30 is one of the most popular entry-level cinema cameras on the market - due in no small part to being an excellent camera (from all that I've heard, I've never used one personally). If we're talking glass, I have no idea what's currently available from Sony themselves, but with the popularity of E mount and Sony being permissive with licenses (or not requiring them?), just about every third-party vendor releases a version of their stuff for it (including the outstanding Fujinon MK series). 🙂

In my experience, Alvin's is worth the money. Good cables, great customer support.

Would it help to know they ALSO announced the TZ99? 🤣 https://www.dpreview.com/news/8943078360/panasonic-g97-zs99-tz99-refresh-usb-c

This is a really weird statement. The main resistance to mirrorless (initially) was related to latency and low refresh rate in the EVF. Latency seems to be a mostly-solved problem as I can no longer perceive it in any meaningful way and refresh rates of 120fps aren't uncommon these days. Plus for those who want a DSLR, there are lots of excellent models available on the used market and at least one manufacturer (Pentax) who doesn't seem inclined to move away from them. That's also not to mention that mirrorless cameras, especially those without a mechanical shutter, are far more reliable than a camera which relies on gears and levers that will eventually wear out - or have oil dry up or... any number of other ways that physical things break over time. It me. There are piles of excellent EF glass on the used market and as the price keeps going down, my collection of unreachable and generally impractical dream lenses is likely to increase. 200/2L IS? Got it. 400/2.8, 500/4, or 200-400/4? NOT YET Bonus: By using adapted EF glass, I can easily jump to just about any other mount and have it act basically like native glass for that mount. Except Sony. I still don't understand why seamless AF adapters seem possible for every other system, but for EF->E, adapter documentation tends to be full of caveats like "PDAF doesn't work in video mode" or "you have to toggle adapter modes for this thing to work and when you do, continuous AF will stop working until you un-toggle it." About the only RF-native glass that I have or am likely to get is the low-end cheap plastic stuff (for when I want to set up for the lightest possible camera) and unique/interesting lenses - like I kind of love the 800/11.

Should Leica have done anything at all? https://petapixel.com/2022/07/08/2021-was-leicas-best-financial-year-ever/ Last year, they had almost a half billion dollars in revenue and increased their profits by 16% over the year before. Seems like they're going the opposite direction from Olympus. Operating a high-profit luxury brand seems to be working about as well for Leica as it has for the last 70+ years. If inflation gets too bad or the economy crashes, though, so that people have less money to spend on high-end gear, my guess is that's what would inspire a fire sale for the brand.

Keep in mind, in terms of "prestige" with clients, Leica don't seem to be super famous among the general non-camera nerd population. I'm sure it varies by market, but I can say that on a number of the shoots that I go on, when I take out my Leica M glass and say things like "we're going to shoot with Leica glass," people are often like "Oh, that's nice." On the other hand, I take out the CN-E and people are like "Ohhh, those are really nice lenses!" Which, they are, but could also be described as the same optics as equivalent still lenses, but with focus rings and maybe different coatings. Take out the GFX 100 II? "Oh, I thought you'd use full frame, not APS-C." "Uh, this is medium format, bigger than full frame." "Hmm. OK." Take out the Komodo (which is S35)? "Whoa! Is that a Red?" Anyway. At least for a video shoot, if you want to impress a normie, you probably want to break out Red or Arri - with honorable mention for Sony... and within the Sony ecosystem, they are almost equally unlikely to be aware of the difference between, for instance, FX6 and Burano.

You can rent it or walk into a camera store and ask them to let you play for a few minutes and then you can judge from your own footage.

1500mm (equiv) will quickly show any weaknesses in your tripod. Or your lens mount. Or any heat in-between you and the subject. Or somebody walking 5 meters away. 😉

There are nicer fountains in other places, some of them even doing light and music shows - but there are a bunch of celebrities and dentists who would like to explain to you how the very basic fountain in that photo gets all of the other stuff out of the way so that the observer can really just focus on the true joy of a fountain, moving water.

David Burnett certainly seems to love his - at least, when he isn't hauling around a Speed Graphic.

I bought my R5 shortly after Canon sorted out a bunch of the stupid overheating crap (like using a temperature sensor instead of a timer to determine when I could shoot again). At least for the sort of shooting that i do - either intermittent 1-2 minute tourist clips - or on set, overheating has never been any sort of problem when doing raw lite at 8k. I think I've only seen any sort of warning once or twice. It's too bad Canon shit the bed so hard during the initial release. It gave a bad reputation to an otherwise extremely usable and reliable camera with great image quality. My only complaints are that DR could be a bit better and that the IBIS could be described as "barely better than no IBIS." It's my go-to camera for traveling very light and/or incognito shooting. And yes, it says a lot that after 4 years, they released a follow-up that leaves me feeling no compulsion to upgrade and every time I think "Hey, maybe I should see what small cameras are out there, maybe swap out the Canon," I come away from my search thinking "Dang, that Canon ain't half bad."

The true Leicaman would understand that their cameras shouldn't be dirtied by the abhorrent presence of a third-party lens! You are correct to banish yourself to the shameful world of EOS R5 plebes! (One of the few worthwhile things on KR's site after all these years) https://www.kenrockwell.com/leica/leica-man.htm

It's not exactly a BF/CM deal, but keh have a holiday sale going with 10 or 20% off a bunch of stuff with code SL24. My Leica M collection grows (21/2.8) and my bank account weeps just a little bit more.

Ah, good point. They're probably sold out. It's gotta' be a really popular design.

Do they have one that looks like a pair of jeans festooned with bedazzler beads and puffy paint? If so, I have a GFX 100 II just a few feet away from me...

One should only buy a camera based on current features/accessories instead of on potential future stuff, but hopefully Megadap's announcement of an M to RF adapter with autofocus actually goes somewhere. My Leicas look beautiful on the R5. But then, they look beautiful on everything.

They were literally called "cine-nikkor."

IMO, shallow DOF should usually be shallow enough to separate talent from background and draw the eye to the talent, but without obliterating the background into a mess of shapeless blobs of color. Exceptions may be made for extremely dramatic moments, especially if the talent is intended to seem alone - or on the other side, if setting the talent in a specific place in a wide. A lot of the main YouTubers would have people believe that "cinematic" footage involves continuously moving the camera without any reason for it. I've also received some looks from younger filmmakers in my area when they're onset as a PA or similar for shoots that I'm doing - when I'm putting the 20-pound Komodo-X kit on sticks, they sort of roll their eyes at the old fuddy duddy. It's cool, though - as you've pointed out, Spielberg does a lot on sticks and I challenge any of them to explain why Fincher's work isn't "cinematic." Not that I'm Spielberg, Fincher, or any of their DP's... but a strong composition with the camera on sticks is ideal for some things. Switching to handheld for narrative purposes is one of the specific reasons that I bought the Ronin 4D. Now I have the options of locked down with the K-X, shaky handheld with the OG Komodo which is rigged to be under half the weight of the K-X, and fairly smooth gimbal handheld with the Ronin. I used it on a shoot yesterday and it's the best experience I've ever had with a gimbal on set. Anyway, having been mostly S35 for my shoots in the last year, I've been finding it a real pleasure and I've missed FF a lot less than I thought, especially once I got the Fujinon MK set. In general, I'd say S35 is great in a practical sense - shallow enough DOF at t/2.8-5.6 to be pleasing, but not so shallow that pulling focus gives an aneurysm by the end of a long day on set.

Are you asking IronFilm for more links beyond those that Davide DB was already kind enough to provide you?