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New travel film-making setup and pipeline - I feel like the tech has finally come of age


kye
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8 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

Thanks a lot! That's some seriously extensive testing and great review! @kye

I'd argue that this kind of testing is actually necessary to understand how things behave.  Over the years I have tested a lot of things and it's amazing how many things that "everyone knows" do not stand up in even the most basic tests, but continue to be myths because no-one bothers to even look.

Aristotle claimed that women have fewer teeth than men, which is not true, but he obviously never actually looked to see if he was right - despite being married multiple times where he could easily have tested his claim at any time.

8 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

2x crop looks great. One thing caught my critical eye:) The 2.08x on your second setup looks to be higher resolving than the 25mm focal length on the 12-35.

No, not mixed up, but the 12-35mm has a shallower DOF and so you have to know where in the image to look to compare sharp details in the focal plane.

This is the unsharpened cropped image:

image.png.db7252aa0371e569a129bac285bffa9c.png

This is the 12-35mm image:

image.png.cbe02a5a69cf7fafe62ed26af322c6cf.png

This is the sharpened cropped image:

image.png.78d93977fc69105d39fc2231065c9444.png

The sharpening is perhaps a little over-correcting, but the thin edges are still slightly blurred in comparison to the proper image from the 12-35mm.

This is where it is important to know how to read the results of a test.  This comparison of the zoom to the crop matched FOV but not DOF, and while I probably could have zoomed in using the 12-35mm and also stopped down at the same time to keep DOF the same, the lens sharpness would have been reduced so it wouldn't have been a fair test.  To get around that I should have tested using a flat surface like a resolution chart or a brick wall.

The problem with going that route is that now we're no longer testing anything close to real-life, and no longer answering questions about what will and won't work in real shooting.

The test wasn't "what percentage of resolving power is lost using the CrZ function?"...  it was "is the CrZ function usable for shooting with cropped lenses?".  Realistically I shouldn't have included the 12-35mm optical zooms at all, I should have just cropped in using the CrZ function and left the images to be judged on their own merits in isolation, the same way that any project shot using the CrZ function would be.

This is the danger of pixel-peeing - it distracts from the only thing that actually matters - the image.

8 hours ago, PannySVHS said:

By the way, your Cosmicar looks like it is outperforming the 12-35 for 1.4x and 1.5x gate. Impressive.

The cosmicar really is a gem!

There's a reason that cinematographers have relentlessly driven up the price of vintage lenses over the last decades, and why modern lens manufacturers are designing and releasing brand new lenses with vintage looks, and manufacturers are even creating new mechanisms to control the amount and type of vintage looks with custom de-tuning functions.

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EOSHD Pro Color 5 for Sony cameras EOSHD Z LOG for Nikon CamerasEOSHD C-LOG and Film Profiles for All Canon DSLRs

The comparison was great. I was thinking you focused on the leave behind the first one. Anyway, 2x crop in 4K mode looks like a great, even downsampled FHD image.

I have the Fuji 12.5 F1.4. Your Cosmicar looks like it's outresolving my lens quiet a bit. The Fuji is still a nice lens though with a very solid build and delivering a beautiful image.

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On 6/26/2025 at 11:26 AM, Fatalfury said:

Simply fantastic images and I like the dark look. Though I'd change the 14-140 to M.Zuiko 12-100 f4 for that constant aperture, while losing tele but gaining on a wide end. Feels like 100mm on a M43 body should be enough though.

I own and use both. The Oly 12-100mm F4 is a great lens, but it's much bigger and heavier than the Pana 14-140mm (560g versus 265g) - both on an OM-1:

image.thumb.png.5121742c7d49705adc831bc12cd12df7.png

On an E-M1 ii/iii or OM-1 the 12-100mm supports Sync-IS which gives sublime video IS performance, but even with the relatively light (for that kind of camera) OM-1, the combo is 1.2 kg and somewhat front-heavy if you're using it handheld. A GH7 + 12-100mm would be nearly 1.4 kg.

As a 'travel' lens, IMHO the combination of low weight and focal length range makes the 14-140mm almost perfect (other than in really low light, of course).

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3 hours ago, ac6000cw said:

A GH7 + 12-100mm would be nearly 1.4 kg.

Ouch!!

My GH7 (with battery, card, 14-140mm, and vND) is just over 1.1kg.  The 12-100mm is just a hair under 300g heavier, so the GH7 + 12-100mm combo would actually be a hair above 1.4kg by the time it's fully functional, and my setup doesn't even include any audio equipment, so that's also something to take into consideration.

I walked around Pompeii carrying the GH5 + Voigtlander 17.5mm + Rode Videomic Pro (1.4kg) in my hand for several hours, raising it up when I saw something I wanted to shoot.  My wrist was sore for several days afterwards, just from having the weight on it for that long.  It might be something you'd get used to, but having to train so you have the strength and stamina to carry a camera around seems a bit much to me!

3 hours ago, ac6000cw said:

As a 'travel' lens, IMHO the combination of low weight and focal length range makes the 14-140mm almost perfect (other than in really low light, of course).

I agree.  The high-ISO performance is actually quite impressive too.  For low-light I have the 9mm F1.7 with CrZ and if I want longer range than that I have the 12-35mm F2.8.  Probably the only other lens I would get for super-low-light shooting is the PanaLeica 15mm F1.7 because it's small and fast and being a Leica lens should be nice and sharp wide-open so the CrZ mode should be quite usable with it.

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