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Y'all know what Darias Khondji and Dean Cundey, Kovaks, Carpenter, Storaro, Toland, Conrad Hall, Harris Savides and pretty much anyone you can think of and dozens you can't, guys who shoot great looking stuff on purpose, not by accident, not because they got lucky but by design and through their own effort and expertise, either for the selfish benefit of the image itself or in service to the story, you know what they did so that they could do that stuff when it count, when they were getting paid to do what they did, when dozens if not hundreds of people were depending on them, waiting on them, when possibly millions of dollars were on the line or potentially rendered forfeit, you know what they were doing so that they could do what they did?   They were shooting tests.   Every camera.  Every lens.  Thoroughly.  They didn't waste other people's times learning what they could and couldn't do under a variety of common or unique circumstances on-the-clock.  They're smart enough to realize the occasional "happy accident" of a flare or focus pull or color combination or Golden Triangle configuration that just happend to occur at just the right time such that a most amazingly emotional chord is struck when the image is viewed by most humans is great but discovering that that last take, the one where the set/car/character/town is destroyed by fire, the giant monster is blown up, the command shuttle breaks apart the rented helicopter is finally, perfectly aligned with the setting sun to create a perfect silhouette through rippling heat refraction in some exotic locale on their last day of access or visa or the last raw nerve of some local potentate or executive producer isn't wasted because they didn't know WTF they were doing and just hoping for the best.     They weren't satisfied knowing the stuff they were using was expensive, or from a well known pedigree, or supposedly crafted by Santa Claus's most talented, clever elves, or promised in some way to never fuck up, under any circumstance, with any other combination of previous, contemporary or future widgets made by Satan Claus or the Easter Bunny or Baby Jesus.  They had to know.  So they could do it.  On purpose.  On demand.  Repeatedly.    They shot tests.   What they likely didn't do, for all sorts of reasons, is share these tests with the world, in a public venue, so that others at, below or above their stature and experience could comment on, learn from, share, ridicule or improve upon.  (this last bit was my maybe cryptic way of saying we should be lucky we're in a community where ideas and techniques are shared openly and not hoarded.  I'm not saying "stop posting tests" and non-narrative videos)   edit: TLDR version -- y'all stop marginalizing folks posting test videos because that's how you familiarize yourself with your gear enough to be useful to yourself and anyone else.  It's what the  name brand pros do so snarky comments about yet-another-boring-test-video are really just ignorant.

http://vimeo.com/57016257 Check out more of Andrew Wonder's work here Here director, cinematographer and DSLR user Andrew Wonder talks to EOSHD about his latest anamorphic spot for G.E. The technology behind the shoot is rather interesting. Two Sony F3 cameras mounted on the front of the train, remotely controlled and recording to e-sata drives in the control carriage, kitted out with Joe Dunton / Panavision anamorphic lenses from London. Joe Dunton is a British Bafta winning camera equipment guy who has always held a great fascination with anamorphic lenses, and was one of Stanley Kubrick's closest collaborators after A Clockwork Orange in the 70's and provided Kubrick with his lenses on Eyes Wide Shut.  

This is a really quick test*: executive summary- it works. More details on vimeo page. https://vimeo.com/57994446   * someone already did a chart test: http://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2013/01/metabones-magic  

Anyone field test this yet? Opinions?

Love Spielberg's reference back to Mifune when talking about Eastwood's Man With No Name movies.   For those who don't know the history: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Fistful_of_Dollars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yojimbo_(film) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Man_with_No_Name

I had the same thing with the GH2 once with a fast non-MFT-lens, a Nikon 50mm f1.4. Every light produced a glow, and the whole image was too soft (not seen on the Sony Monitor I had attached via HDMI). My mistake: I didn't make night-testshots in advance. I did later and found, that the lens was only usable @f2.0 and further. You should have closed the aperture one stop and increase the iso instead. Very fast lenses tend to produce softer images at wide open. The best sharpness for MFT seems to be 3.5 or 4. At f8, the DOF gets deeper, of course, but details may be lost. It depends, as you say, on the lens. Tests are needed to know for sure.

I can't think of the technical term for the problem you're having with the white paper but it is to do with both your lens (some lenses have a "glare" when dealing with strong light and using a wide aperture) but it also could have just been that you were blowing it out (making that specific part of the image over exposed) as you were exposing for the band. Blowing out highlights is just something everyone has to deal with when dealing high contrast situations (like if it's a very very bright day and you are trying to film/photograph someone in dark shade you might blow out the sky making it white instead of blue). With practice you will learn how to better deal with these situations better but sometimes there is no way around it. This comes down to "Dynamic Range" if a camera has better Dynamic range it will handle high contrast situations.. This is one area where film is still superior to digital.   The peak performance of a lens is usually around f/5.6 or f/8.. When a lens is "wide open" shooting at its widest aperture (f/1.8, f/1.4 f/1.2 etc) unless it's extremely good will usually be slightly softer than when it's at f/5.6 or f/8.. However, stopping all the way down to f/22 doesn't make your pictures any sharper it actually makes them worse due to lens diffraction (look it up) lens diffraction will appear at different apertures (dependent on sensor size).   I'm honestly not sure how noticeable lens diffraction is for video but any good photographer will avoid shooting at such apertures as it will make your images softer. Good luck.

  I agree. There are more 'tests' on vimeo (and more on youtube) that are the peak of what the creator is capable of than experiments for future masterpieces. By labelling the videos tests the publisher anticipates harsh comments that could hurt his feelings. I also hesitate to upload anything of my amateurish stuff for the same reason.      What I like about them is, they are fun to watch, because they play with the tricks. They prove nothing, but they didn't claim to do.    We have three cats, and they like cameras, coming close and purring. But never would I expose them to the public, because I do respect their personal rights  ;)   What I do quite often is to capture small, personal events, like any other amateur, but more often I choose not to upload that, with very few exceptions: http://vimeo.com/29954680   I did an awful lot of wedding videos and continue to do so, but of course these are too private to publish. I often do second camera for music videos, most of which never see the light of day.

Cameras are now so cheap everyone can be a film maker but many dont realise what that really means and how small a part the actual camera plays and that talent is the key. Vimeo is awash with films that are categorised as TEST videos but really a feeler to see others reactions to what they created.   Some of those films can also be fascinating although not educational.   Say your looking for a test on a certain camera and find test after test video that is no help at all You may end up only looking at tests from people you know are going to be of value IE Guru's and thats a shame really.   Some sites are opposed to tests as they support a camera and dont want to be reminded of the low resolution 8 bit 4,2,0 limitations of their fav product.   There are some great test videos being done that have helped me a lot. I completely agree though Why would anyone share what they do if they want to use their methods professionally?    Often though there may be motivations  a) setting up as a guru for financial gain b)  because they have extensive knowledge and want to share AND in cyber space too Just shows how social we really are as nothing stops us.    Problem is anything qualifies as a test video and no one to put them in order of any kind.   I've made my own share of TEST cat videos .   These are some old test films circa 2003 https://vimeo.com/22477660 https://vimeo.com/22477534 https://vimeo.com/22477503

I agree. In my favorite film, Groundhog Day, Bill Murray gets the chance to 'redo' every action. Creativity founded on experience is the best. Routine mustn't be a contradiction to artistic freedom. One objection I have is that watching test shots of others doesn't help me as much as making them myself. This is, because the circumstances differ too much, and to learn something and know it by heart means having it done yourself. What I often think when viewing test shots is, 'he could have done better'. Or, 'how on earth did he do this?' Then I rise from my armchair.

This is an image of the Canon 24-105 F4L at 50mm on a 5D3 and FS700+Speed Booster blended 50/50. Max aperture set on 5D3 (F4) and FS700+SB (F4 full-frame DOF with F2.8-like light transmission performance). [attachment=393:FS700+SB_5D3_DOF.jpg]   Close up of bokeh: [attachment=394:bokeh_match.jpg]   The FS700 S35 sensor with Speed Booster gives full-frame performance with a 1.09 crop, approximately same DOF and FOV performance as full frame, and effectively 1-stop faster light transmission performance. In this example, F4 DOF for both cameras, with the FS700+SB providing F2.8-like light transmission. Where a T-stop is exactly the same as an f-stop with 100% light transmission, then a lens rated with a T-stop of 4 on the 5D3 would have a T-stop rating of 2.8 with the FS700 + Speed Booster.  

I did some research on the noise grain in 50Mbit long-gop vs 72Mbit ALL-I   Actually the noise grain is the same in 50Mbit 24p and 72Mbit 24p. But it is different between 50Mbit 50/60p and 72mbit 24p especially in motion. Less noise in the 50/60p codec.   But the difference is quite small. 50p is on the left versus 25p (I have PAL camera hence EU frame rates).  

  Sharpness loss at the edge of frame is mostly a function of the lens itself.  It's only apparent to the smaller sensor after using this adapter because it could never see it before, it only saw the "sweet spot".  In point of fact, sharpness at the edge of frame is better through the adapter on a smaller sensor than the same lens mounted to a FF camera.   Seems lots of people still aren't bothering to really investigate or grok what they've read so that they can add meaningful discussion.   edit: it cracks me up that, even though the adapter IS performing a kind of magick, its critics now feel compelled to criticize the magick itself as if it just weren't miraculous enough for their standards....    "Yeah, you turned water into wine...but you didn't raise anyone from the dead.  Fail.  You suck."

looks better than most cheap steadicam samples you see online.  i think this would be perfect if you used the same technique alongide a cheap handheld steadicam as well, the camera and your processing will smooth out all the slight issues with the cheaper stabiliser i imagine.    

Upstream Color by the director of PRIMER Shane Carruth, is getting good reviews at Sundance. The movie was shot on hacked GH2s.   http://vimeo.com/57342043   looks like he has a OCT19 or novoflex converter on the GH2.   http://www.imdb.com/title/tt2084989/

I think most of the people who complain about people doing tests rather than narrative work is because these complainers are annoyed they aren't shooting anything at all. Often you see the technical driven guys spending more money of equipment (which could be used to create films instead of doing tests) but usually these guys can only afford the gear because they do a day job which pays monthly. usually these jobs are less creative, working amongst uncreative people, meaning they might not have access to a load of friends who are also interested in hooking up and making a film together. The 'creatives' are often failing/struggling artists who struggle to hold down well paid jobs, due to a lack of ability to stick with menial duties before the good, creative and well paid stuff comes along. due to this lack of career building they cant afford the gear, and when they have that crazy cool idea thay want to shoot they dont have the glitzy dslr and set of lenses and audio recording to bring it to reality. Their response is to start researching, get hooked in, join some forums without understanding forum ethics and then question the people who have the gear in an ignorant and jealous way by trying to undermine them.

  Sorry, my rant is my reaction to what I recognize as pollution that creeps into so many discussions where one member is trying to understand why they might be getting a particular result, or trying to figure out how to get a particular result, or wondering why their gear might work in a particular way or not work in a way that they expect.     So often another member will decide to not contribute to the discussion in a meaningful way by offering that "story" or "acting" or all the other various aspects of filmmaking are really more important that worrying about fiddly technical aspects of shooting.  Ironic since they went through the trouble of setting up an account on a site that's very clear from the front page what it's focus is.  Andrew doesn't pull a bait-and-switch with some hippy-dippy method actor's smoking lounge up front only to find out it's all nerd shit once you're roped into joining.  Not to mention, one would assume they've bought a camera and found this place based on a recommendation from another enthusiast or through their own searching for information on how to work that thing in their hands, either at all, better or just to see what other people are doing with that thing they have, since humans like every decision they make to be validated by others.   Anyway, I have my theories why these people feel compelled to be disruptive but I'd rather talk about cameras and cinematography here and not my unqualified opinions as a psychologist.   What's worse, in a way, are the folks that now creep in to poo-poo on test videos posted by people, either trying new filters, patches, lenses, stops, whatever.  Somehow this non-narrative work offends their sensibilities I guess.  My only point is, there's a lot of new cool news, gear, etc. coming out and it would be a real shame if the trend towards fewer and fewer new posts with video links in them continues for fear of "boring" people.   And, Rich, this isn't directed at the talented guys uploading non test type work or the guys uploading test type work, just in case it seems like that.  Producing narrative type work is far too involved for anyone to be contributing that on a regular basis.  I get that and I know you get that.  There seems to be an an awful lot of people who haven't done it that don't understand what it takes and therefore it's easy for them to say this or that about how little of it there is posted here.  It's pretty amazing that the filmmaker behind the GH2 + LOMO feature has given the forum so much attention recently.   Taking the story in for a narrative work is ultimately the most important thing, true.  But tensions would be less likely to flare up if we always keep the context of their appearance here in mind.  They're being posted to a technical/artistic forum specializing in digital cinematography in general with highly focused sub-cliques for specific cameras and lenses.  Odds are the poster is going to be the fellow who shot whatever is featured in the video and may or may not be the writer/director.  The only reasonable expectation someone should have by doing this is a hopefully intelligent discussion of the technical and artistic aspects of the piece being viewed.     Expression of how well or not so well other aspects of the piece work for any particular viewer shouldn't be discouraged.  However, it would be completely inappropriate in this forum to suggest that any other aspect of filmmaking or the filmmaking process take precedence over the discussion of technical and artistic methods used for the purposes of creating or enhancing the photography of, whatever.  Or to suggest that improvements in any of the other disciplines necessary to make a narrative (or otherwise) piece can or should excuse poor execution of its photography.     edit: I posted this to a thread of its own instead of going off (again) in someone else's thread as a reaction to follow-up posts they might be getting from other members and further derailing their topic, which I know I'm guilty of and really, really hate myself for sometimes.

ok, fine, sorry, I surrender, everybody...GH2 anamorphic 4 life!  nothing else matters.

I hope they make a micro 4/3 version very soon !! it will sell like hot cakes!

I'm about to get a GH3. Other than a few old SMC Pentax lenses I plan to use via an adapter, I'm really starting from scratch. Hence, I'll need to buy several different things to get started and would like people's informed input if possible. Of course opinions will vary, but I'm curious to hear some thoughts if anyone would like to share.  :)   A few different things I'll need to purchase:   1) Editing software: Final Cut Pro vs. Adobe Premiere?   2) Color correction software: ?   3) Tripod set up: ideally something that balances compactability with a decent amount of quality   4) ND filter   Thanks, compadres. Like I said I'm starting from scratch. Lots of decisions to be made to get up to speed. Any input is much appreciated.  :)