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Hi, I was just sitting here, eating my mince pie and drinking my tea when, I had what alcoholics refer to as "a moment of clarity". It was sparked by an advert on the TV for Lambrini, which is truly the worst thing I have ever seen. (For those who don't know what Lambrini is, it's a cheap wine mainly consumed by women on hen nights) (If you don't know what a hen night it, its a bunch of hysterical women drinking too much and behaving like promiscuous idiots, under the guise that their friend from work, who they don't even like is getting married) This advert like so many others has jumped on the anamorphic band wagon. Which is not a bad thing in itself, they have just done so in the most horrible way possible. Probably shot on spherical with some tacky flares, but that's not the point and I digress. I love anamorphic as much as the next man, but it seems the world has gone mad. I know the topic of price has been a hot one on this forum so I will choose my words carefully. After all who the hell am I to tell another man what to sell his lens for. With the introduction of the new anamorphic adapters, love them or hate them, they have brought about interesting eBay auctions with low start prices. Perhaps it was inevitable as people clamber to raise cash to follow in Andrews footsteps as one of the first adopters of the SLR Magic. :rolleyes: Interestingly I have seen Kowa 8Z's go for around £250, that's a great buy for whoever bought it. Lots of lenses for sale = cheap prices for all. Here comes my point, these auctions give us an indication of what these lenses are actually worth at this present moment in time. I'll pause there..... Don't get angry, keep reading. After all you can put your scope lens on eBay for £1200, cross your arms and stubbornly claim that's what its worth, that's your business, I'm not knocking anyone for doing that. You won't sell it. But again, that is your prerogative. There are people selling lenses on eBay who have no idea of what they are actually selling, let alone if it works or not. But alas it has some bent glass on the front so they slap it on eBay with a description reading "Anamorphic lens" and they convince themselves it's "worth" £1000. There have been lenses for sale on eBay for as long as I have been looking, that have never sold. Why? Simple, no one wants to pay the price they are asking. Basic economics. So is that what they are really worth? The simple answer is...........(say it in your best Chris Rock voice) "Naaaat Really". There is a big difference between something being rare and valuable and something being a piece of old tat. I suppose people will realize that eventually. There have been arguments on this forum about inflated Iscorama prices. "They're not worth this, They're not worth that". What I would say is; they are worth what people are willing to pay for them. That's it. Personally I don't have $4500 to spend, but if I did, I would have been really tempted by "Macgregor's" 2004 Leica delight. What a lens, what pedigree, what a luxury. Someone said "worth every penny", yes quite possibly. The photos he posted were truly breathtaking. Thoughts start to run through your head, "if I had that lens I could capture images like that!" Hmmmm maybe, but there's a lot more at play here than just a nice piece of bent glass. Location, lighting, talent! I have seen images captured on Iscoramas that were very ordinary, I have seen images captured on a £300 Samyang that were truly beautiful. Look at what happened in this thread started by robtilbury Guess the camera and morph lens! This is a strange example. We all thought the video was shot spherical. We agreed it was a great looking piece with really nice shots, I personally really liked it, but there wasn't any anamorphic "character". Turns out it was shot on an Iscorama, the holy grail of anamorphic. I know a lot of this was down to wide lenses and stopping down to f8 but still we called an Iscorama spherical. So back to my "moment of clarity". For me my frustrating journey of looking for a bargain lens has come to an end. What I have found is, there are no bargains, if it seems like a bargain it's a scam. If it's worth anything, someone will have bashed its name into eBay using their ham fists and come back with a ridiculous price from another listing, which they will demand until they turn blue in the face. I could save like mad, spend £3000-6000 on a lens, cross my fingers and hope that it works. My girlfriend would leave me and I would have to eat baked beans for a year, but I could do it. Then I would have something truly amazing to shoot photos of my cat with. (no offense to those who shoot pictures of their cat, I do it all the time) Or.... and here is where it gets interesting, I could use that money to travel the world, see things, beautiful things. I could buy grip and lighting, I could finance (all be it very cheaply) a short film, I could photograph it all on a £300 boring lens, it doesn't matter. I could hone my skills, learn my trade. I have become bogged down in lenses and kit over the past few years. No more. If you have an Iscorama, or a Lomo roundfront, that's great. Shoot with it, do great things with it, share them. I think the early adopters of the DSLR anamorphic resurgence did so to add something different to their work. Just like we are all trying to do. They hunted for bargains and forged a new path. Is that still the case, is anamorphic still as "different" as it once was? Has that Lambrini advert killed it? I don't know. Maybe. Maybe not. Are the new anamorphic lenses that are coming out turd, who knows. All I know is, I will no longer be obsessed with finding the perfect lens, for me it doesn't exist. I'm going to buy a spherical Samyang, put tape across the top and bottom of the screen and wonder the Earth like Ryu at the end of Street Fighter II (If you're 18 and don't know what Street Fighter II is, it was an arcade game in the early 90's) (If you're 15 and don't know what an arcade game is, you haven't lived) Congratulations if you made it to the end and thanks for reading. :)

shot on 5d mark 3 with raw function

Not sure you question, but in general bit-depth is a computer (bits) + photo (depbth) lingo way of saying how wide the range in shading of any given color/brightness sampled be the electronic equipment. You can store 256 shades (or depth values) in an 8-bit memory slot (or byte). When working with Canon RAW, the camera saves each sensel/pixel as a 14-bit value. That would give you a range from 1 to 16,384. Once you save those values in smaller bit values you have to reduce the precision. I tried to explain the "precision" problem on the ML forum like so: One can think of it this way. You have a palette of 14 scales of gray. You need to convert them into 8 scales for something else. So 1-2 because 1, 3-4, become 2, 5-6 becomes 3, 7-8, becomes 4; 9-10, 5, 11-12, 6, 13-14, 7 (and we throw out the 8, for example) Let's say you have two gray colors in what you shot, and they are 2 and 6. You want to reduce the exposure by 1 (increase contrast). They were convered to 1 and 3, so now they become 0 and 2. You went from a 300% difference (in 14bit) to 200% (in 8bit). More importantly, you went from some gray 1, in 14bit, to no gray 0, in 8bit. What people don't understand, especially about H.264, is you can't just take 8 bit values and put them in a 14-bit space, for example, and get that 14bit precision again. Does this make sense? You seem to know your stuff, so maybe you're asking something else?

hi, my bmpcc just arrived this morning loaded the latest soft 1.5.1 I notice I can check the remaining time on the card: if you go to playback mode, the time indicated moves forth and back when you move trough the clips: so the time indication at the start of each clip is the total time of all previously recorded clips so when scrolling to the last clip, the total recorded time on the card is indicated time plus the length of the last clip seems to work for me

You are right. I just bought the only micro HDMI to mini HDMI cable I found on the net (to connect the Pocket to the Alphatron EVF), only to learn, that it's an ordinary HDMI-cable with two flimsy adapters. But it would need to fit in the Continuo cage:

the guy that sold me it said it was as good as an iscorama if not china better said it was an all new design not like the regular old one a special one he said : ) it ended up hitting a brick wall at high speed lucky for me the wall was not damaged and focus did seem to be improved. also punching yourself in your camera filming eye before the shot also helps. just kidding your lens is still alive i am rebuilding her better stronger and faster.

I'm thinking about buying one of those brand new Arri master anamorphics and have it converted to Nikon mount. I have some cash left from the grocery store. Oh no, wait a second...

  There's tons lacking on the photography side too actually. They don't have a mirrorless system with EVF. They have something like a grand mirrorless lens range of what… 2 lenses!?   So no really portable full frame camera for stills like Sony has with the A7R, A7 and RX1.   There's no high megapixel body for stills. Canon 22MP to Nikon / Sony 36MP is a big gap. Their CMOS manufacturing needs to move off the current outdated process to achieve this high megapixel count and it seems they are late doing this.   Their contrast detect AF is still slower than Micro Four Thirds and 95% of Canon lenses don't have internal silently focussing stepping motors for AF. Even on 70D the live-view AF is way slower than the Panasonic GX7 / Olympus OM-D E-M1.   They don't have the variety of bodies either… They are all almost identical to use, similar size, similar ergonomics, similar black trad. SLR design, etc.   The lens range is incredibly strong but very pricey, look at the new Canon 35mm F2.0 IS. That began at 700 euros and they had to drop the price 200 euros before it started selling. Compared to Sigma 35mm F1.4 you have to really need IS to consider the Canon. It's a nice lens, I use it, and light… but at 700 it was a non-starter for me.   Photographers are also complaining about the EOS M2. They were awaiting a proper update but instead had the range cancelled altogether in the US and Europe where the last one sold poorly due to being rather rubbish.   Trust me, it's pretty much only momentum and inertia which is keeping Canon in the game at the moment.

Take a look at this...   http://nikonrumors.com/2013/12/08/the-last-d3100-d3200-d5100-d5200-and-p7700-firmware-update-killed-third-party-battery-compatibility.aspx/   - Third party batteries banned for use in D5200 and others - Absolutely no mention in the change log for firmware update   I think that's an absolute disgrace not to mention it in the change log for the firmware update.   Imagine if you had an important shoot coming and then suddenly none of your batteries worked any more.   Again this will upset more customers and turn away more customers from Nikon than it will gain them in profit from genuine battery sales.   And I am sure they will say they did it for safety related reasons, so I must somehow be missing all those horror stories of third party batteries damaging cameras or setting fire to kittens. Bad bad third party batteries.

Can anyone recommend a good cheap HD Lcd 7" Monitor for a film Student just starting out? btw I have a Canon 600D. Thx!

It's disturbing that no Japanese company really wants to push technology that's readily available to the masses. How hard is it to put in a gig or two of fast ram for the camera to write to and them dump to a slower memory card? How hard is it to put audio meters on the display? How hard is it to record 4K at 24p? I'm tired of Sony, Canon, Panasonic and every Japanese brand that continues to pump out bullshit 8-bit 1080p mush. Step the f--k up and do something you bunch of conservative, profit-squeezing, planned obsolescent lame companies.

Hi everyone, I'd like to share my new short film 'a moment before awakening'  Created by me in Bory Tucholskie National Park (Poland) Hope you'll like it YT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cvsaVcFnKw8 or VIMEO https://vimeo.com/74399092  

Any luck? I seem to be dropping my connection between the camera/iPhone when I follow directions  on page 69 of the owners manual. HELP!