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Here's my video to share. Had some trouble nailing focus shooting T2.8 on some crap BMPC LCD screen, but here you go! EXPERIENCE I enjoyed using this. This is a final production prototype that I am testing. What makes it great is that the setup was really light, pretty well-built, and the learning curve is pretty easy. It can resolve sharp images, especially with the achromats. On the small LCD of the pocket camera though, getting focus can be a crapshoot. Focus peaking does not always work and I had to guess a lot. I did have to tell Ying to slow down a couple times because there was no way I could pull focus, especially on a fairly fast aperture of T2.8 and pretty much 100mm equivalent lens. Really should have a large monitor. But then it's not really a run and gun lens like I was using here though. I don't feel like anamorphic in general is normally for documentary style work. Neither is the pocket camera. Hope this helps you. Erik

Neither the BM Pocket nor the Digital Bolex are low light monsters - especially the DB, but the pocket's ASA 1600 is fine & cleans up nicely if you really have to. Unless you're filming in a field with no lights, the f2.8 is fine & with a SB even better. If you're really worried, then get the 28mm & crop out any mild vignette that you might encounter when using diopters. Found this on Vimeo - obviously not low light, but exactly the lens pairing of Iscorama+Nikon 35mm f1.4:

The guys over at nikon hacker have managed to change the bitrate options on many nikon cameras. Higher bitrates produce cleaner movements, cleaner shadows, clean details. The result is an image that can take more grading and sharpening without producing artifacts. http://nikonhacker.com/ Current hacks (video related): Nikon Patch v1.18.1 BETA (26/02/2014) current limitations : -recording time is reduced (2x bitrate, 1/2 recordingtime) -on-camera playback of videofiles does only work with lower bitrates and depends on card speed although it is not perfectly clear. (green has been tested on actual hardware, orange has not been tested, red is experimental,pink is nonfunctional) No guarantee, strictly at your own risk I will try to keep the list up to date, check the nikonhacker for latest news.

I cannot say for certain, in all cases, that FC is good for getting digital LOG footage out of its flat state. I haven't experimented enough with LOG footage to know the extent of its capabilities in this regard or bothered to see what flat/log profiles they've created. I have brought in some very LOG looking, still very flat, green, "typical" RED Epic footage into FC and it did what appeared to be a very good looking transformation of the footage. It turned it into something instantly recognizable as "film like". I do forsee an ACES workflow as being the more general purpose means to get better log->lin conversion than what is currently standard and I drew parallels to how that system works and what's going on under the hood of Film Convert. Those six steps and that poking around to get a decent looking image from BMD cameras (or RED or any raw), either RAW or with that log curve baked into linear ProRes, is what the ACES workflow is designed to remedy, because it's the result of an incomplete, inefficient and error inducing workflow (no judgement on you, it's been that way for everyone). But, back to FC, yeah, you can do your conversion and then consider this a new starting point to then actually grade your footage or you can just be happy with the primary conversion. That choice is up to you and your desired look. If you want your footage to looked DI'd and heavily modified then it would be best to do the conversion to FC within Resolve or AfterEffects and then do all the grading that you would normally do to any footage. Since the whole DI process began with scanned film anyway, not digital camera footage, you are essentially turning your digital footage into some approximation of a scanned negative and now you're free to grade to the look you want like anything else. All you're doing is altering your starting point. Or, you just do the primary conversion and minor balancing for any exposure and color temp inconsistencies. This would be analogous to what you see in film prior to DI. Watch a movie from the '80s or the '70s or even all through the '90s when there weren't a lot of ways to modify the look of film, no such thing as secondary CC for feature film (though there was for commercials), just basic color timing and exposure before involving an optical house for some kind of effect. There are thousands of films that are basically just lightly modified, processed film...basically everything before O Brother, Where Art Thou? That's an approximation of what you have just running FC and not doing a lot of grading afterwards. There's nothing wrong with either way of using it. I will say, it's kind of refreshing, going back to watch pre-DI films where folks weren't doing heavy handed modifications just because they could. The opposite would be something like that new Liam Neesen film where he's an air marshall. Hoo-ah, that duo-tone taken to absurdity looks like hammered shit, pardon my French. Again though, download the software and play with it in demo mode for free. It does give you film-like results like nothing else you can currently buy and better than any attempt that's come before it. One of the negatives I've read about it that I wholeheartedly agree with is that their grain is too strong. It doesn't bother me that it comes up by default with 100% application. The only thing that makes sense is that it would be either all on or all off. Complaining about a program's defaults are silly to me. That said, the scale of their grain is set based on selecting a gauge of film, from 8mm up to various 35mm formats and their 35mm options seem too strong. I believe their grain files are something like 4K but I don't think that they're doing an appropriate supersampling of the highest resolution file and transforming it to be appropriate for the frame size. At the very least, it's all too big for 1080 footage. It almost looks like they're doing a 1080 crop out of the middle of a 4K grain scan. It would be more appropriate to scale down and filter. Having worked with scanned 35mm film since 1993 which is not long after film scanning became common, I can tell you that grain is bordering on sub-pixel in a high quality 2K scan. You might get something pixel sized in the blue record but the grains in FC are huge by comparison and, if nothing else, it just needs to be "kissed" in. I'd suggest doing this after everything else since you can apply a second copy of FC with all of the color and film settings dialed down to pass-thru and just apply grain, or use some of the grain files that have been posted by other professionals for other folks to use.

Yep. All the Nikon AF-D lenses have aperture ring. They have electronic contacts providing info and autofocus support on newer Nikon camera bodies with AF motors - but they retain their manual operation and backwards compatibility with old manual film cameras like Nikon FM2 / F2 etc. Which means they'll work nicely with adapters on any other system. The manual focusing feel is not fully as good on AF-D lenses as on the all manual AI/AI-S lenses, but it's alright. @Bioskop: Wow. Never used that 35mm f/1.4, all I know is that it has its issues (coma, soft corners).. But seems like it really can shine if used properly on a smaller crop camera!

If its only 9 stops of DR, then that sure is a big & robust 9 stops! I've used RAW & ProRes Film/Video modes - they are all a dream (well RAW is an extra hassle I can live without). Even if it turns out that it really is only 9, the pocket just shits all over the majority of DSLRs or anything else close to its price range for that matter when it comes to image. The way you can push the footage in any direction is simply amazing - i've been doing some test CC/Grades all day for a doc i've nearly finished shooting & whatever i want to do, i can do. You just can't get hung up on this type of nit picking stuff! Its a damn nice Cinema Camera in a ridiculously small package, which produces some of the best images i've seen in a long while. Everytime i use it i just chuckle to myself about the nonsense spewed by all the detractors. Can't use it, won't use - who gives a fuck!

What about the Panasonic 12-32mm pancake? http://amzn.to/MUauyD

Red Epic (M642) w/ Ti Canon Mount 16-35mm & 50mm L-Series Lens

Close enough for a PR release.

Well Simeone gave this answer: https://nikonhacker.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1779&start=60#p11792 who knows, they removed timelimitation on the d800 so maybe it's similar. Btw,they are saying that the video is 4:2:2, or at least the live view feed. http://simeonpilgrim.com/nikon-patch/nikon-patch-beta.html [update] d3100 and d800 coming next: https://nikonhacker.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=1790 We got lucky :D, I'll try it first with the d7000.

We must not watch the same horror films.

Depends on what you're looking for. The AF-D Nikkor 35mm f/2 is faster than f/2.8 and will perform better than the f/1.4. AF-D lenses have support for autofocus - but can be operated fully manually. The downside is that they don't have the nice fully metal construction like AI-S lenses. Then, for Nikon mount at 40mm, also with 52mm filter thread, there's also the Voigtländer 40mm f/2. A very sharp, fully manual all metal lens. The color rendition of the Voigtländer should match the Nikkors. Either of above mentioned, in addition to the excellent AI-S 28mm f/2.8, are my recommendations for wider than 50mm.

The thing to also be aware of, besides coma, is a noticeable lack of contrast totally open versus a stop up on that 35mm. My 50mm F.Zuiko has the same issues wide open but this effect virtually disappears with a little micro-contrast adjustment while grading.

You should really only do it though if you're going for that look. If you aren't really unhappy with the inherent look you're getting from your camera then it's maybe an investment that would be better spent (not that it's that expensive) on a video card upgrade, if you don't have a compatible card for using something like Resolve, or some other tool. I love what it does when I want that look but it's not hard to see example works out there shot on nearly any decent camera where I don't think the footage or film would have been improved any by pushing it through Film Convert. It would have been different, but maybe not really better. Please don't misinterpret my desire to keep things fair with regard to its purpose or value with any kind of blanket advocacy for it being used all the time on all things. I've seen, for instance, lots of video shot using various Driftwood patches for the GH2 that have a great look as-is. It's often hard to judge the stuff being shot on various BMD cameras because it's so often poorly graded (or worse, un-graded). I've seen RAW 5D footage that I don't think needs FC at all to look film-like enough for me. You can download a trial copy and you should play around with it before buying. I also suggest getting the plug-in version, not the stand-alone which is tuned for speed and not precision. If you don't want to spend the cash for their one price buys all you must be very careful about which product you buy because they're all licensed separately and licenses are not transferable between product or platform because they use a really kludgy style of local key.

GH3 and BMPCC. It's tough to keep steady handheld. I think it works best with tripod or shoulder rig.