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I see they listened to the pros at NAB.... "As expensive as possible please!"

the Zeiss P6 medium format lenses are some of the best you can get , I like these lenses alot , great contrast , Zeiss warm colours and very sharp !! and they have character , all hand made - no computers used in making these or designing them ticks all the boxes for me!!

Just a brief note: Panasonic have given me a ship date for the GH4 in Europe. First shipments leave the factory last week of April destined for Germany. Shipments to dealers start after the May 1st holidays so from the 5th the camera will be almost ready to ship to customers.Read the full article here

This might be obvious to some of you. It wasn't to me. By default the GH4 records in 16-255. So that's what I shot my video's in. Turns out, you have to do some stuff to recover the 'super whites', if you don't do it you end up with crushed highlights. This guy took some original footage from Vimeo (yes, I'm flattered by the compliments I got on my cat ;)) and made a tutorial about it. Awesome stuff, must see! The bad news, I have to re-edit all my videos and upload them again ;) Also check out his website: http://www.florisliesker.nl/ This guy makes great stuff.

I've been playing with the GH4 for a while now. I'll share my video's here. Shot a lot more material, still have to edit/upload it. Will do so in the following days. Go over to Vimeo/YouTube for all the details in the lenses/profiles/settings used. You can download 4K files or high bitrate on Vimeo. Cinema 4K mode - sunset and lowlight. The 14mm makes razorsharp 4K images. Also used a cheap 200mm f/3.5 Vivitar lens. Hard to get the focus exactly right and maybe not really suitable for 4K. For the video on Vimeo I used pretty high iso values. Shots with the birds are 3200 for example. 96 fps slomo test: with shallow dof shots it is pretty sharp. I have some slomo sufing shots as well, the resolution looks less good with very detailed scenes. Short test shot at ISO6400 in C4K. Anamorphic test with Minolta MD 28mm f/2.8 and Petit Cinevision 1.5x

I cable tie it round the rods just to make sure there is no vertical lift by accident too

Yes for sure, I always use 15mm rig with the iscorama. Lol might need a second lens support with this thing.

Yes, but what that ultimately means is different based on the vertical height of your sensor. Your vertical FOV determines your framing and distance to subject which directly feeds into your DOF at a given stop. That may or may not be important to you depending on if you're using theatrical anamorphic films as your reference.

yes its that easy , Ive posted about how to do this before in the Anamorphic section the Century is a very high quality piece of glass made by Schneider , its big and heavy but does the job very well the bayonet at the back comes off with a few grub screws, I then added a 77mm thead , so I can use a 77-72 step down ring as needs be as this is a very good x0.7 wide adaptor for any lens not just anamorphics , so I use it on any lens with 77, 72 and 67mm fronts

Purchased and looking forward to reading. This is one hefty book on lenses Andrew, don't know where you find the time to pull it together! I can't justify an A7S and a GH4 this year, so I think the later will win out, but love the knowledge you share, and happy to know i paid considerably less for my lenses than you estimate :-)

just bought it , will have a good read of this

There's definitely wider lenses to build out a Jena set. Here's one of the best threads I've found on the subject, if you're not already familiar with it: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?91477-Which-Zeiss-Jena-set-to-build ...down at #9 lists what appears to be a full set. The f/2.4 Flekogon looks pretty decent in what little poking around I've done. At APS-C f/2.4 is decent. Assuming Metabones produces a Speedbooster for the D16 as good or better than the one for the BMPCC, you'd be looking at an equivalent f/3.5 or so compared to anamorphic 35mm, but that's using the BMPCC numbers. The D16 could be better in this application because supposedly they'll open up the height on the sensor, one of these days, when they stop messing about with silly f/4 c-mounts and leather bags. Regardless of scaling up to APS-C a 16:9 sensor is still at a disadvantage because vertically it's still highly cropped compared to anamorphic 35mm on film. Supposedly the D16 will eventually be 4:3 for anamorphic purposes and that will be pretty major. Still, keep in mind the stops used on real films, even those considered "wide open" are rarely terribly big. Django Unchained was shot mostly at 40mm - 50mm and around T3.1 while Boogie Nights was also mostly 40mm and 50mm, T2.8 for night (on really slow stock) and T4 for most everything else. One of the most wide open anamorphic films in recent memory, some might say irresponsibly so, is Killing Them Softly and they did shoot mostly in the lower T2 ranges but that's a very rare choice. It's spherical films that need to be more open, because the act of cropping throws every focal more telephoto compared to anamorphic, forcing the camera to back off, pushing the subject in the direction of the hyperfocal, reducing bokeh. That's part of what's to blame for Super35's reputation for sharpness and greater ease of focus. On your GH2 + Iscorama project it makes total sense, the problems you encountered, because that 35mm was the equivalent of shooting with a 55mm lens in anamorphic 35mm, a fairly "normal" focal length, not terribly wide. That Helios was the equivalent to shooting a 94mm lens in the anamorphic 35mm film format (anamorphic frame height = 17.5mm and the GH2 sensor height = 10.7mm so that's a 1.64 factor).

Still using that tiny sensor though.

"This one goes to eleven". One should seize every opportunity to see this awesomeness :) I wonder if this is true for GX7 as well, which is supposedly using the same sensor.

Hello everyone, These are just some random snaps cut together using the DSO Trump FF58 with a 1.5X oval aperture inside, combined with the iscorama 1.5X anamorhic. Simulating the bokeh of a 2X anamorphic.. Anyways I thought some of the shots looked pretty good an wanted to share. Pretty cool being able to shoot this on a D800 and not go to wide like 3.25:1 Password is buds

thanks to you all for the excellent replies. quirky - my work is archival footage of architecture for the state historic society. I spent my career shooting architecture with a 4x5 for the library of congress, and all these little cameras seem like toys to me, so I don't think it is just GAS... I wanted to shoot this new archival footage at the highest possible resolution to achieve the best possible quality for long-term documentation purposes - I am not trying to shoot "cinema".

Sorry, didn't notice that! Seeing alot of this going on recently & it does provide for a few bargins - picked up a cheap Mir 24M in mint condition last week - Yay!

yes you can use them with adapters on speedboosters as you have just described it will work

Nice, my favo dutch surfspot :). I liked the slomo shots on the beach. How did you get the camera, is it already up for purchase?

My advice is use Premiere and set the playback resolution to 1/4.

Looks like its being eaten alive!!! So i assume that's mostly a sun shade...

Yep, you can!

External drives are actually more common with serious editing, usually some kind of raid solution, sometimes sharing between multiple editors, etc. This provides greater access to the drives themselves for maintenance and expansion while lowering downtime on the host editor. Home editing of course doesn't have to be overkill though and a couple internal drives is okay for small stuff. The speed of the drives and implementation used as well as the speed of the connection play a big part in external solutions. FW800 connected to an inexpensive raid is plenty fast for 422HQ Prores realtime, for instance, and for at least playback I'm getting realtime QT proxy playback off a single G-Drive with RED footage over FW800 and that's an interface that's fairly long in the tooth now. eSATA and USB3 are way faster. Of course, you don't need to be editing with 4K footage and if your machine can't handle it you make offline proxies, edit just fine and concentrate on editing, and then do your online conform at 4K and render. Like a real editor. An overwhelming majority of the films you see in the theater aren't finished in 4K and of those that are none of them are edited in 4K with camera original files. Tyler Durden would have a lot to say about all this prosumer/consumer 4K business...

Excellent! I do appreciate the information.

Very nice detail. Just can't believe how clean the image looks. Especially like the 2nd video (YT) with the wind farm/docs in the background. Just amazing detail and colors! I can't wait for this camera! Thank you for all the tests!

wide open, an 80mm f2.8 medium format lens will transmit more light onto a full frame sensor than a full frame lens of the same aperture/focal length. almost all full frame lenses show vignette wide open on full frame, but the vignette on the medium format image circle is cropped away when used on full frame so the illumination is more uniform. in the centre of the frame you will see exactly the same exposure, but the edges will be different by a stop or more. Edge image quality will also be worlds apart - the medium format lenses delivering better quality due to being used within their sweet spot. I use Hasselblad and Schneider medium format lenses on the sony A7R because I often like to position the subject at the edge of the frame, while keeping the lens wide open. Only with the medium format lenses do you get really good results at 36mpx at the edges when the lens is wide open. regarding iscorama use on medium format, you'll only see light loss and related issues from step rings if you use them on medium format sensors. the crop factor negates any adverse effects. finally, As i have said a few times, medium format lenses only tend to deliver 'creative' looking images when on big sensors/film surfaces. when on smaller sensors you loose the aesthetic benefits such as that awesome wide fov and shallow dof obtained by a longer lens delivering wider fov due to the bigger imaging area (80mm on medium format = 50mm on full frame). The main argument against using medium format lenses is that some will say they are not as capable at delivering a fine enough resolution in 'line pairs/mm'. - due to not being designed to compress all the information into such a small area. I know for a fact that my schneiders out perform my hasselblads drastically in terms of resolution when used on full frame, 36mpx. Once on medium format imaging areas this difference is less noticable. It is worth reading up on lens talk in the view camera / bellows type technical camera user forums since this subject is easier to discuss in the domain of 8x10" frames! Schneider make a range of 'digitar' view camera lenses which aim to address this issue by delivering way more line pairs per millimeter than typicakl view camera lenses - which would suggest there milage in this discussion.

I have a bunch od these lenses they are Pentacon 6 mount (P6) so to use a speedbooster you will need an adaptor from P6 to what ever mount your speedbooster is Yes I have used my Schneider anamorphics on the Carl Zeiss 80mm f2.8 Biometar it has a 67mm front so works will with the Schneider that has a 70.6mm rear

Shot some people today! Panasonic Leica 42.5mm f/1.2 DG Noctricon OIS (handheld) Cinema 4K - 4096x2160 Cinelike D - Ungraded Aperture: f/1.6 (Vari ND filter used) Shutter: 1/50 ISO: 200 White Balance: Daylight

That was one of my main reasons to always pick up the GH3 for a long handheld shoot. The battery life is insane. A full day on a half battery.

The battery is excellent by the way. Shot 179 4K clips today (10-20 seconds) between 11:30 - 15:00, camera was on pretty much all of the time. Still 2/3 full.

More slow motion:

slow motion video looks great - thanks for sharing :)

The Canucks sort of agree.

Below was shot on a d800 (with Atomos Ninja) and I don't believe it could have been any better. As you pointed out, Andrew isn't primarily a stills photographer, so if he wants to have fun dissing the optical view-finder why should we begrudge him ;) In the end, I think we all agree, ALL viewfinders are limited. There are pros and cons. In the end, the viewer doesn't know what viewfinder was used, if any! What I love about the video below is how it demonstrates the a perfect transition from photographer to filmmaker. Jacek Dylag obviously started out, and is primarily, a stills photography. If he had used Blackmagic cameras, or any other non-still camera, would he have been comfortable working? I wonder. My epiphany this morning is DSLRs are perfectly capable of giving professional results to the stills photographer, and should be used by them. However, artists starting out IN film should work with RAW or Panasonic. We have to give credit to Andrew for looking into the d800 again. It shows a very open mind. I loaded the hack. It won't make me switch to the d600 as a primary video camera, but it did improve it and that wouldn't have happened if Andrew didn't pave the way. I don't want to sound like I'm a fan of Andrew, that would be going too far! Yet credit must be given where credit is due due. :)

Are you calling my cat fat!? :p I absolutely love the GH4. I bought a 5D Mark II a while a go to shoot ML raw but actually I never use it because the workflow is just too much trouble for me. The GH4 is small, it has pretty much everything you need. Great EVF, great flip screen. Focus peaking, zebras, good customizable profiles, electronic level. I love the 96 fps slomo. The quality isn't as good as normal 1080p but it is a lot of fun to use. Also it has a perfect built in time lapse mode, and electronic shutter so it won't wear out the camera. The 4K 100mbps files are very easy to work with. In Premiere CC I don't notice any difference with 1080p, only exporting takes longer (like 25 minutes for this video). I'm using a 3 year old pc: Intel i5 2400, 16GB, GTX660, SSD for software, files are on a normal hdd. Haven't tried grading in resolve yet, will do soon. I edited on a 5760 x 2160 timeline but Premiere doesn't let me export that size (max 4096), so I exported to 3840x1440 because I think that will scale the best on 1080p screens. You can download the 4K file from vimeo. For me it's a perfect camera. I'm just a hobby shooter, I can just grab it and go... No need for rigs or whatever extras. Can adapt pretty much every lens to it. Just have to grab a speed booster of some sort. Only wish I have left is stabilisation. There aren't many native m43 lenses with OIS, except for the zooms and they are either cheap with small aperture or pretty expensive (12-35mm 2.8). I'd love some cheap-ish primes with OIS. This anamorphic lens is tiny btw.

These films I hope shape my filmmaking. If I can recreate 1% of what these films are I will be happy. 1. Come and See 2. 2001: A Space Odyssey 3. Wages of Fear 4. A Clockwork Orange 5. After Hours 6. Dodes'ka-den 7. La Dolce Vita 8. The Thing 9. Sansho the Bailiff 10. La Haine Many of these films are cold, and lonely. They are minimal and beautifully shot. No real heroes in any of these films. Wages of Fear, and Sansho the Bailiff tell great stories, while A Clockwork Orange, Dodes'ka-den and After Hours take us to magical worlds. It's not a definitive list. I love Ace in the Hole, Le Trou, Chungking Express, Grand Illusion, Contempt, In the Mood for Love. Too much stuff that makes wanna create art. Most of it is foreign. IDK why, but foreign films have soul. Come and See is just my flat out favorite. No Spielbergesue optimism in this film. I just brutal war that almost plays out like a dream.