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One chapter at a time, I'm translating to english my graduation work which is 90% focused on anamorphics. I hope it brings some light onto common questions as well as works as a good follow-up read after the original EOSHD Anamorphic's Shooter Guide. I'll keep updating the links to each chapter on this post, please feel free to comment and correct me along the way. There are 22 chapters/topics and roughly a hundred pages. WHO AM I AND WHAT IS THIS ABOUT? http://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7166 INTRODUCTIONhttp://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7174 LENS RESEARCHhttp://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7195 a ) FOCUS THROUGH (1.33x)http://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7204b ) ISCORAMAS (1.5x)http://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7225c ) DOUBLE FOCUS (2x)http://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7235d ) CINE LENSES (2x)http://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7260e ) DAMAGE AND SERVICINGhttp://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7278f ) DIOPTERS AND CLOSE UPShttp://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7282g ) LENS-YCLOPEDIAhttp://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7280h ) FAKING THE LOOKhttp://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7283 MAGICLANTERN RAWhttp://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7304 a ) CUSTOM CROPMARKShttp://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7305 ZONA SSPhttp://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7310 a ) LOMO: EPISODE 01http://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7311b ) ISCORAMAS: EPISODE 02http://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7317 THE PROCESShttp://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7318 a ) CONCEPT DEVELOPMENT http://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7319b ) ON SET PREVIEW http://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=7320c ) WORKFLOW CONCLUSIONBIBLIOGRAPHY

Hi all, check out our newest short film "In Good Company" It's quite creepy! watch it here:

Yup I already thought of this. But thank you annyway!

Every time I open this forum, I see new threads asking questions about diopters and close ups, and how they work, or why some are more valuable than others. Would it be too arrogant of me to ask for this thread to be pinned? :P The first post answers 99% of all other threads questions, and it's always better to have centralized information instead of roaming around dozens of threads looking for one specific reply.

You cannot compare video to photo. Many people do that same error, yes they are images but how they are perceived (I don't find a proper word for that in my english) is very different. They are very different art form. A photograph is eternity, a fraction of a second capture for eternity. It is like a painting, you can watch a photo at least for a minutes, your eyes wander through the scene, it is like a book it can convey many stories, have many actors etc. Like let say a scene at a market with a seller and woman discussing price. In a photo you could have those two into a heated discussing with lots of emotion, on one side or on her back the child of the buyer completely disinterested or bored about the discussion with a very candid face and a toy in her hand, some buy standers in the background amused by the scene with some interesting impression on there face, etc etc.. It could take you easily a minutes or more looking at this image if it is well done in terms of framing composition colour or black and white etc In a video scene of the same scene you would never look at the same scene for more than 5/10 seconds. For it to be interesting you would need this scene as an establishing shot, the you would do closer shots to capture the different people to tell the same story. At no time would you do a shot more than 5/10 second if else it will start to be boring. This is why the discussion about resolution in photo and video are two very different films. In a photo in a book or a bg gallery wall you can move toward the photo or put the paper closer and your eyes and mind can wander through it. You can watch a photo for minutes but can you tell me how many static video scene can you watch for more than 10/20 second. Video is about motion within the frame and outside of the frame (editing). As such your eyes(brain) cannot settle at any point for enough time to render the same resolution as in prints and this without facturing motion blur. Another thing myth about using 4k images for photography. When I do a wedding, I am easily shoot about 2000 photos. The work of sorting out these photos and doing selection is easily between half a day and a days work. Why, again photo can be scrutinise much more, if it is out of focus, it is out of focus..... while if in a video scene of 5 sec 5/10 frames are out of focus in a moving scene it will still be good, because again your brain will just skip it as it is not permanent, the half a second it is on the scene it is already replaced less than a second after that by other images. Then lets say you have 4 hours of footage and you have to search for lets say 800 to 1500 good one as photos as good one before choosing those that will be processed. And those photos will generally be on the lower quality jpeg compression (If you are shooting raw it is some gigantic file size). The last thing would be shutter speed, most photos will have motion blur which will equate to blurry photos at 1/50 sec!!!!!!!!!!!! For sure in some occasion it can save some shot, but 90% of the time it would be just spray and pray photography, the worst form of what is an art form. I have a D800 and I have shot with most Nikon cameras except the D3/D4 line and I pride myself of being able to capture that sense of eternity in a fraction of a second of what photography is about. On many website I see mostly videographers talking about using 4k for photo etc, and this tells me how much these two art form are very different and that they don't understand that the mindset is very different because video is about continuity.

Geeks calling them DP/film-makers/Cinematographers will tell you that 4k is a big difference with all sort of mathematical formula etc... But artist and true cinematographers like the ones above will tell that there is so much more like colour to make a beautiful image. And how 4k is becoming detrimental as too much resolution start to impact the image and how they have to use filtration to soften the image. By the way the bayer filter is more like 2/3 resolution that is why Red Camera the most vocal camera manufacturer about 4k objective was to have 6k for true 4k. But in the end WTF, do people see it? even if it is 2k, 4k or 8k, motion blur and viewing distance will kill 99% of its advantage. You would need to be like 2 feet/50cm from a 65 inch screen to notice any difference and only static scene where motion blur won't take out any advantage in resolution. In this case you would have to move your eyes or head to be able to see all the scene. Its like a ping pong or tennis match if you have two actors talking to each other when they are on two side of the scene. The perception of true 1080p has been ruined by camera like the Canon dslr which even if it is written 1080p are less than 720p in resolution and SD in terms of details with the low 8 bit codec. You should take more the example of the 2.7K down-res Alexa for a proper 1080p image in terms of resolution and detail. Many films like the latest James bond have been shot with the Alexa and up-rez to 4k with no one complaining and DPs (Roger Deakins) have said how it up scaled well. In the end buy Tiffen stocks as when in 2/3 years, when every camera will be 4k and more, everybody on these geeky website will be asking what filter to use to soften the look so that there image look film-like and that the wedding couples, corporate clients, talking heads interviews, film actors to their family members won't be complaining about the highly digital look and crispness of the image.

I am forced to blow my own trumpet again - and with my back ache, I need to limit how much I do this! :) I am absolutely certain that there is a difference between rendering of imagery between smaller and larger sensors. I see a difference, and obviously professionals who spend £80k on a medium format digital back see it as well - otherwise they'd just shoot 36x24 and pocket the difference. What you are disregarding is that dof isnt just about the ratio between the in focus and out of focus blur. It's about the intimate step between the two. Generally when comparing a longer and a shorter focal length (both of the same quality), the longer focal length will be higher resolution with less aberrations, distortion, and less vignette wide open. This is known as a rule which is rarely broken. a fast 50 will always be better than the same quality fast 35mm. when you add these apparent strengths of a longer focal length and then obtain a wider fov by increasing the format size you maintain the quality of the longer focal length while gaining the same fov as the wider lens delivers on the smaller format. This is what makes the difference - the ratio between in focus resolution and the amount of blur is contributing to the clear difference between how different formats render the same fov's. The reason fast zeisses lenses are known to have their 'zeiss 3d pop' is because they are able to deliver large amounts of defocus blur while also delivering very sharp in focus subjects. A 50mm 2.8 hasselblad distagon on 6x6 format 50iso will out perform a 25mm f1.4 (if there was such a thing worth mentioning!) on s35mm at 50iso when we consider both will render similar fov and dof ratio but the 50 f2.8 distagon is razor sharp at f2.8 and the 25mm f1.4 will be nasty and need to be closed to f2.8-f4 before it comes close to the resolution of the 50. the 25mm will be 'in focus' on the subject, but in comparison to the 50mm lens the in focus area won't look sharp.

Is this a facetious question?

Ha ha thanks man. :lol: I just re-read it. I maybe went a bit over the top but yes, it is quite good ;) I particularly like the bit about "Hollywood vomiting dross all over us." I certainly stand by everything I said there. It's basically the DIY punk-rock aesthetic: talent, ability, equipment, distribution ... all of it ... comes second place to expression. If you've got something to say you find a way to say it that is within your means. And that comes across in the end product - the urgency of the content. Artists don't work within the constraints of their medium (whether they use an Alexa or an iPhone) - they work in spite of the constraints and push to find ways to say the unsayable. I'm not saying technology isn't important - the opposite in fact - but pushing the limits of a medium is where art happens. All media has constraints. All modes of representation are inadequate, impotent and broken, no matter how sophisticated. That's why art is art and not science. I wrote my Fine Art PhD thesis on this subject by the way - perhaps why I got so vociferous about it!

Seems like quicktime can do it too, Im also interested in any tips / advice

Nice mate! I miss NZ and grew up in Blockhouse Bay!

I guess not everyone here is a professional or an enthusiast. More zoom = better is a fairly common consumer sentiment... until you show them the results from a high end lens.

Only??? Think of it this way, if you stand face to face with someone, noses only 2cm apart, and you move your head forward until your noses touch, it's only a change in viewpoint of 2cm but it makes a dramatic impression on the passive viewer (the other person) who will probably pull back from you. Now stand 200 meters away and dolly yourself 2 meters towards them, bet they hardly noticed you moved. It's a bit of a fluffed simile, but it makes the point quite nicely, that it's not the magnification that is important, it's what you do with it. 50mm is a nice portrait length, on super35, 150 is a very long telefocal length. So you can have a really dramatic change in viewpoint with "only" a 3x magnification (and when you really get down to it, how many times the wide end can be divided into the long end is a really quite odd way to judge a lens). Also remember every lens is a compromise, the wider a range of focal lengths any single lens covers, the more the lens is going to be compromised to deal with the optical effects - how can one lens adequately control both balloon distortion at the wide end and pincushion distortion at the long end, answer is with absolutely insanely expensive optics or it just doesn't but balanced some balloon with some pincushion and hope the middle is about right (and that is only one of many compromises). This is why you will find the better quality lenses have a lower magnification, they specialise in their range and do it well. If you want one lens that rules them all, one lens that finds them, one lens to bring them all and in the darkness binds them, one single lens that covers every possible focal length, then why would you buy an interchangeable lens camera in the first place. They are fundamentally designed to take advantage of the higher quality optics while retaining the flexibility to be able to shoot a wide range of focal lengths. The compromise, it takes a few seconds to put a different one on. Also, trust me on this, the Samsung 18-200 is not a pro lens and it is not a movie lens, it's a lens designed to have a giant x11 on the packaging to sell it.

It's not about shallower dof.

  A sense of pride in your existence :)

Here's a short vacation video I shot on my a6000. Lenses used were the Zeiss 24mm 1.8, Sony 50mm 1.8, and Sony 10-18mm F4. Coming from the NEX-6 I appreciated the a6000's autofocus speed and accuracy quite a bit. I also used the face detection focus tracking a couple times and it worked pretty well. Still wishing we could record in XAVC / slog2 though like the A7s.

Andrew or anyone else shooting with this camera, do your initial impressions hold up? I'm shooting with the A7s for video and the A7r for stills. Very happy with the A7s, but autofocus on the A7r is abysmal. I've already got a lot of nikkor lenses and was thinking of picking this up as a B-camera

Absolutely, raw is still a benchmark for ultimate image quality. Let's be clear, I'm not denying that.   For me, now it's all about how close we can get to that beauty....but with more practical solutions like the GH4, A7S and D750.   I am over regular raw shooting now, as I ran out of space at the local aircraft hanger where I stored my hard drives.

I agree, this regional crap is pretty lame.

FU SONY! You cannot buy these Playmemories camera applications unless you are living in specific countries/regions. This service is only available in the "big" countries like US, GBritain, Germany, etc. And is really difficult to overcome this restriction (actually you have to commit fraud). And the ways I spotted in many forums, now are not available anymore (Sony is to blame for this). I think this is outrageous.

Canon APS-C looked really soft to me even before I knew anything about HDSLR filming. I still don't understand why it was bigged up so much :/

Nothing wrong with being a bastard. We should embrace its bastard-ness! Besides, there were all sorts of film gauges besides 16 and 35, 17.5, 18, 21 etc

Guys there's a very simple way to test which is sharpest: look on the box and find out which one is made by Panasonic. :)