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Here's a nice little R1 mount I made with an inexpensive smallrig ballmount.

The live video walkthrough of the QuadLock functionality is here The AFX v1.7 firmware update will be released on Wednesday 21st and includes a possibly interesting new focus function.

Kowa B&H Close Focus Mod & other 'Tweaks' Recently I picked up a very cheap Kowa B&H that needed a lot of internal cleaning and a fresh re-lube. Since it was my 'Spare' Kowa, I have a chance to illustrate/share my findings on some simple modifications that I discovered a couple of years ago on another lens. Since I already have a 'Standard' Kowa to compare with, it should prove easier to illustrate the difference in performance before & after modifying such a lens. These principles will work on many lenses of this type that share a similar construction. Following these steps are at your own risk. The modifications allow: * Minimum focus to be reduced from 5 feet down to 3 feet. * Reduction/elimination of 'Veiling Flare/ Barrel Glow' that is common with Kowa lens types. * Overall sharpness improvement. Close Focus: To achieve closer focus from the 5 foot factory standard is pretty easy.The focus mechanism transport is done by a helicoid pushing/pulling the front element that is seated within a tube, guided by brass tabs/stoppers within slots in the housing.These brass tabs/stoppers ensure that the linear travel is straight and true (ensuring correct alignment with rear optic). By cutting these tabs to be shorter, the travel of the front optic assembly is allowed to seat closer to the body - allowing closer distance between front and rear optic. This allows an increase in optic proximity to be achieved. This modification effectively allows the focus ring to turn to it's maximum close focus position, and not restricted by factory limits. Veiling Flare/ Barrel Glow - Reduction: A common artefact of Kowa lenses in bright light situations seems to be a strong Veiling glare. It is similar to a strong vignette of light that happens when the front optic is hit with off-axis light. Although this can be a desirable artefact, often it is too overpowering to the image when purposely flashing the lens to pop a flare for effect. A simple solution I found is to blacken the edge of the front optic - this is the edge that gets hit by light and pools the image with a 'Barrel glow'. Taking a fine tipped marker pen does the job well (without needing to disassemble lens) - even better would be black paint and a fine brush and a steady hand if you wanted to eliminate glow completely. I personally tried the marker pen method, as you can carefully remove or thin the ink with a tiny amount of lighter fluid on a brush - creating a reduction/dulling effect, rather than remove the glow effect completely. At least it is good to know how to minimize the glow effect, especially when shooting in bright sunlight without a mattebox and you don't want everything to be washed out all the time. Overall Sharpness Improvement: This came from a few year back when playing on another Kowa lens and is the nicest find I've discovered so far (about most projection anamorphic lenses). I found that when removing the brass tabs that are used for alignment, you can separate the front and rear optic assembly for cleaning etc. But If you do not re-install the tabs into the pre-set positions (using the screw holes aligned in the factory) - you can often tweak the alignment and fine focus to be even sharper. As a pure guess, I can only presume that back in the day when most of these lenses were made the tolerances for alignment were only considered for image projection, rather than image acquisition (iscorama/bolex types an exception) I found that by freehand rotating the front optic assembly (when attached to camera) - It is possible to achieve more finite sharpness from the alignment. Using high magnification on my camera and additional magnification on my EVF + focus peaking at a reference at infinity - it was possible to rotate the front element assembly to what is probably fractions of a millimetre from the factory alignment, then glue the brass tabs into a very slightly new position. Glue works well, as it does not require additional holes to be drilled to re-seat the brass tabs, or forever alter the lens. The glue does not bear any load of consequence, mealy seats the tabs to prevent rotation. The lens can be easily returned to its original alignment by dissolving the glue with solvent and returning the tabs to factory position. I’ve found that the very slightest tweak to factory alignment in 3 out of the 4 of these Kowa lens types I've owned, improves the sharpness noticeably.

Seem pretty easy to me. If you get the FS7 for it's gun-for-hire appeal, you can still use it for self-produced client work as well. If you get the 6K for self-produced client work, you'll probably miss out on a lot of gun-for-hire work.

No speedbooster, just the straight adapter. They do look nice, and I used them a lot for a while. But there's a lot I disliked about them too. The 12.5mm Is tack sharp int he center at f/1.4 but you had to stop down to f/4 to get sharpness from edge to edge. Plus the entire fronts rotate when focusing which can cause problems with polarizers. I'd only recommend them to people who are able/willing to do the heavy modification needed to adapt the 25 and 50. The 12.5mm and 50mm had nice sizes though, not as tiny as the 25mm and other c-mount lenses. The Fuji zoom lenses are good though. Here's a few more things shot with the Fujis: Edit: top is a Reel of some of my favorite shots from a short film I DP'd years ago. It's called Escape Room if you want to watch the whole thing (I'm not even sure if it's online) but the director opted to add a shitty sepia filter to everything, though I offered to grade it for him. So this reel consists of my favorite shots (Micro + Pocket + Fujis) with proper grading. This was a little promo shot for a friend/local library (one of a few I've done for them with these cameras. The only shot that isn't with Fuji lense sis the B&W stuff which was a Computar 8.5mm 1.3 that I used for effect. The Canon TV-16 Lenses are probably my favorite c-mount lenses for the same reason my FD lenses are my favorite FF lenses: that vintage Canon magic. I can't put my finger on it, but they're soft and a bit dreamy wide open, and stopped down they get sharp but not overly sharp. They just hae a pleasing rendering that goes well with he Pocket and Micro. Here's a bit more of them. Nothing special, just some random BTS footage and another home movie: This was all 3 lenses in the set, mostly wide open (the 25mm shots were at f/2) with the Micro. This was the 25mm the first day I got it. Shot on the Pocket. This was shot on the Micro. Two fo the interviews are shot with the 50mm 1.8, one shot on the 13mm. The b-roll was a mix of the 13mm and 25mm, plus the Fujinon 18-108mm 1.8 and 18-108mm 2.5 zooms. I know the newer 1.4 cctv versions were made by Pentax, not sure about the vintage ones which have the Cine Ichikuza logo, which are the best ones. They're sharp wide open, and look nice, and don't need any modification, unlike some of the newer ones. I used to have the "zebra" versions but now have all black ones that are a little smaller but seem to have the same optical quality. I got the 12.5mm for $10, the 25mm for $30, and the 50mm for $50 I believe. I also have a more modern 8.5mm 1.5 that covers the s16 sensor and a Pentax 6.5mm 1.8 fixed focus lens that covers s16. I always go back and forth but keep coming back to these little cameras and c-mount lenses. I have a lot more videos shot with them, including an entire concert at the Wasteland Weekend festival (it's like Burning Man + Rennaissance Faire + Mad Max). There are more home movies as well that I shared here a long time ago. The entire concert is on my YT for those morbidly curious and 45 minutes to waste. Above is an excerpt. We shot with a Pocket and Micro with Fuji zooms, plus a friend's Canon 80D and Sigma 18-35mm for the wide shots of the stage. I've been hired to do some pretty fun little jobs and I've used used the Pocket and Micro cameras for most of them. I also shot a number of episodes of a food contest web series, a country music concert, promo videos. Too much to share, really. A few feature length scripts. My pet project for years now has been a feature based on my Crazy Pete shorts. I want to shoot it this winter possibly. Unless Covid gets in the way again.

Can't wait. 🙂

Absolutely amazing at this level... : ) I'd firmly nominate you for an Academy Award for Technical Achievement aka Technical Oscar and trust me, from my experience with my previous Herr Doktor Horst Linge (Isco), your achievement is on such list ; ) You're a third party player, not a major camera manufacturer bigwig (yet) ! ;- ) - E.

@Django FS7 def has the advantage if you want to shoot almost full frame for cheap. Basically the only reason I'm still shooting on FS5s... S35 out of the box, or pop on a metabones for 1.07x crop. There's (2?) FS7M2 on ebay for 4k. Nothing included but the locking e-mount is awesome. Such a pain in the ass to rig a lens to not move when using a focus motor or follow focus. eND is nice to have too. FS5/FS7 is still the only goldilocks body available IMHO: FF/S35, SDI, RAW, 4K120.

You need to be in Focus mode rather than Control mode. For the P4K, you can toggle between the two modes by either a short press of the B button on the AFX itself or a long press of the upper trigger on the R1. (Page 23 of the User Guide by the way 😉 ) The current mode you are in is indicated when you are on the Control screen (left) by "C" or "F" below the shutter angle and if you are in the Focus screen by the T0-T3/N transition value being shown next to the aperture display in the bottom right hand corner.

They did give it a rather nice follow-up: But I'm pretty sure that cam was also a flop at the $5K pricing with no internal 10-bit. That said, I find the DVX200 sexy as hell in a throwback MINIDV/3CCD cam way.. and I'm sure in the right hands this was/is a very capable and surely fun to shoot with cam..

Maybe not most underrated but the Panasonic S1 is definately underrated outside of this forum. It's giving an FX9 quality image for peanuts. I would say it could compete with the C500 MK2 and C300 MK3 as well. The C500 can see into the shadows better by 2 stops or so, but it doesn't have dual native ISO. The Panasonic S1 can do 4000 iso with 4 stops of headroom in the highlights and a couple in the shadows. That punches the C500 dynamic range in the gut at the same ISO.

On the DVXUSER site there was some debate on the two S Logs, the one paid and the one released by Sony in the V1.40 Firmware. You would have to do a search on the DVX site. I would always use an external monitor to use a LUT. The built in LUT I think only came with the paid upgrade. You could learn how to expose with the S Log only? One nice feature on the Firmware V1.40 is that you can dial in your color temp! On the paid S Log you only have either 3200K or 5600K. BB

Lens-cyclopedia has been updated with a reference to this thread