blondini

Except I'm not talking about a generic calculation of equivalent depth of field per se. My question is whether, using the 17mm lens on a mtf sensor, it is even possible to film a subject at, say, 15 meters and still differentiate them from the infinity plane as you could with a 35mm lens. I'm just looking at a few barrel markings on some lenses I own, a 20mm which hits infinity just beyond 4 meters, and a 35mm lens which hits infinity past 30 meters.

Another thing that occurred to me regarding this is the physical qualities of lenses of different focal lengths. One of the things that distinguishes wide from telephoto lenses is their focusing characteristics. Wide lenses focus closer and hit infinitely sooner. A 17mm lens is likely to be at infinity by 3 or 4 meters, where as a 50 might still separate the infinity from a subject at 20 or 30 meters. This is not strictly an issue of perspective, but it is a focal-length-dependent characteristic of rendering space. I have no experience of using short focal length lenses designed specifically for MTF sensors, but I would presume that those physical characteristics still hold true? Hence a 17mm on and crop sensor is not truly equivalent to a full frame 35mm and so on, because they do not focus through space in an equivalent way. Or maybe I'm just suffering an esoteric crisis because I'm some kind of flat earther.

Ah cool, thanks for this. It was a piece of misinformation that an older DoP passed on to me and I've held on to for a while now. But you've explained this very well. I think its the way I use different focal lengths that has helped hard wired in this instinct. And it's actually and instinct of proximity rather than focal length.

I disagree about this. From what I understand, a 17mm lens is always a 17mm lens, even if it's fast and you crop it's field of view to correspond to the same field of view and DoF as a full frame 35mm lens. The way the lens renders perspective is still like a 17mm lens, which is a result of its focal length, not the field of view or the DoF. That's my understanding and I always feel that when I swap between shooting on my full frame 5D and, say an Arri (Super 35 sensor). By that I mean, a 32 or 35mm lens on an arri never truly feels the way a 50mm on my 5d does. A 50 on the arri feels like a 50 even though the field of view is different than my 5d (more like a 75 -80mm). It renders space flatter, focus falls off quickly in the way a 50 does. Different fields of view or DoF achieved with different sized sensors doesn't change the way a 50mm lens renders perspective. As I understand it. I think the photos Andrew posted show that. The full frame shot has a steeper drop away from focus, the background has more blur (the buttons on the fax machine in the BG are a good place to look, or the text on the magazine). The full frame picture feels flatter. Even though each lens/sensor setup have corresponding depths of field.

I never said anything about Neumann Films being a man. But "Luke Neumann Filmmaker/Neumann Films" is a man, as he is credited in the promo about 4 dudes with cameras. That's an incontrovertible fact, so stop making up stuff and show me your cute buns already.

Thanks Panasonic for finding 4 dudes for your promo video. I guess girls don't know how to use cameras.

4K smoke and mirrors. And XAVC s-log is the emperors new codec.

I remember having an argument a few years ago late in a bar about how film would never be suplanted by digital. I said: just look at Once Upon a Time in Anatolia if you don't believe me. The next day I checked and discovered it was shot on the F35.

I also want to like this new generation of Sony cameras. Ever since magic lantern blew the lid off canon DSLRs by enabling RAW, I've been expecting an HD/2K camera to come along that offers similar quality in proper shape at a decent price. Instead its all 4K smoke and mirrors, delivered with flaky, pain in the ass codecs.

Well, I've not even had good experiences with Sony's form factor and ergonomics... I found the F5 plain awful to use. It has a million pointless buttons on it that I just wanted to go away, and trying to navigate the menus for things that I actually needed was just nightmarish... nothing about that camera justifies the price. And the bottom line should be the pictures. Spend 5K on a pro camera - the pictures should look better than on a consumer camera a quarter the price. I just don't see that right now at all. I wonder how much the recent space race for 4K+ resolutions has actually derailed absolute image quality.

They're both beautiful! See, I knew you could do it.

um... my opinion? this is a forum right? Or is this big dicks club and now I have to show you mine? I don't like any of the pictures I've seen come out of this camera. But I'm sure we'll see a lot of test videos from very happy owners who love the specs sheet. Thats my opinion. Pictures are subjective things. They are like seaweed being pushed and pulled in the ocean of peoples preferences and prejudices. I don't care about the specs or even the resolution really. But I care about pictures... I guess in a more esoteric sense. If I was buying a camera to shoot a movie on, I would pick something else. A camera that can reproduce colours, that creates rich, immersive images. The stuff I've seen from this camera looks like flat video with colours like puke. But maybe you'll figure out how to bend it right to get some good results with it, you're a clever guy. Enjoy your camera and I look forward to seeing how you get on with it.

has sony finally made the ultimate vimeo camera test camera? I can't wait to see lots of slow motion shots of grass blowing in the wind or some drab english beach, set to some pirated music. Meanwhile, trying to assess this as a filmmaking camera: all the footage I've seen looks horrible.

Sorry I'm confused... has Nikon Hacker enabled RAW video? I followed the link and saw 11 frames that were a mess of artefact and errors. How is that video?