richg101

their first attempt was a disaster. I doubt they'll have many people willing to fork out such worryingly high prices for another hopeless lump.

my suggestion would be to just plump and pay for a iscorama 36 if you have the budget. if not, as has already been suggested a lovely sankor or similar. dual focus isnt a negative quality if you can set a workflow to suit fixed focus / no racking shots. if you cant live with this, the 'rama is your only option. (or this new fm module - which is gonna be a rather big and heavy lump!) again, weight shouldnt be seen as a negative, but an attribute you use when considering how to shoot the piece. IMO you should be shooting with as big sensor as possible. if not, at least with a speed booster. the whole reason you wanna go anamorphic is for the 'look'. with the gh4 it might have a 4:3 mode in 4k, but the sensor area becomes only slightly bigger than s16mm - and as we all know, its harder to get bokeh with smaller sensors. without bokeh, there's no point in shooting morphic IMO. nothing, and i mean nothing beats an 85mm + morphic on full frame. f2.8 and it's sharp, while being relatively wide as well as shallow. on gh4 (4k mode) you'll need a 30mm f1.4 to match the 'look', and since you;ll likely be shooting wide open a 30mm f1.4 is never as sharp as an 85mm at f2.8. just my personal opinions I have gathered after a few years of having the anamorphic illness.

i think you'll not seem much (if any) anamorphic character when the taking lens is that wide. you'd be better off just shooting with the 10-22 on its own. fast primes are where it's at with anamorphic. anything wider than a 35mm at f2.8 and the dof is so deep the bokeh deformation isnt visible enough to warrant the loss of resolution and hassle the anamorphic adds to the process.

I can undertake relube service, as well as close focus mod. I'm in the uk if you're interested

focal length compatibility shouldnt be of concern here. the front optic looks to be way large enough to accommodate as wide taking lens as the cinelux or similar will allow. this fm module wont add any additional vignette. so full frame users will be able to shoot 3.55:1 ratio on an 85mm with little to no vignette, aps-c a 50mm, and m4/3 a 35mm. I think there is far too much thinking with regard to how important having multiple focal lengths actually is within the film making process. The importance becomes even less so when you're shooting anamorphic on a big sensor and resolutions to allow cropping. imo just find the widest taking lens and leave it there. then crop in or move closer for tighter shots:) an 85mm + 2x anamorphot and a full frame sensor cropped at the edges to 4:3 is really wide. the same on aps-c with a 50mm, and the same on m4/3 with a 35mm.

Cheers guys:) I guess the 'look' is dictated by the lack of variation in lens choice (and the lens itself which is low contrast and loves the lighting in the venue). - I love working around a lens's limitiations because this seems to direct the way I work. the aps-c and full frame modes of the a7s are really good to create a bit of variation. Since the space was tight, the 58mm + 'rama made it easier to ensure all material has something intertesting in shot I didn't do the grade or edit myself. Hans_Punk (another member here) did this. I always 'shoot to edit' and if not, I cut away anything I'm not happy with myself before sending to Hans for the edit. I guess if you capture enough variation and points of interest it makes the edit roll nice and smooth.

if i had the money I'd have one in PL mount. 8 bit and 24mbs is all that's needed when the image looks good straight out the box. Why can;t black magic create complete and finished all in one products like this?

They really need to sort out their test footage. sod the red camera. Just shoot some humans with a 550d if needs be! a human face in the foreground tells 1 million stories

indeed a point and shoot camera with a tiny 20mpx sensor will very rarely have a lens that can deliver the 300lp/mm resolving power required for so many pixels on such a small area - meaning the pixels are simply a marketing number and a cause of false detail. And wont lead to as good results as a 12mpx sensor and a lens capable of delivering a required 30lp/mm - pretty much all 35mm photography lenses will reach this level. The 36mpx A7R and D800's are not point and shoots. -They're full frame monsters which are only bettered moderately by the best medium format backs. The pixel size of a full frame 36mpx sensor is around 5micron requiring around 100lp/mm in order to make full use of the pixels. Your comment seems to be talking down the number of pixels of such cameras without really understanding their benefits. It also brings up the fact that assuming you have a lens which is capable of delivering 100lp/mm (I doubt very many people here do since we're not tabletop product photographers with 80mpx medium format sensors!), you then have a anamorphic lens which doesnt degrade the resolving power of the spherical lens. lets take a typical 35mm format 50mm f1.8 lens and assume it has a resolving power of 30lp/mm at f2.8 - which is considered a rough benchmark for good optical quality in photographic film terms. If i put an iscorama on there the resolution feels like it lowers to half what it was without the 'rama. so lets say we now have 15lp/mm (line pairs per millimeter, or 30 lines per millimeter). so for the full frame width of the image area (36mm) and full frame height of the sensor (24mm) we are looking at 36mm x 30lines = 1080 pixels wide. And 24mm x 30lines = 720pixels high. Lower than full HD!!! Lets assume the taking lens is a crazy high resolution of 60lp/mm while still being a 35mm format lens. we're still only getting a final optical resolving power of 2160px wide once the degradation from the iscorama is taken into consideration. take the anamorphic lens away from the signal chain and you maintain your 30lp/mm (60lines per mm) from something like the helios 44 at f2.8 or any similar nikon or canon normal prime. even then the resolving power at f2.8 only just exceeds that required for fullhd. Obviously we don't want ultra sharp images from an anamorphic anyway, but as i have said, their resolution benefit is moot - particularly in the context of this subject.

glad you like the look of them:) I don't really want to do business dealings on the forum, but i believe the sankor will be pushing it on full frame before cropping away the sides. However the use of a rather low contrast taking lens on a relatively long and thin anamorphic can create lovely things since the anamorphic acts as a hood and controls some of the craziness from the ff58. The behaviour tends to appear suddenly when a lightsource comes into the frame. a tint in the same colour as the coatings on your sankor will also help to integrate the two lenses so they look like they were made to be together. The thing with sankors is that they have a really nice character to start with, and a 2x squeeze so are full of life to start with. a nice clean helios 44 should be on your shopping list no matter what. A 2x ff58 on its own might be a good move rather than going for something specifically for the sankor.

The design criteria was to develop a 'close to zero' degradation of the original imaging capabilities of the Biotar 58mm f2 design. So as little light loss, CA or MA, and as little barrel distortion as possible, when used on sensors of 24x36mm. Without using modern techniques that have been developed since the biotar was conceived. Rather just use brilliant glass types in a simple and unrestricted traditional design Since i worked in partnership with a optical boffin who is purely scientific, he took my criteria very seriously. We decided on one of Schott's most costly Lanthanum flints for the primary optic since it was so critical to the design. The other elements are also of esoteric nature. upon delivery of the optical prescription to the manufacturers, very few would touch the design since it uses Glass types very few ever work with. Most asked for the design to be simplified (in manufacturing and material sourcing terms) using more cheaper and smaller elements rather than using less elements of large and costly materials. In the end we found a manufacturer who would undertake the job, and would fulfil the tolerances required - but even they struggled and caused so many delays I'm still suffering with a backlog! Anyway, when you set such a strict criteria to a scientific person, and let them run with their concept you end up with good things. The inherent lack of degradation from the ff38 unit, in partnership with compressing more information through the overall optical path delivers a tighter LP/MM in the centre meaning an aps-c using a ff38+ff58 will deliver the same fov as a full frame with just the ff58, but the overall resolving power with the ff38 and aps-c system delivers sharper images (optically). At the edges when on full frame, the existing aberrations from the helios/ff58 remain intact but are not increased. CA? What CA? :) Biotar 58mm @ f2:- '> Biotar 58mm @f2 + 38mm WA Attachment (0.66x):- '>

Of all the anamorphics, the cineluxes (and similar) will be the only ones where true res gains are seen. I'm astounded by how sharp the one I grabbed recently is. - i really hope the FM module glass is up to scratch! A contax 100mm f2 and a cinelux will be a madman

I have to disagree there. And I also think as time moves on the resolution gain will become less and less of an argument for anamorphic. For example... (and I'm purely saying this from an a7r 36mpx point of view, which is around 8k, and over 14 stops of dr in 'cinema terms', so about 5 years ahead of what we're currently seeing from most 24p cinema cameras today) Even the Iscorama degrades the resolving power of a taking lens quite drastically wide open at say f2. It's still usable, and beautiful too, but it doesnt resolve very high levels of detail when compared to the spherical lens on its own. I'd say that nowadays with 'true 1080p' and 4k, the degradation in image detail from cropping away 1/3rd of the pixels is less harmful than putting any anamorphic lens on the front of a system. All but the cinelux and similar are not delivering very high levels of resolving power. 2 years ago when everyone was shooting 1080p that looked like todays 720p the benefit of anamorphic for resolution gains was there. - since cropping away footage no more detailed than 720p is gonna result in lower res than 720p. but IMO the gains are no longer valid now we're able to shoot true 1080 which is often oversampled from 4k (gh4, a7s, etc) which is visibly 2 to 3 times more detailed than what we were getting from 5dmk2's!.

Andrew Reid has been testing one of the prototypes over the last few months and should be subjecting it to a review soon:)

The original aperture is completely removed and in its place sits a very thin and precisely milled brass insert. There are a number of other people doing similar things, but they just seem to go for the laser cut acrylic route and as such the actual ovals are never as perfect due to the cut always being a bit graggy. Rather than modify the limited range of alternative focal lengths from the same era and source, I have developed a ultra high quality wide angle attachment (the FF38), which FF58 users can install on their lens to widen the fov to 38mm. all of the lens character of their ff58 remains intact, but the fov is widened. and as it happens the wide angle attachment improves sharpness. Moderate barrel distortion is visible, but nothing too bad!

I'll chip in if I may...:) I literally don't know which I prefer and I'm actually building these things. The reason dso started was to add a degreee of dirtiness to the iscorama (which at the time i wanted more gragginess from, with the singla focus and sharpness left intact!). The 1.5x oval was created to add to the look of the 'rama and give a 2x oval look, which also sharpening the helios marginally. A wide open helios 44 + iscorama is indeed a beautiful thing that will never quite be matched with an oval aperture alone - 58mm, f2 and a 1.5x widening of horizontal fov as well as the physicality of the big hunks of glass from the 'rama' is a hard thing to match with anything. The ff58 does not deliver horizontal streaks so if this is important then the ff58 will not do what you need. The benefits of the oval aperture is that you gain sharpness by a huge amount (since the aperture on a 2x oval is stopped down by around 1.5 stops), but you maintain some of the shallowness of an f2 lens due to the oval remaining the same height as the original f2 aperture. Then keep single focus capability, and keep size down - particularly on a full frame sensor since 58mm is relatively wide and you'd need an 85mm taking lens on a full frame snesor if using an anamorphic. end result is a very similar fov. though the 85mm will look 'bigger'. The new FF38 attachment is a nice addition to both the ff58 and the helios 44. since it widens fov while actually sharpening the image quite drastically. If you have the pixels to spare, a big sensor or speed booster, and enough light to cope with the 1.5 stops slower aperture due to the oval, and can afford to crop, the ff58(2xoval) + FF38 wide angle attachment will stand head and shoulders above the iscorama for 95% of image quality criteria while being a lot less of a financial and creative burdon - when i take the iscorama out it always causes worry which always seems to impact on workflow. I'm still gonna grab a 'fm module' when they are available so I guess that says it all:) you cant beat real anamorphic if it's really needed!

Great work Kaz:) Love the star flaring of that voigtlander when the torch is in use. perfect stars

The A7R is definitely a step up form the 5d3 in terms of stills - as long as you can live without the AF performance which come with canon and their L lenses.

£2500 also goes a long way when buying a matching set of contax zeiss. A red t* on the front of a lens says a lot, and image looks like cinema too. a red ring around your lens conversely oozes guy who went to argos and bought the most expensive canon lens they had on offer, and also makes footage look like the rest of these types:) L stands for 'lack lusture' when used in moving picture IMO

let your work do the talking man. if you show up with a small camera and deliver a result the client likes, you'll get booked again. if you're not getting the bookings you want, use the money you;d waste on a heavy cumbersome show piece, and spend it instead on a nice personal showreel piece. for example £2500 goes a long way in travel expenses to shoot something impressive. or could be spent on living expenses while working on a no fee passion project for a good client, that boosts your showreel credibility.

Let's not turn this into a which 'camera is better' argument. My comment related to low light performance and in which case if your image is dark and grainy it doesnt matter how much detail or colour information you got. As you know, the bm4k may have the res you needed, but lets not for one moment even suggest it could have taken the place of the f55. if it had, you'd have needed a lot more lighting. Maybe I'm wrong, but I can't see anyone using this camera on anything important enough to require the increased colour depth or resolution. And by the time backers get their chance to pay the balance $1500 and get their camera there will be something available which just 'works' that outperforms everything this camera can do. lets assume sony release 2 more a7s successors before this thing is ready to ship... it's logical.

great idea. But as with all of these types of things the body design cries out 'software developer' rather than industrial designer and this is the first nail in the coffin. copy Arri or Ikonoskop's mechanical design philosophy. Dont go the black magic direction! why not a sub PL mount or E-Mount with 18mm ffd to allow all lenses to be adapted? doesnt make sense. Unfortunately even if they get off the ground and deliver a product, I can't see any of these actually being used for more than camera tests in the first week. I'd have been more excited if black magic and the a7s weren't available for such low prices. And i imagine black magic will have yielded the best they can from this now ageing s35 sensor - of which I haven;t yet seen many rave reviews or exciting stuff captured with it. The pocket delivers a nicer image than the 4k bm camera doesnt it? Low light capability is pretty much the number 1 criterion in todays list of low budget film maker requirements since lighting is the last thing most people in this price range think about.

The thread is not a standard step ring gauge. it's very close to 67mm. I put mine on the lathe and took most of the thread off, then did the same with a step ring. leaving a small amount of thread on both means you can push a 67mm-62mm step ring onto it using a bit of weight and two flat surfaces.. however you'll never get the ring off again unless you saw it off. Hans_Punk knows about a special adaptor with the correct thread on it.. Maybe he can chime in.

awesome subject matter. if it had been shot on an iphone or imax, the material would still be as powerful. looks nice though. I'd like a c300 if it were within reach.