richg101

If the Alexa doesnt need 4k, nothing does.  Anything with a K after it is a Marketing gimmic.

I cannot for the life of me understand why the words 'cinema' and 'iphone screen' are being used in the same sentences in this topic.   Anyone who deems watching a movie on an iphone screen as acceptable isn't going to notice the difference anyway.   When I go to the cinema I like to see the curtains widen just before the switch from the shitty 16:9 projector used for trailers, to the proper projector with some curved glass o nthe front.  

http://vimeo.com/78111977     i had a go at tweeking things on the mts files from Nahua.  I'm pretty happy with the results.  I'm assuming the 24p / 25p mode will be a lot better too.  DNxHD file downloadable and description of tweeks on the vimeo page.

interested to see it is an mts file and 29.97fps..  since the avchd doesnt have a 30p option. Which avchd mode was used?

the vimeo playback looks good to me.  and damn that 55mm is a beautiful focal length/aperture combination.

/\  Thanks Orlando!  Downloading now

This is terrible just how little interest this topic has had. It seems as if it's not technical based, relating to a raw hack, resolution test or new anamorphic lens, no one is interested. Shameful really.

you are not taking into consideration the effect they have on the overall picture in general.  resolution gain is null and void since sensors nowadays dont suffer from any crop.   the main thing these lenses impart is the feeling of proper cinema.  shooting anamorphic has always been a more complicated affair, requiring greater technical skills,  more time and effort, production design not to mention 4 perfs instead of 3 adding up film costs by 25%, and budget to afford such requirements.  The look of anamorphic is now etched into the minds of anyone who enjoys proper cinema, done properly.  Take Leon (The Professional) for example.  - if it were shot nowadays by typical film makers they'd have said there are too many scenes in confined spaces, too many close up's, etc.  They'd say the aspect ratio is not justified, and that the resolution gain is null and void.  And this is exactly why we see less and less films made that are of the caliber of Leon.  They go for the quick and easy option.   The reason people shoot anamorphic is because it allows them the aesthetic edge over the guys who don't see the difference.  It's not that oval bokeh and horizontal streaks look better than round bokeh and typical lens flare,  - its that the subtle difference is very effective in imparting a feel of true cinema, and the scale of a true cinema budget.  even if you cropped the edges off a 2.35:1 movie and showed it in 16:9 or 1.85/1, the subtle bokeh alone will add the look of a film that cost 25% more money to pay for the skills, and production to enable them to shoot in that way.  Are there any flares in Braveheart?  nope.  its not the flares, its the association the lens character from anamorphic has with real cinematic efforts like Braveheart. 

lovely man. really nice.

I don't think I ever shared this one.  But is was shot using an oval aperture TRUMP58 with a prototype streak filter.  So it's not really anamorphic, but in terms of looks, I think it does a pretty convincing job.    I also wanted to make a point of shooting with a auto shutter (which ranged from around 1/100th to 1/4000th sec - sometimes swaying from one end of the scale to another.  I think if carefully done so that the exposure change is smooth, the use of auto exposure can give the impression of better dynamic range.   http://vimeo.com/77088547   The auto exposure is pretty intelligent and with a few little tweeks in post the highlights seem to remain pretty intact and the rolloffs smooth thanks to the low contrast lens.   Still to this day I am more than happy with the look achievable from this so called 'lower performing in video mode' camera.    

this method is also used on dof adaptors. wobbling the ground glass to mimmic the grain changing every frame.   loving the idea to use it on a camera to reduce moire.  great idea.  was it just a motor with an offset weight?

  Not really sad.  not really mushy (particularly the rx10), and the 8-bit gh3 stood up pretty damn well against the raw cameras in Andrews recent test.  I was hoping for 10bit proress type image quality from these cameras, I love the look of the 5d raw, but looking at the A7 vs A7r image i see the a7 looks how the nex's looked, and the A7R looks about 5 times better.  I've always been happy with the nex image quality.  The size of the 5dmk3 ml raw files make the whole thing not very economical to me.  neither is the fact that the 5dmk3 lacks a decent evf or a articulated screen.  The raw is all for nothing if the workflow gets in the way of      @ Andrew.  did you get to try the aps-c crop mode in video on the A7 and A7r?  i'd like to see if the video quality improves or degrades.  it'll mean in aps-c crop I can go to speed booster for an extra stop of light (at the expense of softer edges), and go full frame for when the edges are more important.    

    good points.  The sigma has come up a few times as a possible.its begging to be done, but  the problem is these modern lenses are not designed or manufactured with easy aftermarket repair in mind.  I'd love to open one up and see all the lovely brass parts you get in old zeiss and olympus lenses from the 70's and 80's, but unfortunately in things like modern lenses like samyang, sigma etc there is a remarkable amount plastic used for the mechanics, which just doesn't take well to deep disassembly and rebuilding.:(

  The integral hood/reflector bevel on trump was always designed to allow fitting of the iscorama and iscorama 36 while maintaining full frame / 5k/6k RED use without vignette.  As you will know, your iscorama 54 can be used in two ways   1. with the thread extender tube (which encapsulates the rear optical module meaning the rear element is flush with the rear 67mm? thread) 2.  with the extender tube unscrewed to expose the sticking out rear module and a 77mm? thread - similar set up to a iscorama 36 which needs a tube to allow attachment to a taking lens since the thread on the 36 is not flush with the rear optic..   If you can take a side on view of your iscorama 54 with a steel rule in shot it will allow me to determine if the 54 will physically fit deep enough allowing the rear element to be sat deep enough into the TRUMP to allow no vignette.  on full frame it will be hit or miss whether it vignettes, but on aps-c i imagine there will be no problems.   also, I'd be interested to see your support of the 54 to see if the trump would interfere with that.     If required, the new front rehousing section of the upcoming 35mm trump is shorter and could be used on a 58mm to allow an anamorphic to sit slightly deeper into the body.  Since each lens is made to order, its also possible to hand machine the body parts too accommodate. 

Lovely stuff mister Bannister.  -As always.  And great to see you shoved the iscorama into the front too.  was that using the 1.5x oval to get 2x oval result?     re. wider focal lengths.  Indeed this is an issue that is being resolved, however the upcoming wider lengths are more of a companion type set to the existing 58mm.  the 58 being the 'go to' beauty lens, then the 35 and the short tele being for the additional angles that a 58 wont cover, but that will give a nice matched aesthetic to the 58mm.    The fact is, the double gauss (6 element) 'planar / biotar' type lens configuration is the most agreeable lens formula when it comes to the mods I'm applying optically.     To me the only real solution is if metabones were to take advantage of the smaller sensor of the pocket, and the lack of fast, exciting and also wide lenses for it.  And create a ultra strong focal reducer/speed booster that would shrink the full frame (or at the very least s35/apsc) image circle onto a 16mm sensor.  gaining maybe 2.5 stops, and obtain the fov we expect from the type of lenses most of us are using on cameras in the price range of the pocket etc.   I've been dealing with a very well regarded optical designer who is working on a prototype medium format to full frame focal reducer for DSO.  And have also thought about a lo-fi full frame to s16mm focal reducer concept (around 0.4x if my memory serves me).       Bang on.  I think it would be more like 112mm f1.4 on m4/3 equiv.  It's a beautiful 'beauty / money shot' fov and dof blend as Hugo Goudswaard demosnstrated with his Trump58 on a gh3 (which the pocket effectively becomes in fov terms when a speed booster is added into the equation).:-      http://vimeo.com/70412767   obviously he had infinite space behind him to allow for the fov limitations, and he was not working to a deadline with a nasty branding manager on his back, asking for wide shots etc, but i think he demonstrates what can be done when you make do with limited resources and a beautiful subject/theme.

wow.  now thats a lens!  damn its wide.  lovely all in focus look - exactly what should be expected from the pocket.  shallowness isnt everything - especially when you got something that makes an image like this.

I've had a 1.5hr convo with him which started on lenses, then went to manufacturing, the demise of British industry, and finally a bit of politics.  A real bloke.  top darts 

  based on my few experiences,  I find that a clean and dynamic result can be obtained by gh3 footage where the highlights have been pushed slightly.  there always seems to be more information in apparently blown highlights and pulling them down rather than pushing up shadows I feel yields superb results that would not require use of neat video due to the shadows being exposed better from the start.    

Sod messing around with raw.  the improvement over the gh3 is tiny IMO.  Well done GH3!   Great test Andrew.  Not got time to read the full article yet, but is there a reason why the noise levels on the 7d is so much higher than the rest? 

That's a beautiful piece of metal and glass there.   cheap was it? :)   Maybe my suggestion of $5k was a bit extreme, but I meant the actual prototyping - since working out the ideal pitch will be trial and error/blind at the start.  A good cnc machinist and a machine stopped and being programmed, reprogrammed and reprogrammed again for at least a day is hard to get for cheap since the machine running an exiting program continuously and being reloaded every hour can earn a machine shop thousands per day.  I imagine in order to get your lower cost you knew exactly the helicoid pitch you required (or were replicating an existing helicoid? in order to get the throw you wanted, provided a machinist proper specs before the job and were lucky enough working alongside someone with an understanding of optical/mechanical design.   I suppose a man in a garage with a lathe would do a one-off by hand, but then the design would need to be reprogrammed anyway if to be reproduced in numbers.  if its to be a replicated part, you may as well get the program written from the start IMO.

  I don't think you were the first person to come up with this concept.  Every anamorphic lens ready to fit to a camera comprises a taking lens and an anamorphot.  it's all very well rehousing something into a new body, but for your concept to work you'll need a taking lens with a matching rotational focus direction and throw and a helicoid pitch to co-incide with the focus attributes of the anamorphot.  The reason LOMO's work is that the rear part has the same focus throw and a helicoid pitch to ensure the elements travel in unison when coupled.  I imagine you'll have to put $5k into paying someone to prototype a custom helicoid specifically for the SUN anamorphic.  I'd recommend you select something higher quality like a kowa 8z before investing big money into making a 16mm SUN anamorphic lens usable as a all-in-one lens.    This chinese lens will be a lot simpler, and no doubt be a straight copy of a la7200 bolted onto a cheap 50mm f1.8 lens.  the focus will stay fixed on the la7200 clone and therefore will never be optimal for any focus distance - and will be particularly bad in close focus terms.  on anything but m4/3 the edges will be horrific at anything faster than f8.  

"Prototype just arrive from the research laboratory!"  

  they need to turn the in camera sharpening off.  sort out their exposure, sort out their white balance,  and actually output a decent video sample.  then offer it on vimeo with downloads enabled.  this video sample is less than worthless to determine the results obtainable.  

I've been away from RP for a few years now and things move on quickly, but from my experiences the issue with 3d printing is that the parts don't come out of the machine as finished, ready to use items,  They wouldnt be able to print to tight enough tolerances so you'll find yourself spending many many hours fettling and filing the mount into a finished part.  Though the printing process is cheap due to the influx of owner operators, the real skill is in the finishing of the parts.   Also I doubt the available printing media will be ideal for repeated mechanical coupling purposes.  we're still a long way off beating proper cnc machining of brass, let alone stainless parts.     take calipers and a micrometer to the mount, draw it in solidworks and give the drawings to a machinist who will be able to write a cnc program on a 5 axis. 

  NO.  You wrong.     In todays climate it's not economically viable to make lenses of the standard of the contax zeiss for modern consumer grade cameras (of which every Sony alpha camera is consumer grade).  Anyway, you're clearly a fanboy so I'll leave it there.