richg101

I'd love to hear some feedback on the newest development from DSO..    A streak filter for TRUMP, to work in partnership with oval apertures to get as close as possible to a convincing anamorphic look, without the complicated cylindrical elements.     http://vimeo.com/75175593     Hans_Punk and myself have been beavering away in the development of this, and know there are a few weak points, but our intention is to create something usable, while maintaining the sharpness and ease of use by keeping things spherical and resorting to the dreaded crop:)   Priority is to nail the TRUMP module, but ultimately this technique will see integration into the FF58 and upcoming FF35mm and FF90mm     Feel free to be nasty!    

I've been watching the rumours sites with an eagle eye recently and am getting rather excited about the proposition of a NEX7 type camera, but in full frame.   I'm also excited that there sounds to be a good likelihood that they will introduce a video optimised dslr form factor full frame e-mount camera, with evf, that is likely to shoot in XAVC, 4k 10bit 4:2:2 - as the f5 and f55 allows.   Their testing the water product (vg900) was horrific, but since they have been right on the ball with the rx1, rx100 and the nex6 recently, im hoping they hit the nail on the head with what is sounding like a beast.   has anyone else been looking at this with excitement?    

if ever in florida?? bluesdrummer715 Members 9 posts LocationMerritt Island, Fl. Sent Today, 04:36 AM look me up! When you get here i'll give you my address! I'll take it from there.         I'll bring the vaseline!

  I'm mister complainer because this forum has become plagued by people like you, who pretend to be ignorant, then bang! - he wants to sell it.  Then he's gone.  Your purpose here was to gather information about something you are trying to sell under false pretences.  2 days research?  2mins is enough to tell you how much the thing is worth.  You came on here to sell it.     I don't personally lose anything from your actions.  I imagine your plans to list it for a high price will go on to increase the value of my own iscorama.  What I, and many others here are sick of is new leaches coming out of the woodwork, sucking all the good from this place.   I feel I contribute positively to this forum.  You on the other hand have brought nothing.  so in this context you are the arse hole. 

He who wants to profit, should first take the time and effort to learn.  So far you have struck upon a lucky find,  taken information from regulars here - who have learned (often the hard and expensive way).  You've then contacted a professional who took time out of his day to reply to you.   Redstan shared a link to his mounting system in your other topic.  Jesus, just buy his mount.   Now you're selling the thing without even considering trying it,  can't be bothered/don't have the knowledge  to take the time in shooting sample footage to be included in your sale and have brought nothing positive to the forum.    Just sell the thing on ebay and stop cluttering up a once incredible, now ruined anamorphic forum resource.

i've been quite critical of the stuff i've seen from Letus.  And have also been a bit wary of what I saw on the last test video of the previous slr magic prototype.  But I think this sample shows amazing promise.  There are none of those century and la7200 nasties present - even at the corners.  I'd love to see a direct comparison of this versus a iscorama, both using a nice old 85mm at f2.8-f4 on a full frame camera.   IMO SLR magic should coat the thing to offer best performance / lowest edge CA,  the coatings on the kowa 8z are a good benchmark since it flares nicely and in the lovely blue/purple.  let the user then decide on their desired contrast by selecting either a modern or older taking lens depending on the look they want.

my opinion on the matter...   these new offerings wont touch the current ones for people like us.  it wont better a century or a la7200 since the guys developing these new lenses dont really understand the reasoning behind why people want anamorphic.  neither will they touch the performance of an iscorama unless they infringe on a patent.   their key failing is in deciding to rework a 'one size fits all' option instead of making people work with a proper solution that has limitations.   the letus option will have only been tested with Canon L lenses the slr magic solution will have only been tested with slr magic lenses on m43   The key to success is to deliver a set of integrated lenses with no user options available.  each lens being sub 1.5k usd.  each being f2.8.  a 35mm, a 50mm and a 85mm.  each covering full frame to allow yielding of the speed booster for that magical f2..   the worst thing in the world is to create a one size fits all front solution that will in 90% of circumstances be fitted to the front of ghastly canon 50mm L lenses.     Set maximum and minimum focus point for each focal length and optimise the anamorphot to suit.     if anything i see these offerings as only a reason for my iscorama to increase even more above its actual value.  and id rather these people put their efforts into something that matched it.  all this computer power we have nowadays.  how can these people not better a 1960's design?

    the image they're getting is no better than I remember getting for a rehoused century 16:9 + 28mm olympus zuiko.  shame these guys don't put their r+d efforts into something proper instead of messing around with reworking technology that was developed for grain of rice sensors.  shame    

depends on your camera choice.  the century 16:9 converters can be had for this price.  and on a black magic pocket I imagine it will work very well due to the smaller sensor.   I know if I hadn't bailed on the Pocket (because of black magic's repeated lies etc) I'd have been trying to re acquire a century for this exact purpose.

shoot 135mm on anamorphic, aps-c and you have a lovely fov and dof combination.  gets you close, but not too close.   There are a few shots from this combo in this video.  they stand out from the rest as my favourite shots.   http://vimeo.com/57724126

I respect that having locked focus shots can apply a particular 'big' look to a film.  Barry Lyndon illustrates this perfectly.  very little focus tracking due to very deep depth of field on a lot of the landscape/wide shots and where zooms are used.  and in contrast some very shallow locked down shots in the candle lit and interior scenes and the portrait shots where no focus pulling seems to be evident.   however for films that tend to benefit most from the anamorphic look (Alien, Die Hard, Leon etc), where movement within small spaces is key to the action, and depth of field is used to guide the viewer, it would be physically impossible to shoot these type of films in the same way with a dual focus system.  Though I have not seen Argo, I am very certain that they will have had focusing being adjusted during takes and it is probably only due to the editing that this may be less obviously the case.     The moral of this topic is not that dual focus is unusable, but that these silly large red and gold anamorphics should be banned from discussion because they are hopelessly large for use by 99% of people who actually shoot stuff.  And being so modern, they fail in almost every respect to deliver the character myself (and very likely most other anamorphic enthusiasts) look for from going anamorphic in the first place.  And lest we forget...  being for projecting in multiplex cinemas their close focus is about 5mtrs!  

if only all these so-called film makers had it in them to put the same effort into shooting something creative and worthwhile rather than just shooting f%%king tests.

I wanted to shoot a few shots using the 'Rama in partnership with an oval aperture - as has been discussed in recent topics here.       http://vimeo.com/73911861     So we have a sony nex5n, sped booster, 2x f3.5 oval aperture on 58mm, and 1.5x squeeze from the iscorama (with 3.5ft close focus mod).  the result is a 2.5x oval bokeh which is rather pleasing indeed.   thoughts? 

I recently did a modification job to a non 36 iscorama and tested it against my own iscorama 36 (single coated).  the difference is slight, but nothing that should convince you to not use both on the same job.   same flare colour, coatings, fov, sharpness.   though most '36's are multi coated it would seem.  

Great work man.  love it. a really fun video with lots of beautiful imagery.   The Shallow DOF, width in combination with the very smooth motion (way nicer than typical IS it seems) contributes to a very nice look.  I also really like the 30p on this.  seems to work really well in partnership with the other factors.     Currently looking at SLR magic quite closely.  I've always been put off by their prioritising of m4/3 but some of their stuff is starting to really stand out from the crowd recently.   thanks for this test man

    the '20x' profit margins go to pay off the huge initial R+D expenses that these companies like zucuto put into their products.  Zacuto will actually see less than half of the retail price.  for that money you get customer support as well as a top quality product,  Since the Chinese only need to purchase a single zacuto evf to copy, their r+d costs are as much as it costs to buy the product they intend to copy.   Though it is often nice to benefit from the cost effective chinese knock offs, the more we do, the less progress will happen with new products since the pioneers will go bust leaving the chinese with no one to copy.

I think there should be a straight ban on everyone who posts more adverts than they do helpful and contributory posts or topics.  Also, a ban on any adverts (or discussion for that matter) for those damn red and gold projector lenses.  I swear I see more adverts for rail supports + complimentary multi coated projector lenses than anything else here recently.  I remember Andy Lee originally created these packages and an occasional post from him wasn't a problem, but now it seems there are about 20 more people cluttering up the forum with similar copies.   If they're not selling on Ebay, no amount of repeated adverts here will help.     For that matter...  What the hell is a carl zeiss 50mm f1.4 nion mount and a marshall 7" monitor doing advertised here?  They have zero to do with anamorphic shooting!  

Bravo!  Love it.

I think my wording wasnt very clear.  I don;t see this lens as anything that will replace an iscorama.  My point was that anamorphic in general isn't as important to me as it was a year ago.  - since i started cheating with oval apertures.    I'm certainly in the camp of 1.5x for an anamorphic being used on a 16:9 sensor.  the aesthetic gain is worth the cropping of sensor information IMO.  But to be honest i'd just leave it at 2.66:1 since I think this is a best aspect ratio.   if a crop were to be applied to some gh2 footage it certainly wouldnt be a crime since the gh2 is incredibly detailed to start with.  the cutting away of sensor information isnt an issue.

Coming from someone who has slowly gone off their Iscorama 36 over the last few months, I almost feel the anamorphic bubble may have burst already (at least for me).  Though this sample shows promise, I hoped for a bit better.     I think one of the fundamental flaws in the design is the 1.33x.  though really good for using the whole of the sensor and delivering 2.35:1, added to this I think since it is a m4/3 lens i think this is also a critical error.     I'd rather see an integrated lens designed for aps-c (or ideally full frame) with the sole intention to allow use of a speed booster on m4/3.  it would mean their selected taking lens could be a 50mm (which would equate to a similar fov as their current 35mm choice.).  the longer focal length combined with the speed booster will equate to a much more pronounced oval bokeh distortion and might help out the 1.33x to be more obvious.     From looking at the video I also think the lens they were testing may not have had its curved elements properly aligned rotationally - the multitude of horizontals which are not all parallel would suggest this to me.  In particular in the first flare shot there is one short flare line which is particularly off from the rest.  Considering this, and the low light it appears they have created a rather good front mounted anamorphot.  Certainly a century and la7200 killer.  I imagine if the optics were tweeked this lens would be a lot sharper than we're seeing here.   I think people shouldnt be worried about doing the dreaded vertical crop to take a 2.66:1 down to 2.35.  Since the gh2 and gh3 and the m43 bmcc have very good resolution i dont think it is a problem to make the crop on the sides, and a 1.5x would help out the anamorphic look no end.     A matching achromat would be good too - allowing those lovely portrait shots to be even more obviously anamorphic. 

when the full frame nex arrives it really will be game over for canon and nikon as still photography cameras for use with manual focus lenses.  The only advantage canon will have over sony will be magic lantern.  Word is the full frame nex will be a similar sensor to the d800....     if metabones can integrate the fast AF of canon L lenses to work with the phase af on the full frame nex it will not only be the best digital camera for creative photography, but will also trump everything Canon have on offer in a professional sense where af is key.   

The sooner Kickstarter is forgotten the better.  I particularly dislike the way the most successful campaigns are from projects who have huge marketing budgets in the first place.   I am of the impression that crowdfunding shouldn't be allowed on anything except not for profit or good-will projects.  If a commercial project cannot get funding from the bank, it's likely it isn't commercial in the first place and the masses shouldn't be fooled into pedalling the dreams of those who are unwilling to stump up the cash and/or responsibility themselves to see it through.   How much crowdfunded money have digital bolex wasted?  with the budget they acquired from kickstarter the product should have been released 6 months after the funding target was hit.  They have failed, and I doubt will succeed all because their marketing plan was way stronger than their project management, knowledge, skillset and practical experience within the field they were entering.  As a result i imagine they've used up all of that funding on paying for flashy web design, low quality prototyping, silly thick framed glasses and pork pie hats.       because we have yet to consider the huge costs we'll accumulate when paying for the skills and knowledge we lack.  Anyway...  It doesn't matter because we've had a few years of crowdfunded jet set lifestyle out of it.  

This just made me think twice about my plans to go 5dmk3 hacked....  I'd love to know if they can provide e-mount to allow speed booster use.  what is the ffd of the native mount?  less than 18mm?