dahlfors

​My first picks for primes in those ranges would be 35mm f/2 AF-D, or to go a bit wider and get the excellent 28mm f/2.8 AI-S. The 35mm f/2.8 AI might be worthy to have a look at. And as you said earlier - the 35mm f/1.8G DX lens is a nice lens for Nikon APS-C bodies. Due to lack of aperture ring it's pretty useless for other cameras.

But yes, lots of DR is certainly not a key feature to make pictures looking good. It just helps in many situations.

​Agree. Maybe high iso films or older films were limited to 12 stops. But since mid/late 90s at least, at least the still 35mm films surpassed that. I missed film many times with all the 12 EV stops cameras I shot with. Only when I had the D800 I realized that I won't miss any aspects of film anymore - and probably won't ever shoot film again.

Damn. That was some serious damage on the front of that Iscorama 54! I wouldn't have had any hope for salvation of such a lens. Incredible result after polishing and recoating!

​Yes. Shallow depth of field shots work fine. This is because the out of focus areas are very suitable for high compression without visual loss. Then most of the available video bitrate can be used for details in the areas of the image that are in focus.

Sony's AVCHD cameras are great as long as the scenes are such that the codec holds up. With deep focus and lots of motion the footage breaks down to a level where no sharpening / post processing can help it. With my Nex-5 the codec is an unnecessary obstacle that I have to work around all the time. It is just too bad that Sony did not release a firmware update XAVC-S for A6000, that camera could produce so much better video with a better codec! There has been rumored over at sonyalpharumors that there might come an A7000 camera this year, but who knows... My recommendation: try to give D5200 and D5300 some testing in a proper camera shop, see if you can figure out if the film mode workflow is something that could work for you. Otherwise I think some of the Panasonic or other m4/3 cameras will be your best bet.

I have no clues about that math. But, I have shot a lot of stills on Nikon D200, which has a resolution near 4k at 3872 × 2592. I've used quite a few of the same lenses on the D800 (I've even tried using aps-c lenses!). So far, each lens has resolved more detail on the D800, although I've seen that a few hits their limit with D800 resolution, but not at D200 resolution - which is far above 1080p.

I received a private message that I wrote a reply to. When I clicked the submit button it all seemed to have gone ok - no error message or so. When I check now, the message never seems to have been sent as a reply - at least it doesn't show up in my end. EDIT: Wrote 2 more messages to same person. These private messages did not disappear. One thing that was different in the message that dissappeared was that images were linked as images in the message, and not as links.

Damn it. This means my mom has 4k before I do

Holy crap! That's a loooong setup What's going on in the still, I like the hazy look! Did you add the smoke for the shoot, or was it just a very smoke filled room?

It's rare that lens service shops fix the modern still lenses with AF. Even worse when it comes to lenses with stabilisation. Most shops I know where I live (Sweden) only services manual focus lenses, as far as I know there's not a single shop that service complex (AF + stabilisation) lenses from any manufacturer here. Most likely since your lens is a modern zoom lens with AF and image stabilisation, only ones who will do any service on it are the manufacturer's themselves where you live as well. And depending on what needs to be serviced - if it isn't under warranty, it might be just as costly to service it as to buying a new one. Solidly built old mechanical prime lenses made out of metal and glass: those you will find a lot of shops that will touch...

I feel these kind of questions are a bit like "If you'd have to kill one of your children, who would you pick?" - however you motivate it, you'll always feel like you miss your dearest child Anyway, this is why I have a 16-35mm zoom for the wider end. In addition I usually pick 50, 85 and 200mm lenses along in the bag. If I had to go down to three primes, I think it'd be 28 + 50 + 105. Or perhaps 35 + 85 + 200. My preference is to have my bag nearly packed with equipment and lenses nearby - so I can pick the ones that I think are right for the situation when I head out somewhere (anything from one lens to five, depending on situation).

I plan to order mine after Christmas, when I'm more likely to be available at home for pick-up.

Or perhaps buy the cheapest video capable camera that is acceptable for you. Something like a Panasonic G6 / GX7, Sony A5100, Nikon D5200 or something. Then get yourself some lenses, audio equipment and just go ahead filming. Along the way you'll learn better what you lack in the current camera, learn better what you like - and learn what will be most important to you if you get a serious upgrade. The fact is. Even if you spend a lot of money on a camera body now, you'll most likely want to upgrade in 3-5 years at least. If you buy a cheaper camera body, you'll want to upgrade in 2-3 years as well, since the affordable cameras in the same price range will be so much better. With audio equipment and lenses you can feel pretty safe about the equipment being worthy for a long time if you take care of the equipment. Other than that, it sounds like closest to what you describe would be either of the following: 1) 60p, "organic look with real colors", film grain-like noise = large sensor cameras: Nikon D750 or Sony A7S 2) 5-axis stabilisation: Sony A7 II or Olympus E-M5 3) Flexibility for editing in post: BMC cameras with RAW/Prores or Sony A7S with SLOG or Canon 5Dmk3 with magic lantern raw. Note that the A7S have more rolling shutter than many of the other cameras, and you might want to use it with a speedbooster since it produces less rolling shutter in S35 crop. Personally, I'd forget about global shutter on this segment of cameras and put my hope for the future about global shutter...

Tito: Since you've been away, check the anamorphic forum for the "FM Lens module" as well, I think you might find it interesting, especially on the subject of "anamorphic on a budget". Interesting to see your contributions here again :)

Welcome back Tito! Never heard of this anamorphic. You call it "16:9" - is this something that was made for shooting 16:9 on 4:3 cameras, meaning it's a 1.3x adapter? Sounds like a real rarity!

Yes, it will be equivalent of a 35mm for width, 70mm for height. When you crop the anamorphic footage to 2.66, you'll end up with the equivalent focal lengths of 23*2 = 46mm horisontally, 35*2 = 70mm vertically in your end result.

Kristoferman, some of the more affordable rail systems I've seen are the Jag35 ones, like this one: http://jag35.com/universal-baseplate.html I have this older version myself: http://jag35.com/dslr-baseplate-basic.html Been using it with a follow focus. Can't complain, solidly built. From what I've seen, Jag35 seems to be a bit lower priced than a lot of other video gear, yet the products I've seen haven't skimped on quality.

Matt, if you fill the full frame of your sensor to have the object the same size, then YES, different focal lengths give different field of view: But, what gives this effect is only the object distance: If you shoot with a 20mm lens on a camera with insane resolution, like a theoretical 500 Megapixel camera, and then crop in and compare it to a photo shot with a 300mm lens - the field of view of the face of you subject will be exactly the same - as long as you and the camera had the same distance to your photo subject (or object distance as in the figure). So, the key to knowing how the field of view will look for a portrait with a certain lens and sensor (without cropping) - is to know what object distance you need to fill the frame.

I feel you man. My storage server (that contains all my data) is acting up and I'm looking at throwing in big bucks on that now, to build a new storage setup... So I haven't yet pulled the trigger on the FM lens module, although I really would want Santa to bring it to me. Especially since after I saw Häns footage! Soon... Soon...

Hardware approach: Depending on what the project is, I'd consider renting an FS700 for that shot. It has good high frame rate modes. Check Philip Blooms slow motion shots in his review at 240 fps and 480 fps: http://philipbloom.net/2012/05/25/240brighton/ Depending on what kind of shot you need to use, and your budget, keep in mind that the latest Gopro Hero 4 also can shoot at 120 fps, although there's a bit of antialiasing & moiré going on there in the image. There's also a few compact cameras with 720p at 120fps like Sony RX100 III and Panasonic LX7. The LX7 is an older model and can be had pretty cheaply. Software approach, Twixtor and other similar tools: Twixtor often shows artefacts which aren't too beautiful, yet if you use it right the result can be impressive. Worst cases I've seen is when it's used around water, like surfing shots. The water looks odd, gets added artificial movements. Sometimes the bodies and clothing of people get twisted. I guess it's possible to find ways to hide some of these artefacts depending on how you overlay footage on the shot. If it is a project where the budget should be kept low, I'd personally try to see how I could make the shot at 50/60p to optimize it for use with Twixtor. I've seen Twixtor footage without artefacts, so it's possible if you know how to avoid everything that can produce artefacts. That's where I think there's a lot of trial and error included, since I've seen a lot of Twixtor footage out there that has the classical artefacts.

If you check the specs for D810: "FX-format photographs taken in movie live view: 6720 x 3776 (L), 5040 x 2832 (M), 3360 x 1888 (S)" As I said - I highly suspect 6720x3776 to be the full readout size being made on the D810 (probably with line skipping). To test this, set the D810 on a tripod and shoot a video as well as a Large (L) still image in movie live view. Your image at the size of 6720x3776 should match up with the crop of your video clip. Source, D810 specs: http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/dslr/d810/spec.htm

D800 shoots video at 1.095x crop, 6720x3780 out of the full frame of 7360x4912: http://blog.falklumo.com/2012/04/lumolabs-nikon-d800-video-function.html Hence I'd expect D810 to sample around the same size (not APS-H which is 1.3x crop). I think the updated & faster expeed processing chip is the reason they can get rid of moire and aliasing due to better processing, not due to the sensor readout size.

I see the difference because I've spent so much time optimizing images for web output, trying to squeeze the most quality out of the tiniest filesizes. This has developed an extreme sensitivity to detecting compression artefacts :) Yet, these images I have to look carefully at to see artefacts, it's nothing I see in an instant. And even more importantly - it's nothing I'd spot at 24 fps.

Someone has to be first with H.265. I'm happy that Samsung is pushing it already. Would love to see some more adoption for that format. Imagine being able to have 10-bit 422, 1080p and 4k in still managable bitrates! This already looks very promising compression-wise from the NX1. What was the bitrate for this clip, Andrew?