Hans Punk

@Rikoshet No, I sold it about 2 years ago.

When it comes to anything Apple power/ charger related - It is often best to avoid the cheap Chinese knockoffs. Always better to go for the expensive versions made in the factory next door.

I think Apple are way too late to the party...like an arrogant drunk waving his wallet around. Apple won’t surpass Netflix and Amazon because they’ve insisted on being too proprietary in their thinking and have no innovation sparkle under its current dictatorship. It is essential these days for consumers to have choice of platforms to view streamed content. People expect everything to be available on a phone, laptop,desktop,TV and totally agnostic to which manufacture of peripheral you are viewing it on. Apple TV is an example of the last clinging attempt of Apple to lock and control mass-market consumers into an Apple streaming ecosystem. Apple could have been pioneers at the streaming market - if they had just relinquished their proprietary hardware mindset and invested earlier in original quality content creation, thinking about the user experience first, then work backwards - I guess like Mr Jobs probably would have done it. I’d respectfully disagree with that, quality content of any kind eventually gets recognised on its own. With proper promotion, quality content can rise to the top very quickly and stand out from the noise. The content quality is what sustains these platforms, it lives or dies depending on the ratings of any given promoted or originally created works from them. I know of a many people who subscribed to Netflix because of the buzz behind ‘Stranger Things’ and likewise for Amazon Prime when other Amazon original shows became ‘THE’ thing to watch at the time. The power of original curated content is they can do exactly that - become the sole promoter and distributor of content on their own terms. I know many people (including myself) who subscribe to more than 3 streaming services, just to get access to shows that are only available from those platforms. So I think amazing (or at least desirable) content does equal sales. Although they are all behemoth companies, they do carve the way for distribution methods for indi/low budget films...and everything related to the future of distribution is still in flux at the moment, with smaller streaming platforms appearing and disappearing at a fast rate while things settle into figuring out what revenue can be had from the relatively niche demographics. I suspect in the coming years we will have satellite streaming services from the larger platforms - that can cater bespoke content to the consumer, without having to pay the blanket subscription fee for a load of content that the user would never want to watch. Where would Apple fit in? Consumers are already fed up with ever increasing prices on Apple products that have no considerable advancement in generations. Their next lineup of iPhones are supposed to be rolling back the expense to consumers after a market dip and consumer backlash. I think if Apple tied consumers into a mainstream streaming platform that necessitated sole use of their products - then that would be the last straw for many potential consumers. Look at iTunes - it is still an un-intuitive dumpster fire of a platform to store and manage consumer content...all of which is locked into an Apple hardware peripheral to acces and edit. If Apple allows iTunes library and services to be available to Samsung TV devices, then great...pity it has happened 5 years too late to give Apple any kind of advantage to the streaming market! The Netflix and Amazon studio model for original content creation is now quite well established. Most importantly it has seemingly built good, loyal relationships with actors,writers, producers and directors who appreciate when they have more creative freedom allowed to them - that would not have always been the case with traditional studio financed productions. I think the most successful Netflix and Amazon original releases have come from this kind of agreeable partnership. ‘Content is king’ as they say - but by the look of what Apple have planned on their slate, it looks laughably weak and like a last ditch effort to jump on a bandwagon that has already left town and set up a channel on YouTube. Unless Apple can roll out some seriously impressive/ affordable hardware that makes their service a totally unique experience , I just don’t see them succeeding or doing anything more than playing an expensive game of catch-up. I would love to be wrong, and that Apple have a next gen 50inch HDR no-glasses 3D TV to be delivered to your door, after subscribing to a very affordable annual subscription. I’d be most interested to see what Alibaba Pictures Group decide to do in the near future...they are the silent fish in the pond that keeps getting bigger. If they were to decide to bring a dedicated streaming service to the west (or even buy Netflix) they could probably pull off some real shake up to the streaming market.

For Rectilux I’ve used basic white Lithium grease that can be found almost anywhere. A good quality synthetic grease like that is sold in cycle shops or DIY stores. You can buy it in small tubes and the grease itself has a similar consistency as hand cream. In my experience, more specific greases that have thicker viscosity and higher drag values are often harder to thin to get to a desirable friction. There are quite a few synthetic grease brands out there that can work equally well, the trick is (especially with Rectilux) is to coat a very small and even amount throughout the helicoid, then work the action until is becomes smooth. It is always best to ad a tiny amount at first, and then build up the amount of you want more resistance.

@billputnamphoto “So the question is, based on the photos here what's it worth”? As it stands, those web marks will effect the flare and image on that already soft lens. I guess it’s worth what anyone wants to pay for it. I’ve had a few of these lenses in the past, one in a similar state to yours that I disassembled, removed fungus, cleaned and re-lubed back to good working condition. They are not the easiest lenses to work on for a first timer though, since they are so small and quite delicately engineered. FYI I never paid more than $350 for my mint copy of that lens (3 years ago). If it was me, I’d list the lens ‘as is’ (with those detailed pics you already have) - along with some stills or footage as to how the image and flare look in its current condition. A starting bid of $300 might get interest going, but that would be dependent if a buyer is willing to take a ‘risk’. You can minimise the perceived risk and increase the value of your lens if you can prove it can still currently make pretty pictures...despite the less than ideal condition of the optics.

Not meaning to open a can of worms - but most iscorama models (at least 36, pre 36 and 54 types) have an actual stretch factor of 1.42x. But to answer the question - no, I’ve not noticed any discenable shift in ratio when setting minimum focus using the proxiscope.

You don't get a dongle when buying the BMP4K - the Resolve Studio software comes on a SD card in the box. inside the SD card holder is a card with the activation code. You can also download the Resolve studio software from BM website, by using the same code to unlock and register. If reselling camera and Resolve studio, you can simply deactivate the activation inside Resolve and pass over to a new owner to re-activate.

Blackmagic already have prores export functioning on the windows version of thier Fusion software...as of yesterday that was how I’d normally export ‘genuine’ Prores from my windows 7 workstation. Now with Adobe being granted prores export for windows (as long as you are on windows 10 that is) it makes life a lot easier. Blackmagic indeed need to implement prores export via Resolve - or at least a simple ‘send to Fusion’ dynamic link feature so as to make that software suite complete for windows users. DNxHD flavours are all well and good, but deliverables often need to be in a recognised prores flavour...mostly when passing video material to die hard Mac-based post people who assume nobody could possibly use PC’s for creative purposes. One can only assume that the only reason Blackmagic have not enabled Resolve prores export on PC yet is because of licence restraints, rather than any technical reasons. I really hope Adobe have not somehow snatched the rights away from Resolve having native Prores export features on a windows platform.

To be fair, it is hard to avoid strong brown tones when filming the seafront of Weston-Super-Mud

Q: Where is the SDI Port? A:

A rear plug that effectively creates an aperture that is spaced away from the rear optic of the Iscorama will of course create an undesired effect. The rubber ring method however does not - because it is situated just on the very edge of the rear optic edge of the pre-36 that is collecting the light and causing the white vignette and square rainbow flare. The rubber ring is acting as a pellicle/baffle, not as a mask or iris...it is a common method (with many vintage lens designs) to help clean up just the unwanted light and edge glow from an optic edge - that can otherwise introduce contrast drop and unwanted internal flares. the only reason that the Isco-pre 36 may require such a pellicle/baffle ring - is when using the Isco on a non-factory taking lens (which most people these days are). The original 50mm Isco taking lens has a deep recess and edge baffle for the Isco rear built into its design, so does not exhibit the same amount of edge rainbow flare or white vignette.

The iscomorphot 8/1.5x is a nice lens...did not want to give it too much of a hard time, but it's limitations on wider apertures can be an issue. I seem to recall that I got some good results with taking lenses that maintained a spherical aperture when at f4-5.6. I made a fixed f5.6 spherical aperture disk for my taking lens so that I could never go wider than the baby could handle (especially on FF), the spherical disk kept a perfect oval result in the bokeh.

I’ve had 3 copies of the iscomorphot 8/1.5x over the years, two with optics in fair to heavily used condition that I took apart to re-grease the helicoids...one lens that I owned was totally pristine. All lenses were soft unless taking lens is fairly heavily closed down with better performance on smaller sensors. I found that the characteristic ‘bloom’ softness that the lens has is a limitation of the front focusing optic. It is of not of a sufficient design that was intended to resolve sharpness at wide apertures on sensors with an equivalent gate size that is larger than for 8mm film, and the relatively thin edged optic can easily create a bloom on highlights that infect the whole image...as well as some CA on high contrast edges. On used copies of the lens, it is common for the edge blackening of that front optic to loose its black and accumulate micro scratches...resulting in even more contrast drop and apparent softening of the image. Overall, I really don’t think the lens is worthy of the ‘Baby Iscorama’ name...IMHO the smallest lens that exhibits the most comparible optic quality to an Iscorama (pre-36) - is the iscomorphot s8/2x (fixed focus). Same golden coating, zero CA and lovely balance of sharpness and defocus render. The iscomorphot (and it’s bigger non-MC brother 16/2x) are of course 2x, but they have enough of a complimentary look to the Iscorama 36/42/54 family, footage can be easily intercut when mixing lenses. The ‘baby Iscorama’ 8/1.5x however would stick out like a sore thumb in a lot of scenarios if wanting to match the look of the Iscorama clan...the sharpness and edge performance is just is not there, unless using a small aperture on the taking lens.

The greater the stabilisation needed, the greater the crop will be to hide the edges of your footage from being ‘in shot’ after correction. So shooting at a higher resolution (such as 4K+) on a wider lens would be beneficial in most cases, since any post crop introduced from the software would have a negligible effect on resolution, or nil impact if delivery is HD. The nice thing about the SteadXP software is that it allows full override control of the stabilise intensity, with options to keyframe just the sections in need of maximum stabilisation. In other words, a slow keyframed post zoom can be set to hit the crop amount needed to clear the stabilised edges of the frame - then the crop amount can be dialed back to slowly regain the wider FOV. The features of the SteadXP software are too rich to exist as a simple NLE plugin, the power and customisation options in processing the footage needs its own application to exploit the full power of the correction method. Using SteadXP to stabilise handheld moves or jitters from a small camera is not really the best use of the system IMHO. It is too much of an involved process to have for what could be addressed with a gimbal these days. Where the SteadXP really shines is when used in dynamic situations such as filming out of a helicopter or rigged to a car/bike or when the camera is on a helmet rig and you need to iron out a lot of bumps and shakes from a relatively compact setup that does not require mechanical stabilisation on the camera mount. I suspect the initial excitement over SteadXP dropped off due to the swell of gimbals and IBIS enabled cameras...as well as people being put off after learning that a separate workflow of lens calibration/hardware setup and software processing have to all be done correctly just to get to the corrected footage stage. It is not a ‘click and analyse’ post stabilisation solution that many had assumed or wanted it to be. The SteadXP guys themselves have not particularly pushed the media section of their site to appeal to dummies, so there is a little bit of research required elsewhere online from other users to figure out how to achieve the best results. I personally think the SteadXP fills a specific niche that is yet to be bettered. Using a hardware/software solution is a pretty unique method for a prosumer product...the results are relative to the time spent finding and exploiting its advantages over mechanically stabilised solutions. It is not a magical solution that will appeal to all, but I’m keeping mine for a while - as it can be deployed for a few situations that are not simply practical to achieve with my Ronin-S.

Windows PC - but the software is available on mac (and I think Linux can be requested). To be clear the SteadXP is a half hardware, half software solution. The little SteadXP box attaches to your camera and records accelerometer data via one channel of the audio track of the recorded video from the camera. Once auto-synced and processed through the SteadXP software, the decoded data (recorded as telemetry audio pulses) is translated into a corrected displacement mesh for the video footage to be displaced by. The end result is a corrected video that can be exported from the software at various codecs for ingest to your NLE of choice. https://steadxp.com/