Hans Punk

I heard that Trump will be setting up his own camera plant in Detroit, the rumours are that the first camera to be released is to directly rival the GH5 and will have these features: 4k, just the best 4K...you'll going to love it. Honestly, the best 4K. Camera body in any colour as long as its red,white or blue. Colour balance is locked to 2700k for uniform orange skin tones. Buttons made for extra small hands. Weather resistant, including urine. Overheating notification in 4K mode is displayed as "Hoax invented by china". Camera strap has red dye to be deposited onto neck of user. firmware accessible via secure server, directed via Russia. No word yet on pricing yet, but rumour has it Mexico will pay for them.

It's actually an adapter made by Vocas for mounting a PL to E-mount adapter. The inner clamp diameter is a fraction bigger than the outer diameter of a Redstan clamp...with a thin layer of felt tape applied on the inside, It resolves the issue perfectly. It gives a very secure grip, as well as avoiding metal on metal damage when cranking down on the clamp support to lock everything tight. Here is my other setup with the B&H attached.

+1 for the recommendation to rent. unless you plan to buy a set to then rent (between using for your own projects) - there is little financial sense to own...unless you are a very wealthy individual. The 'Best' Lomo anamorphics tend to be whatever has been serviced and colimated by Olex or other respected camera technition that services such lenses. Most 'shoot friendly' versions are the oct-19 roundfronts that have been converted to PL. All lomo anamorphics were designed for S35, 75mm + versions will technically cover full frame when shooting larger sensor area when shooting in 4:3 mode. The roundfront versions are monoblock designs - not needing rail support to operate the focus mechanism like the older oct-18 versions. For a shooting set of 35/50/80/100 lomo roundfront PL lenses in good serviced and clean optical condition, you are looking at a ballpark figure of $50k

Random theory (might be worth experimenting to prove or dis-prove) - it may be that the cable itself is acting as a conduit from the cold...prolonged -30C temperatures directly passing to the connection pins might not be a good thing, the cable is likely acting as a very effective conductor of cold (especially with wind chill) directly into the camera and shogun - possibly causing the signal dropout. But it may be more likely that it's a cable that when stiff or contracting from cold has a poor signal transmission. I wonder if extra insulation to the cable or occasionally applying a hand warmer pack to the cable in extreame cold would solve the problem.

Grain and Noise are two entirely different things. There have been a few posts here before about the benefits of the appropriate use of grain for both technical and aesthetic reasons. As for grain degrading an image? - the opposite effect can often be true. For example, an appropriate application of grain can give a perceived impression of extra sharpness and detail to an image:

You can't beat real grain from a 35mm telecine scan to add over video footage...but if time is tight, the filmconvert grain is ok if dialled down from its preset...and it renders very fast. I've got a ton of use from my effects element library which is from material shot for movies including 'Clash of the Titans' and 'Sunshine' - lots of open gate and anamorphic grain to be lifted from some of those plate shots at the leader and tail of shots. Gorilla grain is ok, but most of these overlay grain packs you can buy tend to be 'enhanced' with sharpening or have too much contrast built in for my taste. I've personally found it best to mix it up and avoid 50% opacity preset settings...it's often better to layer up two low opacity grain overlays (offset), rather than one heavy hit. It depends on the grain intensity that you are after, but for a nice texture feel with a bit of a perceived sharpness boost, less tends to be more.

Lovely work...another good example of why I've kept my 5D3 and have not bought any colour crippled, 8 bit 4K over-sharpened newer offerings. Now ML is refining it's 10-12 bit and crop mode options - the improvements and surprises of what that camera can do are STILL being uncovered.

The Kowa has a very obvious alignment problem....the streak flare in sunlight clearly shows this. No testing with other taking lenses will resolve correct sharpness either, unless the Kowa's optic alignment is corrected first.

iPhone not always a great light source to provoke flare (unless only light source in a darker room than in your test and you crank up your ISO on the camera). Big reason for lack of flare is most likely due to mis-alignment of Kowa's optics and maybe if the Kowa's rear is not perfectly parallel to the taking lens. Different focus distances will also render the streak flares softer or sharper...so you've probably got one or more of these things happening. Currently the mis-alignment issue not rendering anything sharp...image or the streak lens flare. Maybe follow Tito's tutorial and post the results here, it's always nice to see a bodged lens come back to life ps - Did you buy the lens from eBay...if so, who was the seller?

That sunlight flare tells you all you need to know....the Kowa's front and rear optic are definitely not properly aligned to each other.The purple/pink streaks should be more parallel than they are at present. Previous owner probably dicked around with it to clean the interior, but not reassembled it properly (checking alignment). Follow Tito's tutorial to easily solve the issue - it is a much more concise version of the original post post I did a while ago about improving sharpness by refining the alignment of such a lens. The optics not being perfectly aligned in the Kowa are 100% the cause of your focus problems. The streak lens flares are often an excellent way of seeing any discrepancy in front and rear optic alignment.

God we've missed you.

Higher shutter speed for crisp frames is almost always best used for sports coverage...otherwise fast action can appear 'blurry' if using the more filmic 1/48 or 1/50 shutter speed settings. Higher shutter speeds that yield crisper frames are also easier to post stabilise or re-time if needed. If your edit is to be a 'flavor of the day' montage cut to music - it may look nice if you included 90% slow motion shots, with the crowd shots/reactions/ portraits as real-time inserts (or just mix and match to add variety). If shooting high speed, shoot a test clip and play it back - to make sure that your shutter setting is not out of sync with your lights at the venue (causing image flicker or phase issues).

XL1 with a DOF adaptor can look pretty unique these days...has a slight telecine feel:

I don't have a FM anymore to check...but I think they are M1.6 grub screws like this: http://pages.ebay.com/link/?nav=item.view&alt=web&id=360581099885&globalID=EBAY-GB Might be good to find an assortment box of simialr smaller sizes to have as a back up to try.

I should have mentioned more that I was referring to Full frame performance of these focus solutions...which will always reveal the worse edge artefacts at wider apertures. You will most likely find a suitable taking lens for your APSC camera by experimenting (unfortunately like every single FM owner had to do). The FM seemed to be optimised for smaller than s35 sensor, so Brian's mention of pupil size makes good sense to also consider experimenting with lenses that have a smaller pupil diameter.

@Brian Caldwell That makes perfect sense. I've had very good results by 'choking' many of my taking lenses by inserting a fixed spherical aperture disc (relative to f4-5.6 to that lens' aperture size). This enables a non-cut oval bokeh, whilst effectively stopping the lens down. f/4 on 2x anamorphic is already a darn shallow depth of field to pull focus with for anything other than trees and sleeping cats. The aberrations I've noticed on the FM and Core DNA at wide apertures seem to be more apparent to the edges of the image - highlight 'smear' seems to be more pronounced on the off centre area of the optic - where the curvature of the front element begins. Adding a +0.4 doublet Tokina often seems to help clean up these edge artefacts at wide apertures....albeit at the loss of enabling infinity focus. There also seems to be another artefact that I'm not entirely sure about - that there seems to be optic face to optic face reflection that can create highlight 'blobs' when the elements are separated by distance during focus. The FM (and apparently rangefinder) seem to have this 'blob' artefact which makes me think it might be a coating issue (internal face reflection?)....Pure guess mind you.

I'm talking about the limitations of a non-cemented doublet (achromatic) diopter (vs the single element as with these vari-diopter designs) - the single element optics of these vari-diopters is a major cause of aberrations of image at wide apertures. Having owned a FM and Core DNA, I can confirm that f4 is the stop where both focus solutions start to resolve the cleanest image on high contrast edges...especially when pushed on full frame. Sharpness 'performance' depends on your eyesight I guess. BTW - Tito's FM that he did the test with used to be mine...so I know that lens particularly well

Forget shooting anything wider than f4 on any taking lens and expect to get no glow/smear/hazing highlight aberrations on the FM - or most of the other vari-diopter solutions out there. It is all due the single element design of these diopters - it is simply the optical limits of single element design/ coatings and the glass index used. Olympus OM's are quite good for FM use - 85/100 mm are especially sharp when stopped down, but these lenses (and many others) will cut into the oval bokeh when stopped down, due to the non-circular aperture shape that the iris blades. A better solution to this is to search older preset lens types - those that have 13-16 blades, which maintain a nice spherical aperture from f4 upwards. If you want a list of lenses to try, there are many posts on this forum about such things. (or just search 'preset lens' on ebay).

I remember this lens doing the rounds a couple of years back on ebay by the original seller - I did a little research back then. It was a part of a small run of lenses configured by Century at the request of Lars Von Trier when he was shooting on DVCAM. To enable a small part of the film to be shot 'native' 2.35:1 (bulk of the film was cropped 16x9) So expect this lens to work best with smaller sensors and when higher resolution is not critical. Can be considered a Century/Optex grade optic, but with a different stretch ratio. Current seller of lens used to be a member of this forum before he got banned. He's probably still here, under a different name.

When I looked into making a slave motor drive to sync taking and scope lens - it quickly became clear that to do properly would incur about the cost of buying an iscorama or cine anamorphic. You really need a stepper motor solution, ideally with zero backlash (to avoid mechanical drift in movement) - also a flexible interface to accommodate the offset for different taking lenses with varying focus rotation throw. In a nutshell, a vari-diopter or DIY front element mod solution is the cost effective way to convert most lenses to single focus IMO.

@IronFilm Yeah, not many compositing tricks - other than the occasional split screen trick that you can do inside an NLE (to mix different takes into a single shot). So a considerable chunk of the budget on that video would have gone on the drum kits! Late 90's - early 00's there were a load of great music videos from Spike Jones and Michel Gondry as well as a load of great documentaries shot on DV or DVCAM. I think nowadays it is refreshing to see prosumer video from that time period - since everything now looks technically superior. But as with what happened with super 8 and 16mm - early video formats can now invoke a similar nostalgia or 'low-fi chic' if chosen for the right project. Back in the day people were starting to try to make video look more like film - with mini 35 DOF adaptors and magic bullet de-interlace plugin...but the reality is that the video can look more interesting nowadays, if it's left as crusty as it can be. I remember when this was number one in the music charts for many many weeks...I remember thinking that all the broadcasters must have hated showing such a rough looking video, but at the time is was mesmerising to see a music video presented this way...3 years before YouTube existed.

Mini DV can look awesome these days - as an aesthetic choice for an appropriate subject. I was recently digging through some old rushes from my Pd-170 and VX-1000, and it actually dawned on me that the 4x3 footage looked 'fresh' in a strange kind of way. I'm surprised hipster kids have not used them more for tone-poem video projects. Think the secret would be to use these older cameras on full-auto settings, to get the crappiest image possible - then to completely embrace that. It's very cheap now to buy an old hi-8 / minidv/ s-vhs camera for a suitable project (and a cheap capture card to ingest into computer). No overlays, post treatment will get higher quality footage degraded in quite the same way...it all looks fake. I'd say if you want a good looking low-fi video look...shoot it on low-fi video. Some of my favourite music videos and documentaries were shot on DV....back in the day when creativity and originality still existed.

RedStan adapters are best by one hundred nautical miles. If budget is a factor - Rapido is very decent.

Payment / collection in person is best (if possible). No western union payments. No out of auction deals (if selling on ebay - you won't be protected). No 'mark as gift' shipping - (without insurance or traceable shipment option). Don't sell to any Egyptian teenager, claiming he's a 65 year old. Don't assume this forum (or any) is a place without fraudsters lurking, but generally this forum is filled with good honest people. If an interested buyer is a member here, he/she should have no problem in complying in any request you have in proof of address/ identity before sending over any money. It is still a risk, but gets more calculated when you can talk to an interested buyer over the phone or skype - and have proof of their identity/ address. The main risk is in the buyer reporting the lens undelivered or damaged and then filing action against you for fraud. So if sending to overseas buyer, insure it for it's full value, send via a reputable courier - take pictures of lens condition before shipping ('hostage-style' with the days date from newspaper or iphone clock in frame) Is about as safe as you can get. Leave an evidence trail in your favour - just it case the shit hits the fan.

@martinmcgreal I shot the first two crappy 7D tests you posted in your opening post. The cat video was waaaay back when raw video was not even working yet (was silent picture 'burst mode') - now the build for 7D is a lot more refined and it's image can still hold it's own next to the king 5DmkIII which is what I often shoot with now. Moire can be an issue with this camera though (as can the 50D etc) but you can get a VAF filter to eliminate moire effects. - if you can afford it (and sold on going the canon ML route), the 5DmkII or mkIII deliver the cleanest/ highest quality ML raw images. Seems like you could pickup a great deal these days on a used 7D body - and also have a rugged stills camera that will always hold some value...if you ever wanted to resell (quite a safe bet that you would not loose very much money). Magic Lantern is either something you will love or hate (workflow-wise) - it takes time to master and search through many forum posts on quirks and best practices...but it is worth the effort to the right kind of shooter. I wish they handed ML enabled canons out to film school students, as the discipline of conserving 'stock' and having to 'process' the images afterwards is comparable to the good old celluloid days...it can make shooting a more crafted and thought - through affair, rather than spunk a load of footage to wade through later. As for lenses, s35 of the 7D enables you to shoot with quite a few anamorphic lenses without vignette issues, the test videos of mine that you linked to were shot using an iscomorphot 16/2x with an old 135mm f2.8 pentacon taking lens. But I think nowadays the camera is far less important...most can deliver good/ great images. Non - modern (non MC) Lenses are almost always what impart the 'look' you mention. In anamorphic, the taking lens often gives 90% of the 'look'...by reducing contrast and adding pleasant optical artefacts - not just adding crazy flares. I'd maybe keep the pocket camera and speedbooster (fantastic combination btw) and maybe look around for nice little 1.5x iscomorphot that will look very cute on your pocket camera, and gives you single focus! (Yes, this is a shameless plug for my current lens for sale on ebay...but for your current camera and reference, it could be a great match for your pocket camera ) The third video reference you posted (Cosimo's lake video) was shot on this exact lens type. I'm only selling it as it has fairly restricted use on full frame...on crop sensor (s35 and smaller...it can really deliver some beautiful results). http://www.ebay.com/itm/Isco-Gottingen-Iscomorphot-8-1-5x-Anamorphic-Lens-Baby-Iscorama-/252575728612?hash=item3aceafc3e4:g:4rgAAOSwLF1X9Veo