Shane Essary

Just a minor point: All the m4/3 voigtlanders now have an aperture switch to go from step to stepless. I would be highly surprised if the new 10mm also did not come with this feature.

Huh, this slipped me by. Apparently Voigtlander is releasing a 10.5mm f/0.95 lens for m4/3 soon. I bet it's going to be pricey, but nice. http://www.thephoblographer.com/2014/09/22/voigtlander-introduces-wide-fast-nokton-10-5mm-f0-95-mft-lens/#.VElSkfnF-8w

I feel like i just watched a Terry Gilliam film.

If you're US based, you can rent some Optar Illuminas in PL mount from lensrentals.com. They have half the set, IIRC. Made for s16, T1.3 and the 8mm doesn't vignette like the Zeiss... Had I a BMPCC, I'd certainly be renting these. Edit: Just checked their site, they have the 8mm, 9.5mm and 12mm...

Wow, it's so rare I check this forum anymore, sorry for the delay. You're going to have rolling shutter issues with.. I can't think of any camera in this price range (used) that won't have it, so you have to either just accept it or go to some great pains to minimize the impact. Adobe has a rolling shutter "filter" (plugin?) that will help minimize it in post with the cost of a cropped image.

Shot two music videos a couple weeks ago on my GH2 + Nokton 25mm. Still love the image I'm getting out of this combo. A "better" camera won't make me a better filmmaker; continuing to make films will. One day I'll outgrow it, but until then I can just keep saving my money for that time.

More expensive, but the Voigtlander 42.5mm f/0.95 is also available if you have the cash to spend.

Outdoors, I don't go anywhere without my Genus Variable ND. Indoors, I generally remove it if its convenient to do so.

Erm, just a heads up: While I know people do edit on Macbook Airs, I'd seriously consider a Macbook Pro with an nVidia GPU if you spend plenty of time in FCPX. For one-offs with simple editing, etc, the MBA will be okay, but why make life difficult? :)

Just wanted to chime in: still using my GH2. Was itching to upgrade, but I like what I'm getting out of the GH2 + Driftwood Quantum X and I know I'm only touching the surface of what it can do. Inspired by the Kendy Ty material, I've decided to just shoot everything using one lens (25mm Voigtlander) as a challenge to myself and I think it's working great. I did find a situation where I wish I had a wider lens last week on a shoot, but I made it work via a little contortionism. :) I'd love a BMPCC and I'd certainly use one if given one, but my money right now would be better spent on a better video editing rig since my current laptop continues to overheat when doing anything intensive.

Not necessarily as I seriously doubt Google has contacted each and every band out there, but rather the publishers that represent them. For example, my band goes through various distributors, including but not limited to CD Baby. Since CD Baby acts as our publisher, they only have to work with CD Baby since we agreed to let CD Baby handle that aspect of those particular releases. CD Baby has something like 3-4 million tracks in their catalog with the same agreements. Tunecore has a similar number and agreement, and The Orchard has probably even more. Between those 3 catalogs, that's well over 10 million tracks right there (disclaimer: I'm a software dev for a digital music service and I'm directly involved with the ingestion of those catalogs). A huge chunk of the rest of the indie bands come through labels that are under the Merlin agreement, who handles reporting and publishing for those. Chances are, the indie bands themselves aren't even involved in this discussion and it wouldnt' surprise me if the vast majority are even aware of what's going on. They just want to create music and collect their non-existent royalty checks.

I figured they'd work, I was unclear with my question, sorry. How do they look, what with the reduced crop factor and the extra stop.. Are they worth playing with? :)

That's shit, though. Part of the reason I got into filmmaking is so I can make videos for my band without having to worry about some flakey videographer/filmmaker (and I'm shooting one tonight and another in the morning). I want to make music, not promote. I want to perform, not worry about distribution. I want to get in the van and ride to bumfuck Indiana so I can play in front of 8 people for no money, because it's what I enjoy doing, not play phone tag with the venue or two dudes putting on the show with a couple local bands that no one locally cares about. Same thing with films, right? Do you want to make films, or do you want to spend all your time trying to sell them? It's like that dude with the script. He's so busy trying to sell it, he forgets to write another one. If your band is already well-established, like trent reznor, for example, going the full monty direct distribution route is feasible. If you're joe blow just trying to make it, having a good label behind you can be the difference between going "somewhere" or just spinning your wheels. There's an art to it. From a consumer perspective, I like labels because they curate their music collection. I can be assured that music coming from a specific label, while I'm not guaranteed to like it, at least is in the general ballpark of the stuff I do like. That's the value of the label to me as a consumer: They listen to 10,000 shitty bands and pick out the couple that have potential, so I don't have to. From a band perspective, the label gives us good/reliable contacts in other towns to help set up shows. They handle the pressing and distribution of the recorded product and I don't have to have 100 boxes of 7" records laying around my tiny apartment. The label sends out the records to the various fanzines and college radio stations, and all we had to do was get in the van and drive. We sold a lot of merch, but with gas at $4.50/gallon, that was a break-even proposition. I don't know what the actual answer is other than to try and weather the storm and see how it shakes out on the other side, but direct distribution isn't the 100% answer 100% of the time. EDIT: I will add that we also don't pay to record our music because our singer is an audio engineer in his day job (I'm a software dev). He has a nice recording studio built in his backyard, but that wasn't free to build or maintain. It doesn't cost the band anything to record, but it's far from free and is typically subsidized by charging other bands to record there, as well.

Just curious if anyone has used the the m42->m43 speedbooster clones and tried out, say, the Tair 11A or Mir 20 f/2.5?

I wonder if that was Eugenia Loli, from osnews. IIRC she was big into the camcorder (HV/HD 20 something?) back in the day, as well as talking about alternative operating systems (mine was BeOS).