Inazuma

Hey guys, I just wanted to share a quick report on some new gear I have obtained: Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 (£550) Tokina AT-X 80-200mm f2.8 (£250) Camdiox Focal Reducer (Nikon to Micro Four Thirds) (£72) Handling When the postman delivered them was the first time I had seen either lens in real life. Both of them feel very nice in hand and look great. Pictures just don't do them justice. The Tokina is all metal, which makes it feel particularly nice. The Camdiox adapter feels pretty nice too. The aperture control is very smooth and is clickless, which I hear many video people like - though personally I have yet to find a purpose for that. The throw of the ring is a short 30 degrees (or around that). The Tokina's focus ring, when turned, rotates and moves forward the entire front barrel. So using it with a follow focus is impossible. Neither lenses are parfocal, although the Tokina is superior to the Sigma in this regard. For such a long lens you would think the focus shift would be higher. Both lenses have about a 90 degree focus throw. And the rings on the Sigma have more resistance than on the Tokina. And in both cases, the focus rings are smoother than the zoom rings - as to be expected. I do wish the Sigma's focus ring was smoother though. One fantastic thing about both lenses is that neither of them elongate when you change the focal length! The Sigma is around 850g heavy and the Tokina is 1.25kg. The Camdiox is about 150g. In practice, I would not handhold the Tokina but I would the Sigma. In fact it does not feel all that different to when I used to use the 17-50mm f2.8 with my Nikon d5200. The Camdiox's rear element can be rotated to allow you to adjust focus. I had to do this in order to achieve infinity focus. Unfortunately there are no markings or intelligible way to figure out how much to rotate it by. Luckily for me I got it right the first time. Performance With the lenses adapted, the performance is quite good. I have not used the lenses without a focal reducer so I can't say how they compare, but there is no noticeable vignetting and the CA is fairly well controlled (although definitely apparent when viewing 100%). The Tokina in particular impressed me because I have used several vintage lenses and they all have been prone to flaring, but this lens stays strong. The haze of the sun is only somewhat apparent and things stay contrasty. The blue spot problem does exist with the adapter, but it's really not at all distracting. it's not an opaque spot, but rather a very soft and faint blurred disc. The disc also appears on super bright light sources like the sun, not street lights. Both lenses are sharp enough wide open that I am able to find focus without too much trouble using the GH3's viewfinder (which btw I'm finding far superior to the GX7 and the NEX 6 I had before it). https://vimeo.com/101665729 Tokina 80-200mm f2.8 D mounted on Panasonic GH3 via Camdiox Focal Reducer. First image 80mm, second image 200mm. ISO 800. Auto WB. No iDynamic. Neutral PP -3 -5 -2 -5. Might have missed focus on the third shot. No sharpening has been applied and Vimeo makes video look softer than it is. Some photos straight out of camera. Lenses wide open. First two Tokina, second two Sigma. Click to enlarge.

Wow. I could actually rotate that rear lens element without unscrewing anything. And I got it right the first time round :D Thanks!

Hi guys, I received this today, branded "Camdiox" (linked here). It's a £72 Nikon F/G to Micro Four Thirds focal reducer / lens turbo / speed booster. At first, I thought all was well. But as I played around more I found that my lenses weren't focusing to infinity. The lenses in question - a new Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 and an old Tokina 80-200mm D f2.8. Both have great renderings but failed to focus to infinity. Has anyone else had similar experiences with cheap focal reducers?

The aliasing may be due to the editing program incorrectly importing the clips as interlaced. This happened with some of my GX7 clips. Or the editing program had shit scaling algorithm, which creates aliasing (if you remember back in the day if you scaled things in a web browser, they would alias horribly). As for the noise... I kind of feel it's an accurate representation if he's shooting ISO 400-800 (I don't believe it's any higher as the windows are not completely blown out). The GX7 noise tends to be quite fine and I would imagine that the GH4's 4k mode when scaled down to 1080p would be even finer - such as in that video. Even more impressive I'd say is the colour, which has a lot of nice tonality and subtleties.

Film is good but there are some variables which you have little control over. I have shot my fair share of 35mm stills where the photographs didn't turn out great because of either the lens, the film stock, the negative development or the process on to paper or digital. Of course, once you have spent a lot of time and money experimenting with different lenses, film stock and processing companies, you will be set. And of course the results will be magical. Christina & sunyata.. if you are such advocates of film then why don't you shoot with it?

The 14-140 will allow you to get wider shots, but it won't be reach as long as your 70-300G. I don't know anything about shooting surfing so I can't say which lens is more appropriate. But if you do go with the GX7, you will notice a huge increase in video quality.

Can you point to any specific examples where the 5d colours have really impressed you? I would like to see

The RX100 is nice. Great video detail and it's not too bad in low light. But the lens produces strong purple colour fringing, or at least mine did anyway. Between the NEX and GH2 I would recommend the GH2 as the video detail will be better and it has a flip out screen. And in my experience, the Panasonic menus are far better.

Really beautiful footage as usual Andrew! I don't have an A7S, but those LUTs also work really well on flat GH3 footage. The Greek guy's face is a bit splotchy but I think that's more to do with how much the data is being pushed. I have actually been looking for something to produce colours exactly like this. I couldn't find it in FilmConvert, Osiris or Impulz, but here it is for free! Very nice

I loved the Sigma 17-50mm f2.8 when I had it. There's an AF/MF switch and when MF is enabled, the focus ring is really nice to use

Hey guys, Yesterday I shot a social gathering of sorts with my new GH3. Any critique would be helpful :) Natural PP, -5 -5 -5 -5, Standard iDynamic. f2-f4 with a Vivitar 28mm f2, which is quite problematic wide open (v soft, prone to blow outs etc).

I'm about to receive a Tokina 80-200mm f2.8 for use in a fight scene (the compressed image will make the fake hits look more realistic). The last time I had a lens of this length was years ago when I used a 12x compact camera :p Other than for portrait shots, what can I use this lens for? I bought it for a very small price, but I want to make the most use of it.

Can't seem to find a good deal on the canon eos M's. What's the GX1 like?

It seems the GF3 doesn't have manual exposure or exposure lock? And it only does 1080i, not 1080p?

Can you use tinypic.com or a similar service to host the pics?

Hey guys, My gear is very egotistic and likes to have pictures and videos taken of themselves. Problem is that the main camera is usually attached with the other pieces of gear. So I'm in the market for another super cheap (like £100) camera. I DON'T need great AF, high iso, dynamic range or a mic jack. What I DO need is good video detail without much digital sharpening/aliasing/moire and just decent stills quality (better than a compact basically). And preferably a Panasonic so I can use my lenses on it. Any recommendations? :)

I tested out EOSHD's method. Original clip [280mb]: http://sebcastilho.com/uploads/Day_3_Original.MOV |

I'm planning to add a Sigma 18-35mm f1.8 to my GH3 soon. Is there any possibility of using this lens handheld with the camera? If not, what cage or rig would you recommend?

Thanks for the info :) Could still be a nice lens for the range. But will probably just get the Sigma for now.

How slow are we talking? Like DSLR slow? Or Sony NEX slow? JB can you name the seller so that I can avoid him? I think the OIS rattling is common among lenses of this size and higher. I am surprised you weren't impressed with the build quality, as most reviewers (from around the time of its release) say the opposite. I have previously owned the 12-35mm but felt the zoom range was too limited. I know its equivalent to a 24-70mm or a 16-50mm (APS-C lens), but I just felt kind of bummed out that this lens was soo expensive and yet still didn't have great shallow DOF. Still undecided about this lens. On the one hand it's got a good range and IS, making it ideal for travel. On the other hand, it's not going to be as good for my professional work as a Sigma 18-35mm. Wish I could own both :/

Nice stuff :) Wonder if you could write a breakdown of which lens was use for what shot?

The banding in that clip is present in the ungraded half too and is just due to compression. You can avoid banding to an extent by using grain. The noise forces the encoder to add more data to those areas of the image. However, with h264, dark areas of the image will always become blotchy unless it's at 30mbps or above. One thing I've found is that some 3D LUTs (especially Osiris) causes banding where others don't.

Hi, Does anyone know how this lens performs compared to modern MFT lenses? In terms of speed of autofocus, noise etc. Compared to say an Olympus 17mm f1.8 or Panasonic 12-35mm f2.8. Main reason I'm interested about AF specifically is because I've been getting great success with AF on my Oly 17mm with steadycam. And also I plan to use this lens for more casual video shooting, where I may use the internal microphone. Also, do generic MMF3 adapters work as well as the official one?

I agree with Ebrahim. No point of reference so can't really say if they're good or bad. I will say it looks fairly realistic. Though, being Chinese, I'm less fussy than most others in this forum about yellow hues and such.. If anything there is too much magenta; but that's probably just down to lighting.

Really nice work. Nice shots. Great use of the lighting in the environment (sun, moon, street lights, billboards) and the imperfections in the image are extremely charming :)