redimp

@HockeyFan12 what's the password to the video?

I've said this multiple times on facebook and will repeat here once more – there is no concept of focus through. There's no simple way to explain why, but bottom line is – if you have squeeze on one axis, you have astigmatism, and it needs correction. "Focusing" anamorphic block is simply correcting astigmatism for that specific focus plane. Original gottshalk's patent shows the ultra panatar prismatic design in the schematics, if prismatic lenses were 'focus through' that patent would make no sense and we won't have 60 years of cinema history created by this patent. Or think about it this way – if there was such thing as 'focus-though' would any cine lens manufacturer in their right mind fiddle with any other design?

@HockeyFan12 Hey Matt, Proxiscope does not add vignetting compared to the original housing (I design products in a way the front lip is nowhere near the angle of view of the lens itself). I suggest a simple test – put on the old housing (good thing the rehousing is reversible and takes 5 minutes), and shoot a scene from at tripod, then put the new housing on and repeat it. That should help you life your doubts. Front element has to travel 6mm to get from inf to 2m. Of course to travel from 2m to 1.1 the front lens has to move more, in our case it's another 6mm. That would obviously increase vignetting and there is no work around that, but still, the front lip is so short that it's not the cause of vignetting even at 1.1m. My newest design Nexiscope has three times more trave, and even if the lip is 6mm deep and 72mm in diameter it's not going to vignette. Cheers.

Please don't sand it, it's a hack, not a fix. The tolerances on the housing are very tight, If your iscorama is warped, the plastic body is not ideally concentric around the lens helical (which is brass to brass, so no warping there for sure). What you need to do is to adjust the smaller metal ring and the way it sits around the plastic body using three small grub screws, until it's perfectly concentric. Try tightening them quarter turn at a time. It's a game of balance, and time spent doing this depends on how bad the warping of the plastic is. Just play with those screws, spend 10, 15, 30 minutes if needed, quarter turn at a time. Loosen one screw and tighten two others to move the small metal ring in the opposite direction of where the traction happens. Alternatively you can take a caliper, measure the body in the pace where traction occurs, and compare that diameter measurement to the perpendicular diameter of the oval of the body. If the difference is drastic, like 0.5mm or more, you can try to squeeze the plastic in the direction of bigger diameter, to alter the shape a bit. If iscorama was stored on the side it could be warped that way. It sounds a bit barbaric to squeeze the plastic, but it's the issue some of my customers had and it help them. Just be gentle. One person measured the tolerance of their rama and the difference in diameters was 1.2mm which is crazy – that polymer really does not age well, plus if the lens was laying in a box on it's side for 50 years it shows too. Also Germans chose a material that simply cannot have good tolerances even in theory – I have several iscoramas, some have nameplates that are exactly 72mm, but some have it at 72.8, and some at 71.2 – this is crazy, and some of them don't even screw into standard metal filters, simply because they're too big. Maxiscope was my attempt to fix this issue for good, as it's a full metal body that replaces plastic, so you don't have to rely on tolerances and issues of the plastic body anymore. Hope this helps.

To everyone who's still watching this thread – here's my progress: I've bought a Fladners and blackmagic I/O and graded the shot above myself, using Hunger Games stills as references. Here's the last version, and I'd love to know what you guys think.

Thanks, you're always a great help! I have just bought a used FSI I found for a decent price.

Do you know where I can set the gamut in camera on my F3? I could hire a colorist, because I don’t know how things work, or I cold try and understand how things work, and then make a sober decision. Not to say I didn’t reach ot to colorists. I did. Wanted to hire someone, but one of the candidates pointed out that my grade can actually look good, but on my screen exclusively. So he said that even if I hire him and he grades to taste, on my monitor and in my environment it will still look off, or different or even worse then what I currently have. So I’ve invested ina good monitor and decent calibration for now and am trying to understand the cam and it’s footage better.

Hey guys! I am looking for a 1920x1080 or 1920x1200 panel and I have $1000 max. I'm OK buying a used monitor. I will connect it to Ultra Studio Mini Monitor. The footage I'm working with is actually not HD (1440p or 4k), but as far as I know Ultra Studio Mini Monitor can only output HD. I do have another display to check sharpness, etc (5k iMac), so I'm fine if the footage is interpolated, so maybe it's ok to get say a 1440p monitor and output HD to it from Davinci? I work in Resolve Studio and my main delivery is youtube. I have i1 probe and would use CalMan software to calibrate the monitor. I will use it in sRGB or REC709. Great bonus would be if the monitor can store the 3D LUT. I need to buy a monitor ASAP for a pending project, but am afraid I am going to do a stupid thing and in a hurry will buy an outdated tech or just a bad panel in general. So I think I'm looking at 8bit or 8bit+frc panels that can store 3D luts. There's SONY 2110W that someone recommended that is $700 but it's a TFT panel and I found threads dating back to 2012 talking about this monitor, so it feels like a pretty outdated tech. Maybe there's something solid someone can recommend?

Thank you Geoff! Someone in one of these topics mentioned that S-gamut was not around when F3 launched, and that it's Rec709. I have no slightest idea how to confirm this.

First of all I want to thank everyone for their help, you guys are amazing. Lomos OKS cine primes from 1970s with Iscorama 36 with Proxiscope rehousing (my own product, there should be a thread somewhere on this forum about it). YES! THANK YOU! THANK YOU! Doing this de-logged the footage nicely, and the gamma looks like proper S-log now. Now I only need to figure out what color space it's in. As it was pointed out earlier in this thread, s-gamut was not around when the F3 was released. Googling "Sony F3 color gamut" did not result in anything. Does anyone have an idea what it might be? Rec709? And to top it off, here's a snapshot of my current grading. https://www.dropbox.com/s/qcr93l0wq2o49o4/Screenshot 2018-03-15 17.35.52.png?dl=0 If anyone has any suggestions I'd really appreciate them. I was going for a moody feel here. Someone told me it's way to blue and I'm not sure now.

The whole project is three locations, I've included one snippet of each in this folder https://www.dropbox.com/sh/hea92wpkq082gcp/AACjhU7POHwjvMgFmKSaifZRa?dl=0

Summoning the gurus back to this thread. @CineAlta @BenEricson @IronFilm @Dogtown I have shot my first project on the F3 and BMVA combo. It has it's quirks, but I liked it, especially for the money. I've shot the whole thing in S-log, and recorded to BMVA in Prores. Out of camera footage looks lovely, but when I try to grade it, I'm struggling more then I was with the footage from blackmagic cams I've owned. I've talked to a colorist and they suggested I do a color space transform to translate Slog into Cineon or LogC and grade that using some film print emulation. This is where I've stumbled upon problems. When I try to do color space transform, the footage appears to be NOT Slog, but Gamma 2.4. Colors appear to be not S Gamut, but Rec709. So my question is – does the use of BMVA affect the output of F3? Is the footage being interpreted from Slog into Gamma 2.4 and "baked-in" the ProRes files? What am I missing?

Some sexy pictures from Proxiscope user.

This is interesting, will have to test myself though to see whether I prefer the S-log mode or S-log PP, but I REALLY appreciate the tip, thanks!

No, it only outputs 60i that way.