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How much more technical? hahahaha.. just wait! I liked your video - it looked vintage in both the colours as well as lens. Interestingly I didn't spot the Helios despite having done lots of lens comparisons and owning two of them myself! Great stuff! You absolutely win my vote for Most Off The Wall Choice!! I am going to claim that I had the thought of a webcam running to a laptop, but not with an anamorphic adapter! and of course, I only thought about it, you did it, so big credit to you! If only you'd pummelled the image to death in Resolve like I did!! You did well on the IQ - fourth place well earned! Plus you were the only person to include a Dalek, so special bonus points for that!! I voted for you in the IQ category - excellent choice. This has great IQ, nice colours and contrast, and getting that SOOC is impressive! Nice!! These old cameras are still pretty good! I like it! Of course, I don't own a GH2 and wouldn't buy one so would keep my current strategy of using the cheapest camera on ebay and grading it within an inch of its life! I am hatching plans for how we can do this again in some way. I have an action camera I don't want, so maybe the rule will be "everyone must enter this competition because if you don't I'll mail you this action camera" ???

I'll write up what I did in case it's useful to anyone. Watch this space

Congrats to the winners - well deserved! I figured I would lose the competition so would have some fun with it, so went very very budget. I also wanted to see how far I could 'improve' the footage in Resolve. Camera #1: Fujifilm J20 Point and shoot - 2009 - 640x480 30p (final video was cropped to 16:9) Price is about $15-30 on ebay (mine was purchased by my wife when new, so has been sitting in a drawer for about a decade) Final video: Unprocessed footage: Camera #2: Fake action camera It claims 1080p, but is FAKE and shoots the worst 640x480 30p I have ever seen (final video was cropped to 16:9) Price was AU$17 brand new on ebay (which included free shipping across Australia - about 5000kms) Final video: Unprocessed footage: Camera #3 was going to be a D-Mount lens on my old GoPro, but sadly didn't survive the modifications..

I think I have vague memories from watching those videos the first time around, great stuff. Amusingly you covered the only two mounts with a shorter flange distance listed on this reference list of mounts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flange_focal_distance Interesting. I'd almost be tempted to turn everything b&w, but if half the image was pink I think I'd probably have my decision made for me! There is the issue of IR cut filters being required and only installed on some lenses and not others, so that's something to watch for I believe. Of course, who knows what could be done in Resolve to counteract such a thing. You'd be amazed how accurately you can match cameras with a colour chart, the right approach and a couple of minutes.

Considering that D-Mount has a crop factor of something like 4.4 and a very short flange distance, there's hardly anything you can use these lenses on, so something has to give. If we sacrifice the idea of flange distance and accept the fact we're going to have to hack something up, then we can first focus on crop factor, and this leads us to 1/1.7" and smaller sensors, which are typically found in phones, pocket cameras, and action cameras. I really like the idea of fitting a cine lens to an action camera, so I just ordered an SJ4000 from ebay, and will follow in the footsteps of those who have done lens swaps on them. The crop factor on the SJCAM SJ4000 is reportedly 5.7, so my 13mm lens would be a 74mm F11 lens, quite a nice focal length I think. The challenge will be to hack into the camera to make room for the mount. Wish me luck - this will be my second attempt. The first one was for the $200 camera challenge and turned my old GoPro into a paperweight.... I really like the idea of having a small auto-everything camera with a nice lens that can be used to give a bit of soul to the image. @mercer and I have spoken at length about minimalism and the allure of one-camera-one-lens filmmaking, and assuming I don't trash another camera, this is my intent. Imagine having a camera that isn't much bigger than a couple of boxes of matches that shoots 1080p with a fixed focal length. The focus becomes content and style, rather than IQ and tech. Thanks! Nice CZ The dull/hazy/bright notations are on the aperture ring, and correspond to the summer/winter points, so are a cheat for exposure, kind of like the Sunny 16 rule. But I'm sure that the aperture will also be a special effects control too

Some time ago I accidentally bought this bad boy... It's a Cine-NIKKOR-C 13mm F1.9 Nipon Kogaku Japan D-Mount cine lens. It's pictured above sitting on the hot-shoe of my GH5 for scale. Ironically, with all the lenses I've bought thus far, it's the only Cine lens I own, and it's the only lens I own that I haven't ever used - I have no idea what its images look like. I've hatched several plans to mount it and see what it's like but I've never actually carried any of them through. This thread is to kind-of publicly shame myself into actually doing something about this, but I thought it might be of interest to others as well, as I kind of see D-mount lenses as maybe being the most under-utilised vintage lens mount system, especially considering they were all cine lenses. Of course, I'm under no illusions that these will be the best lenses ever, but they must have been pretty good - even 8mm film was still film, after all. Anyone else interested in D-Mount lenses? anyone shoot with them?

Nice use of completely related clip art! ??? I also have no love for iTunes, but for me whatever it is will have to sync apps and music to my iPhone, so how the hell will I do that if they take out iTunes?

I bought a used dongle from ebay from before the price drop and it's fine. Think of it like buying anything electronic from ebay that costs a few hundred dollars... check sellers reputation, reason why they'd be selling such a thing, other items for sale, etc.

A FF version would be very interesting indeed, and now we have the S35 6K version it seems much more possible than previously. @androidlad if this were part of BMs plans, is there any likely sensor they would use, or are there simply too many to be able to predict? (I have no idea about such things). If we are able to make a prediction it might give us clues as to what kind of feature-set it might have perhaps? A FF P8K perhaps? Do we know if there's a change in the colour science from P4K to P6K? or maybe sensor / sensor stack related?

well, not sure why I tagged you instead of the OP. anyway, enjoy your P4K

This is particularly interesting to me considering that I'd love to know more about how to grade GH5 footage to look more like film. Is there any other information you can share about what the colourist said or did to the GH5 footage? Edit: I must say that the 4K RAW cameras have a smooth and maybe "glossy" look to them that previous cameras haven't had.

A few thoughts: You're choosing between directional mics and omni-directional mics. If you're after a general ambience then you want omni mics. if you're going for omni mics then test out the quality of your cameras internal mics - they might be good enough for your purposes, and they may not. I decided I wanted both directional audio (so I can hear what i'm seeing and not hear the people behind me bitching about whatever - true story) so I use a Rode VMP+ for that, and when I remember to do it, I just pull out the Rode and record using the in-built mics. I was looking at expensive stereo mics and did a test of my cameras mics and compared it to recordings from the expensive mics and decided that for my purposes (where I'll likely have music mixed with ambience) the in-built ones are good enough. Of course, my challenge is that I just forget to record ambience, so I tend to just use the directional audio clips from the Rode and if those aren't ideal then I just pinch other bits of audio from other clips that didn't make the edit.

LOL, sorry! I should also add that I really like the tonality. I can't remember if I've said this before, but there's a certain look in B&W images where the tones have a kind of quality that makes them feel like they're colours, even though they're completely (mathematically!) monochrome. I don't see colours in the images, so its not synaesthesia, but it's definitely something. and this image has some of that going on

As someone who has shot with a range of budget cameras (including GoPro/iPhone/point-and-shoots/etc) and put many many hours and money into learning to colour grade, I fundamentally disagree with this. The really expensive cameras with great colour give an image that you can just apply some contrast to and they look fantastic, but the worse the colour from the camera the harder it is to get a good grade out of them. Of course, it's not impossible to do so, but you have to be highly skilled, lucky, or both to get that great result. The fantastic grade on that short from the Micro has much to do with the camera, even if it was just that the camera wasn't creating an almost impossible task for the film-maker.

That is probably the nicest frame you've posted so far... I don't know how much is the lens and how much is composition, gesture/expression, lighting, or anything else, but that is truly well done!

If I owned a RED then I would be very tempted to look down on the rest of the world with comical interest in what the 'little people' who 'are playing at film-making' and aren't serious because they didn't sell their house/car/wife to afford a 'real camera' and I would assume that because the P6K didn't impact the lofty place that I exhibit that it doesn't have any real impact on anyone else except the other cameras that play in the shallow end. Of course, I don't own a RED and I don't view the world in that way, so I would beg to differ. I think there's loads of people who shoot Canon and have invested in EF mount lenses, and who would love to record RAW but can't afford a C200, and this would be hugely interesting to them. But in reality, I have a camera with fantastic IBIS and so I look down from the lofty place of cinematic hand-held film-making watching all these suckers slug around their tripods and huge camera rigs wishing deeply that they could leave the house without a boot full of equipment and not produce a video that has so much hand shake it looks like an 8mm home video. Ah, but seriously folks... I'll be here all week! ???

I know what you're saying @leslie and your questions are valid. The way I see it is that it's about how many bits are allocated per stop across the full dynamic range of the camera, and how much of the dynamic range of the camera is captured and how much of it is clipped. Mostly this isn't discussed because in most cameras the non-log formats the full dynamic range of the sensor isn't output, so you clip highlights (and maybe crush shadows). People generally care about getting the most DR so shoot the profile with the most DR, which used to always be the log profile. There's an interesting thing with the Canon XC10 though - it shoots 8-bit and has various profiles including C-Log / WideDR / etc. The interesting thing about the XC10 is that it keeps the full DR of the camera even in the 'normal' profile. What is different is the distribution of bits across each stop of DR. In the normal mode the number of bits in the highlights and the shadows is a lot less than the bits dedicated to the mid-tones, which are typically where we put sensitive things like skin-tones. This makes it interesting because you're not expanding out the mids in things like skin tones as much as you would if you have a log profile, and considering that both log and normal modes were restricted to 8-bit that makes a difference. One of the reasons people generally avoid 8-bit log profiles is that by the time you expand out the mid-tones of the image (by adding contrast) you are exposing weaknesses of the codec in the most sensitive parts of the image (skin-tones). To my mind the goal is to get enough DR and to get enough bits in each stop of DR so that your image is robust and can be graded easily to give a desirable result. I really noticed this moving from the 8-bit C-Log on the XC10 to the 10-bit HLG on the GH5, the 10-bit files are so much more robust in post. In terms of what matters for you, I'd say that you'd have to just try out the modes and compare them. Cameras are all different and the proof is in the pudding, so they say.

I must say that this was fun and has renewed my enthusiasm for the 3-hour 1-minute challenge. One aspect of this that I really like was that there is a budget limit, so instead of not entering because of worrying you'll get judged because you don't own the nicest cameras/lenses it kind of gives everyone an excuse to not create the best video anyone has ever seen. I like the idea of a film challenge where there is a restriction on equipment to get people over the perfectionist tendencies to not release because it's not good enough. Edit: Maybe a "shoot with the worst camera you own" competition might work? For under $200?? That'll be the day! It probably costs more than $200 in cables just to get a functioning rig!!

Just ordered the Peak Design Capture as recommended by @pryde so we'll see how that goes. Likely put it on the front strap of my day-pack and have the Sony X3000 action camera mounted on it. During travel legs I'll have quick access to the X3000 and when I'm at location I can easily swap between X3000 and GH5 as required. My trip is approaching, so starting to get excited ???

Cool thread and nice write-up. We have to remember that some of us are artists, and imperfection and restrictions and limitations are often fuel for that creativity, and that 'better' is a word that should be taken in context of what we are trying to achieve. Best of luck to those who are making magic with old tech and aren't seduced by numbers.

Voted. I must say that the ones I voted for really were well done and the one I picked for best image quality was also on my shortlist for best cinematography. As cheesy as it sounds, well done to everyone - finishing a project and then sharing it publicly takes some effort and a bit of bravery, so well done to all who entered.

I recall seeing a series of videos on modifying the Helios lenses to fake anamorphics with the oval aperture and fishing line tricks. I think there was talk about colouring the fishing line too. Maybe searching for Helios (or the other Russian lens brands?) plus fake anamorphic will yield results?

Well, I wasn't thinking that, but since you're offering! ???

Price looks similar to Samyang 85/1.4 - any idea how they compare?

Have we seen test images and overall IQ?