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Personally I don't like the aesthetic of these lenses at all, the Helios or this one, anything with directional distortions in the corners (either blurring around the centre or towards it) but I think it's different for stills photographers as that's a different vibe. But it's a taste thing and there are no wrong answers, so... What would you shoot with such a lens?

For those shooting with the 5K 4:3 mode who crop the image in post, how do you set framing properly? I know there are guide-lines that you can put up on the display, but they're so feint that my brain completely ignores them, and so I instinctively frame up in the 4:3 view and then have difficulty cropping in post because I filled the whole frame. I don't want to put tape on the screen, and can't put it on the viewfinder (which I use a lot). Is there a hidden setting somewhere that I'm not aware of that shows stronger framing guidelines, or better yet, actually blacks out the top/bottom parts of the frame to only show the aspect ratio you set? Thanks!

and now for something completely different... Just in case the Helios was too modern and soul-less for you! ???

I agree, and this is why I posted these videos... People on here seem to be perpetually confused: Canon has terrible everything, how are they still selling anything, they can't be selling anything, they're definitely not selling anything, they're doomed The future of cinema is FF P6K has EF mount, why on earth would they do that, it doesn't work for me and my preferences That Canon shooter is now interested in P6K - why didn't they love the P4K with it's MFT mount and its tiny MFT sensor Maybe the thing that is missing from the conversation is that Canon sells plenty of cameras, there are plenty of people with EF lens collections, and the EF mount was a good commercial decision to attract customers from a different segment of the market. What's surprising to me that it's surprising to anyone else.

Yeah, I find that it's either you pay a premium to Apple to make all your decisions for you, or you pay the normal amount to someone else and then you can do (almost) whatever you want but the catch is that you need to learn how everything works first. I was a computer technician for about a decade and it was kind of like you bought 90% of a working system from various manufacturers and had to figure out the remaining 10% of it yourself. My dad is very technical and concerned with privacy so doesn't use Microsoft or Apple, and uses Linux and after being forced to get a smartphone (because "there's an app for that" turned into "there's ONLY an app for that") and now runs Android in a secure little bubble inside a linux installation. It's free and secure and all he had to do was spend about a year figuring it all out and several hours a week being his own systems administrator and troubleshooting things that just break for whatever reason. No model is great, so I just think about it like it's pick the least worst and get on with your life. I use it on my Mac to put music onto my iPhone. I also use it to play music on my Mac because I had to go to all the trouble of creating all the playlists for my phone anyway. It's also good for backing up your phone.

Damn, that is nice... almost makes me want to get one. Almost.... Your screenshots in the lenses thread say otherwise. They also tell me you have perseverance, which might matter more than anything else in the end Skill is the most expensive thing to acquire - it costs time (which isn't something you can get more of) and effort (which is limited) and humility (which might be the most scarce element on earth...). If only it wasn't so!!

For anyone who might be curious what a Canon shooter would think of such a camera (and why BM might have gone EF mount) then check out Matti. and his review.... TLDR - he loves it and is completely blown away with the footage. He's bothered by the battery life and screen and usual stuff, but completely excuses it considering the cost. He also mentioned that it's the first BM camera he'd recommend to other people.

Does anyone have footage of a beach covered in trash? My sister is starting a social enterprise dedicated to help businesses reduce waste (ideally to zero waste) and is still pulling together PR materials. She's funding it all herself and basically has no money, and asked me if I had any, but I don't, and the beaches around where I live are all cleaned regularly. If anyone could help then that would be great, thanks

Hey yeah.. ??? I never noticed that. When did that change??

Yeah, Canon isn't the best for DR unfortunately. Of course, if you're in controlled conditions then you can just light differently, or even just use reflectors to fill in shadow areas etc.

Ah, ok. I've seen adapters that are just threaded with D-mount on the inside and C-mount on the outside, but the description commented that they didn't compensate for the flange distance, so depending on how wide the D-mount lens is, because if the lens is wider than the inside of a C-mount then it won't fit and you'll lose infinity focus (and maybe a lot of middle-focus too). The D-mount I have fits inside a C-mount but only just. I did a temporary mount on my GF3 with a MFT to C-mount adapter and just applied a few layers of paper to the outside of the lens to fit inside the C-mount threads. It created a nice little image circle in the middle but when I zoomed it seemed to be a fairly standard lens, with reasonable performance wide-open and then getting sharper when stopped down a bit. You'd have to focus pretty closely to get any bokeh though, so f1.9 isn't as fast as it seems.

Well, you're very punny today!! ???

Wow - I looked at these on ebay and IIRC couldn't find anything within the price limit. I liked the look of your footage - soft but in an organic kind of way. I also liked your image because it was soft in an organic kind of way, and the colours were definitely very nice. It's hard to tell from YT but it looks like this image would respond well to colour grading if you were so inclined too.

I am.. I didn't go for one because 1) they're EXPENSIVE!!! and 2) I think they're C-mount only? The problem with D-mount is the flange distance is so much less than C-mount, you have to hack parts of the camera out to be able to put the lens close enough. I had a quick scan of their site and it looks like they only talk about c-mount and m12 lenses, but maybe I missed something?

No wonder it's been so cold in the mornings... I set my lenses wrong!

Here's my write-up on how I shot and processed my entries. I created a separate thread in case it turns into a grading discussion In a way I used this competition to test a couple of theories and to try a couple of things I've had in the back of my mind too. Trying to modify an action camera with a better lens has been on my radar for some time now

Turn this: Into this! I entered two terrible quality cameras in the $200 camera challenge and somehow didn't come last, so here's what I learned. In case it's useful to someone Shooting: Low quality cameras have poor codecs and low bitrates, which typically have trouble with a lot of movement. Therefore I used a tripod for every shot instead of hand-holding. This also gives you more options for temporal NR in post too. Go for the 180 shutter by either using an ND or by simply filming in low light. How can you tell if it's 180 shutter? Wave your hand in front of it and see how streaky it is. or alternatively, if your camera is very low resolution and subjects aren't moving too much, then the sheer size of the pixels will completely obscure whatever shutter angle you have! Win!! In post: Edit in your desired output resolution, not the one you shot in.. dodgy 4K image? Output in 8K today! Think about converting to black and white. This gives you 4 times the effective resolution!! Camera only shoots 30p? Excellent - conform to 24p in post and get slow motion for free!! Most NLEs can slow audio slightly too, so if it works for the vibe of your project then go with it. Digital compression is awful and a give-away you're not shooting RAW or film, so is over-sharpening that you can't turn off. Therefore, blur the image in post. You might want to consider blurring only the edges of things, and you should experiment with blur size and blur strength too. I typically find a sharp diagonal line and blur until it looks like a straight line instead of a jaggy digital mess. Use noise reduction, both spatial and temporal. It will make the image blurry, but that's also what you want because of above, so go nuts. The image might look smooth, but we'll add grain later, so don't worry about it. My footage had a bunch of compression artefacts that flickered on and off on each alternate frame and was very distracting (and awful). De-flicker plugins can work wonders. Just play with the types and presets until it's gone. Colour will probably be awful, so either make it black and white (which also gets around the awful coloured fringing) or desaturate heavily. You can also do heavy chroma NR to get rid of colour flickering. Also feel free to use advanced colour controls such as Hue vs Hue to get rid of nasty colours, or use masks to selectively desaturate colours you don't like. Get rid of digital looking clipped highlights by controlling and artificial highlight rolloff via curves. Someone complimented me on the highlight rolloff, which was totally created in post. Use music, pick your shots well, and try and distract from IQ by using content, composition, lighting, and other 'tricks' ??? Can't afford a nice vintage lens or camera has a fixed lens? Add halation by masking only the brightest parts of the image, adding a big blur, then put over the top of the image at a low opacity. Add grain to finish it off. Film has grain and film is awesome, so therefore.... plus, YT kills grain and will put heavy bands on smooth areas so you really should add some. I recommend doing a grain test video with different strengths so you can see what YT does it various amounts of it. It takes more than you think to show up in YT, a LOT more. Here is the curve that gives that highlight rolloff and deep shadows.... Here's another before/after image. and here's my reveal post with the final and SOOC videos: Hopefully that's useful to someone! Feel free to ask questions and I still think I can make a P4K look like a BMMCC or BMPCCv1 so if you have both and can shoot something with both then let me know.....

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?