Jay60p

For the low budget videographers among us: a ZOOM LENS report. On the X-T3 the Fuji zooms have problems with video shooting, including exposure stepping and focus-by-wire jumpyness that is not a problem with stills. So I thought I'd report on a recent Nikon zoom I found to work around these issues. The Nikkor AF 28-85 f3.5-4.5 (1986-1999) is a great manual zoom/manual aperture ring lens to use on the X-T3. It is extremely affordable, I picked up a clean one in a local camera shop for $50, and mounted it with the $20 fotodiox adapter. It is a full frame SLR lens. It is PARFOCAL, the focus does not stray as you zoom in & out. I found the change in brightness as you zoom to be often unnoticeable unless you are watching for it, this really surprised me. f3.5 to 4.5 is less than a stop of change, about 2/3rds of a stop? And most important, the zoom ring is smooth. Often these Nikon zooms are slightly sticky, especially when trying to turn the zoom ring very slowly for a cinematic shot. The focus ring has a good amount of smooth travel for easy manual focus. Finally, the sharpness of this lens is excellent, compares to the 18-55 fuji kit lens. With some pixel peeping I can see a little CA color fringing at the edges, which you would expect for a vintage lens without in-camera digital corrections. There is a glowing review of this lens by Ken Rockwell online. I have another Nikon zoom which is not usable (24-85mm F2.8-4) from 2001, due to a sticky zoom ring, plus a manual focus ring which has a very short travel and is difficult for fine focusing at distances nearing infinity. Some zooms may have become sticky over years of continous use, keep in mind when looking in ebay etc. Vintage SLR zooms are often very parfocal, I also have two Canon FD zooms that hold focus as well, 35-70 f4 and 70-210 f4. I used the 35-70 for 30 years on my SLR and the zoom ring is still smooth. So for $70 you can get an excellent Nikkor 3:1 full frame zoom, especially if you don't have $3000-4000 for an excellent Fujinon 3:1 Cinema zoom. I am posting here rather than in the LENS forum because the Sony & Panasonic camera zooms may not have the same issues as Fuji.

In the GFX 100 video, does auto ISO exposure have the same ugly 1/3 stop quantum jumps as the X-T3?

Excellent. Thank you.

Well, the 2018 Mac Mini i5 has been working fine for me for a year, no timeline stuttering and fast export times here. So what I expect is ... it will work again today. I don't use an external GPU. I thought I'd need to add more memory, but so far I don't. Just needed to add a big external hard drive. I only use the internal SSD for system and apps. Premiere seems to work fine in the 2019 iMacs too, according to Anaconda in a previous post. I haven't tried one. I'm not part of a team so I'm not sure what you mean there. I'd assume a team would be a group of professionals who would be using $5,000 systems and don't need recommendations from us! The amazing thing is I can do everything I want in 4K video on a $1,000 mini. I don't quite understand what you're saying besides bashing Macs. What hardware are you using that works for you?

Correction, I meant "Better Quality" mode. And I just tested the longGOP at 29.97 HEVC 400mbps, and that also plays back smoothly in "Better Quality" full resolution mode, a compression I've never used before. So no problems with 29.97 HEVC at any compression. It's the 59.94 fps HEVC that needs the "Better Performance" mode in the FCPX viewer.

I just tried this on the X-T3 and Final Cut Pro on my Mac Mini i5. Switch to FCPX and your problems are solved. Unless you are not using an X-T3 there is only .... "* All Intra with following settings. DCI4K/4K 29.97p/25p/24p/23.98p 400Mbps Full HD(2048×1080)/Full HD(1920×1080) 59.94p/50p/29.97p/25p/24p/23.98p　200Mbps (direct quote from Fuji website). I just shot long slow pans with X-t3 at DCI 4096x2160, 29.97fps, 409.35 Mbits/s H265 HEVC 10bit Full Range PCM 24bit Stereo 48000hz (reported in Quicktime player on Mac Mini) Both Quicktime Player and FCPX Viewer play this smoothly, and FCPX viewer will play this back in "Better Performance" mode (thats at full resolution) smoothly with no skipping or stutter. That's even better performance than longGOP playback.

From your post it appears Premiere & Resolve struggle with H265 on a Mac. Why spend so much on a Mac and not try Final Cut Pro X? Are you avoiding Final Cut Pro X because of the magnetic timeline? I started with Final Cut 3, and hated the new X version at first. But to do 4K video I tried it again, gradually learned how to use it, with the occasional temporary frustration. Now it is second nature. Thank god for searchable PDF manuals.

Yes. I've used a stock Mac Mini i5, 8GB ram for a year editing 4K60p H265 HEVC 10bit 200mb/s in Final Cut Pro without transcoding. For a single track of video the playback is smooth with the viewer's "View Quality" setting at "Better Performance". This slightly reduces the resolution of the playback display but at 4K is still a great picture to edit with. And as soon as you stop or pause playback it refreshes to full res. Set at "Better Quality" you get full resolution playback in the viewer, but the frame rate drops to maybe 15fps. Still, playback does not stall and the audio keeps up in sync without dropouts. Adding an effect may stall playback, but color adjustments (curves & color wheels) and audio equalization usually will not. If you are stacking layers of shots for keying, superimpositions, etc then you would want to transcode from H265. You need the latest Mac OS, Catalina for the correct handling of H265, the previous Mojave had a problem that crushed the blacks & whites of HEVC.

Vario Switar continued: And now for the limitations to this setup... 1) The 18mm wide view is about equivalent to a 30mm APS-C lens, or about 55mm FF 35mm equivalent, since this 18mm is not covering the entire sensor. So it's more like a "normal to telephoto" zoom. 2) Closest focus is about 5 feet. 3) The live view in the finder shows the image circle surrounded by black and is hard to judge the true edges of the (to be) cropped 1080 frame. You'd probably want to mask off the cropped image on the LCD with tape. 5) I don't actually use it mounted as in the pictures above. I put the camera on an aluminum plate that sets the camera farther back, and has an adjustable lens supporting screw that comes up under & just before the zoom ring that makes the setup much more stable and balanced. I mainly made that plate for supporting long Canon FD zoom lenses. The advantages of this setup (for 2K) over still camera zoom lenses is the constant aperture throughout the zoom, the lack of exposure stepping and focus shifting because the lens is not electronically focused & zoomed "by wire", and the nearly 5:1 zoom ratio (X-T3 kit lens is 3:1) . And for me it was a free left-over from my Bolex days. It's so cool to be able to use that lens again.

I have used the 1.18 crop to advantage with a C mount adapter, for 2K. Using a Vario-Switar zoom 18-86 f2.5 from a Bolex 16mm camera, you can shoot 4K60p and edit in a 1080 60p timeline in Final Cut Pro well within the image circle (set "Spacial Conform" to NONE). I usually reduce the scale to about 0.84 before is see vignetting, to get the widest view. This is a H16 RX lens, but I find no focus problems from the RX adjustment for the Bolex viewfinder prism. Its very sharp at mid apertures throughout the nearly 5:1 zoom range. The version of this lens I have is one of the early ones without the electric eye & automatic aperture so it has a smaller projection coming off the side with the Bolex trigger, so it is not a problem mounting this on the X-T3.

Thats a great line! OK, using the X-T3 without a lot of fiddling with settings...its not as bad as it sounds. Here's a way to grab the camera and start shooting quickly with manual exposure & focus to avoid stepping/hunting: Ahead of time, have the Shutter speed set at 1/60 (for 60p), the auto focus lever at S, the Fuji lens at A (auto), and ISO set at A (auto). Turn on camera, compose shot, hit AE-L button on camera back with thumb (locks exposure), press shutter button to start recording (does a quick one-time auto focus). So that is just two quick button presses. The camera sets the aperture and ISO and focus once and then doesn't change it during the rest of the shot. Outdoors, the depth of field is deep enough to keep a reasonable distance in focus since you typically end up with a F stop over f11. What you can't do is zoom up, the lens loses its original focus point and your depth of field disappears. Indoors, in low light the auto focus C, continous, should actually work better than outdoors. From the postings I've seen, people report the hunting problem develops mostly above f8. I use my widest angle lenses indoors for depth of field without auto focus. (I have the 18-55 kit lens, and the 10-24mm wide zoom which I love). Hopefully, this auto focus hunting will be fixed in the next firmware uptdate and this will be old news.

I know most of the people posting here do this for a living and 30p is probably the standard. I do this because I love it, and have a family with two teenagers that give me a run & gun challenge all the time. But now that I've seen 4k60 versus 4k30 with the X-T3, I won't go with less than 4k60. And Canon, Nikon, and Sony don't have it for anywheres near the Fuji's price. The Panasonic GH5 is close, and the Pocket Cinema camera is just too specialized. This will change in the near future of course. I'm waiting to see what the Fuji X-H2 will do.

Do you set one exposure before shooting and stick to it through the shot? Or do you manually adjust exposure while you are shooting? I'm often moving around a scene with drastically different light levels. Changing aperture or ISO during shooting is visible as ugly jumping steps, and that's fine if you can cut the shot in two and remove it. Otherwise moving from a dark area to bright one, in a continous shot, needs a smooth auto or manual exposure adjustment. With the X-T3 I stick to one exposure. So sometimes I do a gradual brightness adjustment in Final Cut Pro, a "video animation" with keyframes that you set manually so it changes smoothly over time. But this is extra work and can degrade the video quality, so I avoid drastic light level changes within shots. This is not necessary with camcorders. I havn't used the Panasonic G5, does that do smooth auto exposure? (At the time I bought the Fuji, the Panasonic with a zoom lens was an extra $1000, but now it has come down.) I'm talking 4K 60p here.

YES! After using camcorders from Sony & Canon for the last 25 years, switching to the X-T3 for video was a bit of a shock. I liked the colors in my Canon Vixia from 2012, and if you are happy with 1080 60p there is quite a few camcorders from $200 to $800 to use in those situations. They have smaller sensors whose deeper depth of field reduces visible focus hunting, smooth auto exposure, good image stabilization, have 20:1 (!) optical POWERED ZOOM that stay in focus (X-t3 kit zoom 3:1 not powered, not parfocal, exposure stepping. Even the $3,000 cinema zoom is only 3:1, no auto focus, no power zoom). And they can fit in a big pocket. Checking B&H I see the Canon G21 is on sale till Oct 31. If I didn't have a camcorder already I'd consider that for family run & gun.

ISO stepping is still there on the X-T3. It is my #1 major problem with this camera, I saw it within a minute of powering up my new camera and almost decided to return it there and then. I don't understand why I don't see online reviews complaining about this. So why didn't I return it? I wanted: 1) 4K 60p Video and 2) beautiful 6K stills and 3) interchangeable lenses and 4) built-in time lapse & slow motion. And the video quality on this is just so incredible. The other 4K60 camera alternatives are too expensive, or had other problems that I don't want to work around. And I don't use 24p or 30p. So I use manual exposure for video. I just got used to it. FUJI, HERE'S MY 2 CENT SOLUTION: If Fuji doubled the ISO stepping to 6 or 8 or more steps per stop for video, it would become small enough to be acceptable. (Firmware Update?) I don't need auto aperture (I have a lot of 70's & 80's glass & adapters), and I won't use auto shutter speed for video. About other opinions: I've seen a youtube where the contrast in the video was set very low, and the stepping was not obvious. I like decent contrast in my videos. #2 major problem: occasional auto focus hunting, so I use manual focus. I'm used to manual focus, I started with Bolex 16mm, and a Canon 35mm SLR. (#3 problem: no IBIS. My usual solution: software stabilization in Final Cut Pro or Premiere. To smooth most handheld motion, Just click the stabilization box. Its magic.) Despite the above, for the past year my X-T3 has been a blast and inspired me to all sorts of new video experimentation. It's just so cool.

I'm happy to report the "crushed blacks" problem with X-T3 H265 files on 2018 Mac Mini (with T2) has been fixed in OSX Catalina. I am back to editing HEVC from X-T3 natively in Final Cut Pro. I am using a stock Mac Mini i5 with only 8GB memory and get smooth playback with the viewer set to "better performance". In Catalina the scopes show the lowest black levels being set at Zero IRE or above, whereas in Mojave the blacks were actually going down to about -10 IRE and but getting cut off at Zero IRE. (This was only a problem on Macs with T2 chip?) No need to transcode to ProRes and reset the black levels manually anymore!

PROBLEM SOLVED IN OSX CATALINA I had this problem with the 2018 Mac Mini and OSX Mojave. Fuji's HEVC "full range" was being read as "legal range" which cut off the lower blacks and highest whites, even in Quicktime player as well as Final Cut Pro. Video scopes in Final Cut showed waveforms getting cut off at zero level which actually were going down to about -70 ... crushed blacks. Just installed the new OSX Catalina and the problem is gone! Video scopes show all black levels now being set at zero and above without clipping. X-T3 video looks beautiful. I am back to editing the 4k 60p 10bit HEVC files from the X-T3 natively without needing to transcode to anything else. I get smooth playback with the viewing set to "better performance". I am using a stock Mac Mini i5 and so far only 8GB memory has been no problem (running only Final Cut). What a relief!