FILMCONVERT for the Samsung NX1

[M Carter]

I've just started playing with Canon FL glass - mid 1960's; they haven't taken off in price like other lenses because they can't mount on Canon with infinity focus; but the NX with its tiny flange focal distance has made glassless adapters available. These are solid metal little tanks and mechanically quite simple, easy to open up and clean but also very tough workhorses. Wondering how those older coatings will render.

They have very few 1.8 and faster lenses, probably due to the technology at the time; there's a 58 1.2 and a 50 1.4 (pricey but not insane, cheaper than similar Nikkor primes), the 85 1.8 has a cultish following. I just scored a mint 19mm 3.5R which is "said to be" pretty amazing as far as distortion and optics go (been wanting a nice flat wide for some time and Canon claimed "less than 1%" back in the day, we'll see). Most reviews I've read of FL glass mention sharpness increases at F4 or so, but with the NX1, I'm shooting wide open much more than in the past with my Nikkors; you still get plenty of sharpness but there's a really nice contrast drop and high-key stuff gets a really lovely diffuse look to out of focus highlights (speaking of the Nikkors, not the FL - but my gut feeling is the NX sensor makes many lenses or f-stops that were considered so-so worth a 2nd look, especially for beauty, music vids, artsy editorial-style looks, or docs where you want to add some special sauce beyond straight reality).

I need to get someone with nice skin when I have some testing time, but just walking around the studio and the yard, I've been intrigued. They seem to render greens and cooler colors with a very neat look. Only have a 50 and a 35 so far (waiting on the 19) that I've used for B&W film for some time now (still have a working darkroom and I print often) but hopefully I'll post some serious tests before long.

Check this out - Nikkor 28-70 2.8, wide open, probably at 60mm or so and about 500 ISO (WHY NO META DATA SAMSUNG?????); gig was shooting some pickup shots at an inner city grocer, short doc about a food-desert program. One of the directors showed up and we grabbed an interview, just using the store's ceiling fluorescents, manually white balanced through an 82A to warm it a bit. Just added levels to the blacks in photoshop for this grab, but I'm still way impressed with the sensor).

[kidzrevil]

I've just started playing with Canon FL glass - mid 1960's; they haven't taken off in price like other lenses because they can't mount on Canon with infinity focus; but the NX with its tiny flange focal distance has made glassless adapters available. These are solid metal little tanks and mechanically quite simple, easy to open up and clean but also very tough workhorses. Wondering how those older coatings will render.

They have very few 1.8 and faster lenses, probably due to the technology at the time; there's a 58 1.2 and a 50 1.4 (pricey but not insane, cheaper than similar Nikkor primes), the 85 1.8 has a cultish following. I just scored a mint 19mm 3.5R which is "said to be" pretty amazing as far as distortion and optics go (been wanting a nice flat wide for some time and Canon claimed "less than 1%" back in the day, we'll see). Most reviews I've read of FL glass mention sharpness increases at F4 or so, but with the NX1, I'm shooting wide open much more than in the past with my Nikkors; you still get plenty of sharpness but there's a really nice contrast drop and high-key stuff gets a really lovely diffuse look to out of focus highlights (speaking of the Nikkors, not the FL - but my gut feeling is the NX sensor makes many lenses or f-stops that were considered so-so worth a 2nd look, especially for beauty, music vids, artsy editorial-style looks, or docs where you want to add some special sauce beyond straight reality).

I need to get someone with nice skin when I have some testing time, but just walking around the studio and the yard, I've been intrigued. They seem to render greens and cooler colors with a very neat look. Only have a 50 and a 35 so far (waiting on the 19) that I've used for B&W film for some time now (still have a working darkroom and I print often) but hopefully I'll post some serious tests before long.

Check this out - Nikkor 28-70 2.8, wide open, probably at 60mm or so and about 500 ISO (WHY NO META DATA SAMSUNG?????); gig was shooting some pickup shots at an inner city grocer, short doc about a food-desert program. One of the directors showed up and we grabbed an interview, just using the store's ceiling fluorescents, manually white balanced through an 82A to warm it a bit. Just added levels to the blacks in photoshop for this grab, but I'm still way impressed with the sensor).

damn that looks real good ! So you are saying the nx1 is taking in more light ? I've noticed before that the image looked brighter at lower iso's than other cameras but I didnt think anything of it

[M Carter]

damn that looks real good ! So you are saying the nx1 is taking in more light ? I've noticed before that the image looked brighter at lower iso's than other cameras but I didnt think anything of it

Everyone seems to say "don't shoot higher than 400 (or 800 or whatever), try to keep it at 100", but compared to every DSLR I've owned, this thing's a low light beast. 

One of yesterday's shots - I'm pretty sure I was around 1600-2000 iso for this; full frame on the left and a 100% crop on the right, (EOSHD and JPEG compression has added some stairstepping that's not there in the screen grab), but it's very very nice. The thing with this sensor I've found - bring up the master black a bit at high ISOs if the shot can handle it overall; if you're shooting at 400 or higher and, say, your subject has some deep black sweater or something that really just eats up the light, master black will mess with skin tones, so throw up a big sheet or something, crank in some fill and bring your key down a bit. Deep deep blacks have some blocking that H264 delivery seems to just latch onto terribly. Open the blacks where you can crush out the noise and it becomes much better. But it's freaky how punchy and bright a gloomy scene can get with higher ISOs, my experience has been that it's not just a cranked-ISO mush look - with a nice lens, you can get a really sort of "snappy" look. My grip was like "man, do we need to drag some lights in here?" And i was "Look in the VF, dude…"

[kidzrevil]

Everyone seems to say "don't shoot higher than 400 (or 800 or whatever), try to keep it at 100", but compared to every DSLR I've owned, this thing's a low light beast. 

One of yesterday's shots - I'm pretty sure I was around 1600-2000 iso for this; full frame on the left and a 100% crop on the right, (EOSHD and JPEG compression has added some stairstepping that's not there in the screen grab), but it's very very nice. The thing with this sensor I've found - bring up the master black a bit at high ISOs if the shot can handle it overall; if you're shooting at 400 or higher and, say, your subject has some deep black sweater or something that really just eats up the light, master black will mess with skin tones, so throw up a big sheet or something, crank in some fill and bring your key down a bit. Deep deep blacks have some blocking that H264 delivery seems to just latch onto terribly. Open the blacks where you can crush out the noise and it becomes much better. But it's freaky how punchy and bright a gloomy scene can get with higher ISOs, my experience has been that it's not just a cranked-ISO mush look - with a nice lens, you can get a really sort of "snappy" look. My grip was like "man, do we need to drag some lights in here?" And i was "Look in the VF, dude…"

so you shoot with master black levels cranked  up ?

[M Carter]

so you shoot with master black levels cranked  up ?

Usually just +3 or so. But if there are deep shadows and your ISO is high, and you have time to fiddle with it… try stuff like bringing up the black and kicking up the sat as well. Thing is, the master black isn't a crazy level of change - on my panasonic broadcast cams, you can gray the image right out. The NX1 doesn't really change as much as some cameras. But it's also not adding light, so it's not a big detail enhancer. But it can give you room to crush a little more, but I'd be wary of skin tones. 

I haven't tested Neat Video with the NX1 yet, but I'd like to try to force some macroblocking, shoot a noise profile that's pretty dark and see how it goes.

[caseywilsondp]

I haven't tested Neat Video with the NX1 yet, but I'd like to try to force some macroblocking, shoot a noise profile that's pretty dark and see how it goes.

I've done a bit, but it was a story flat picture profile, so while it killed noise, it didn't help with banding. Shooting externally to the shogun it's quite a bit better as the macroblocking is virtually eliminated, and the noise that's introduced is pretty easy to clean up. Haven't tested super high ISO yet