The idea was to show Hamo (frontman) together with the beautiful mysterious girl in various situations on various sets. We had three options. First was an actual set or more of them with different wallpapers. The second one was a green screen shoot. We opted for the best one regarding budget options. Set with a rear projection screen and a powerful Barco projector and real props.

The main light was lots of top theatre lights (we shot it in SiTi teater – small theatre) diffused through 2x2m Photoflex Lite Panel with a few lights diffused and bounced from the front for the faces.

Barco rear projection provided the natural vignette on the background but not on the talent or the set, so it was better looking than if we just applied it in the post.

Hamo (frontman), Nikolaj Vodošek (director) and me checking the shots behind Sony NEX-FS700 w/ big Angenieux 20-120 T3 zoom and Odyssey7Q recorder (video was shot in 4K ProRes).

One of the shots was a top down shot of Hamo being shot by the girl. We didn’t have much time and people to help so I decided agains a jib shot and opted for a wide 4K shot with a slight zoom and rotation done in post. If we had more top down shots I would choose the jib. Zoja making her final corrections before the shoot.

Foto: Marko Alpner / Alpner.com

This is a description from the YouTube page:

THE FAR SIDE is a breathtaking visual story written by Edina Dyachenko, about a woman (Vesna Kuzmic) who gets lost between imagination and reality. Trying to escape unsatisfying life with her fiancee (Branden Garret), she creates an avatar, a young boy who she falls in love with (Denys Bilash). The two start a contradictory relationship filled with mutual feelings of love and divine connection, but the story gets an epilog when she finds out there’s a baby involved and it isn’t her fiancee’s. She starts researching other spheres of reality bringing us to a closer understanding of God.

We shot the trailer an a day and a half on two locations. I used Sony NEX-FS700 with Angenieux 20-120 T3 zoom lens I bought specially for this occasion. It was shot on Odyssey 7Q recorder in 4K ProRes. A also used Hague k14 jib and RigWheels dolly/slider. The trailer was shot for promoting the movie and as another test. You can check previous test done for this shoot in my other posts.

Here are some photos from the shoot.

RigWheels dolly/slider was used for this shot tracking backwards

Hague K14 jib was used at its maximum with the big Angenieux zoom lens.

Sony NEX-FS700 w/Angenieux 20-120 T3 zoom lens and a Odyssey 7Q 4K recorder. This lens was perfect for this shoot. The lens look has lots of organic defects. It flares perfectly and has a creamy bokeh. It has a great range from 20-120mm and adequate maximum aperture f/2.6 (T3). Its only downside is size and weight. It is 30cm long, it weights almost 5kg and has a 125mm front filter thread. A real beast. But it is better for me than any other the low priced PL mount primes.

500W spot light was the only source for second day shoot. Not out of necessity but as a choice. Her you can see it bounced from 1x2m Photoflex Light Panel.

Reversed rig made with C-stands, RigWheels dolly/slider. Worked like a charm. Director Edina giving the last instructions before the shoot to lead actress Vesna.

R.O.W. Presents
In association with AVdesign, Too Much Imagination and Studio Vajevec

The Far Side

WITH Vesna Kuzmic, Denys Bilash and Branden Garret
MUSIC COMPOSED by Tom Roshental
COSTUME DESIGNER Janja Videc 
MAKE UP ARTIST Petra Kusterle
DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY Peter Prevec
WRITTEN BY Edina Dyachenko
DIRECTED BY Edina Dyachenko and Erik Margan
EDITED BY Erik Margan 
METHOD ACTING COACH Janez Vajevec
SCRIPT SUPERVISOR Andrej Vajevec

The lenses are already low light monsters with T1.3 and T1.5 but with SpeedBooster you get another stop more so you are in the range of the SLR Magic HyperPrime CINE 35mm and 50mm lenses.

My thanks goes to Tjaša Kokalj who patiently sat in front of the camera while I fiddled with the cameras and lenses.

The only thing that bothers me with this lenses is their mount. Canon EF mount is just not good enough for proper cine lenses. It would be great if they also came in the PL mount version. You can of course get them converted at Duclos lenses but it is not cheap.

As a standard I also did a flare test. At the beginning there are all three Canon CN-E lenses continued with all my other lenses.

Update: I will post some additional footage of the flares. I shot some cars, crossroads, headlamps at night so you can see first hand experience and real life examples.

Below are the few photos I took while I had the lenses on the test.

I recently visited Photokina 2016 in Köln the biggest photo exhibition in Europe. It is primary a photo show but lately the interconnection between photo and video is very prominent. I went there with the guys from Lumu. They were presenting their new Lumu Power, a device that transforms your iPhone to light and colour meter. But more on that in a later post.

I wanted to test a few lenses that I haven’t had the chance to see before. The new Sigma CINE lenses, SLR Magic ANAMORPHOT-CINE lenses and Schneider-Kreuznach Cine-Xenar III and Xenon FF-Prime lenses.

Below you can find some footage shot with those lenses at the booths. All exhibitors were so kind to let me connect my Odyssey 7Q recorder on the cameras they had there so that I could record some footage with the lenses.

I was most eager to test the new Sigma CINE line. They were announced this year at the IBC show. It comprises five FF High Speed Primes, two High Speed Zooms and one Full Frame Zoom. All will be available in E-mount, EF mount and PL mount, except the FF zoom which won’t be available in PL mount. They will be out later this year costing from 3999$ down. The High Speed Zooms will be the priciest and they have their prices announced, but according to Sigma representative at the booth the primes will be cheaper. I wasn’t interested in the FF Zoom as there won’t be a PL mount version available. The E-mount and EF mount lenses communicate with the camera so that you have the aperture and focus distance info on the camera.

The lenses are basically their Global Vision still lenses lineup rehoused. So they are optically photo lenses with the new Cine mechanical structure.

I only tried the 50mm Prime and the two High Speed Zooms (18-35mm and 50-100mm).

The 50mm has minimal breathing, lovely bokeh rendered with rounded diaphragm and minimal flaring in an interesting yellow and blue colour. The 50-100mm zoom is the worst in my opinion. The breathing is severe. The range is also the least useful for me. T2 is great for the zoom. I was so bothered by breathing that everything else great on this lens faded away. The aperture diaphragm also seemed the least rounded. 18-35mm doesn’t have the breathing problems of its bigger brother. Out of focus highlights have some rings in them but otherwise the bokeh is ok. The lens also has a lovely greenish yellow flare. The loveliest of them all.

I think that 18-35mm T2 fast zoom and the T1.5 Primes will be lovely lenses in it’s price range. I would need to test the other primes besides the 50mm.

Next in the line for the test was the SLR Magic ANAMORPHOT-CINE 35mm T2.4 2x Anamorphic lens MFT. It was attached to the GH4 at the Panasonic booth. The setup there was preventing me to connect my recorder but they let me record internally on my SD card. If I wanted to record internally in 4K I couldn’t connect external monitor so I had to pull focus on the built in monitor and that is why some shots aren’t quite in focus.

This is a lovely lens to have. Flares are magnificent, precisely what would you expect from the anamorphic lens. There is some horizontal breathing when focusing but that is also expected from this kind of lens and it is not to severe. I would love to try their whole 2x Anamorphic MFT line and also 1.33X PL mount line (35mm, 50mm, 70mm). Maybe the set needs two more lenses on both ends.

The third manufacturer I visited was Schneider-Kreuznach. I already own a Schneider Kreuznach Variogon 1:2/18-90 C-mount lens which I used extensively on my Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera so I was really looking forward to test some of their newer lenses. They have two lines of lenses. The low end line Xenon FF-Prime lenses and the high end line Cine-Xenar III.

Both lines are similar in lens focal length offerings, with maximum apertures ranging from T2 to T2.4. Cine-Xenar III line are mechanically better in Canon EF-S and PL mount and ultra close focus down to 26cm/11″ from sensor plane, but the Xenon line offers full frame coverage and an additional F mount (interchangeable mounts). I liked the flaring of the Xenon line better as it is more pronounced.

The footage was shot on different cameras and there are some differences between the cameras (Panasonic GH4, Red Epic, Arri Amira, Blackmagic Ursa 4.6K, Sony FS7, Canon C300).

Panasonic booth

SLR Magic Anamorphot

Recording footage of Arri Amira

Sigma 18-35mm High Speed Zoom

Recording setup at Sigma booth

The test was made for the upcoming movie The far side by Edina Dyachenko and lovely lead actress Vesna Kuzmič. I tested skin tones at various white balance settings using different light sources, which exposure values are the best when shooting SLog2 and difference when using 1/1 and 1/2 white diffusion on key light. Ate the end there is a test how polariser filter affects skin tones.

Shot on Sony FS700 camera and Odyssey7Q recorder at 4K ProRes LT w/ SLR Magic HyperPrime CINE 35mm. Added SLog3SGamut3.CineToSLog2-709.cube LUT in Final Cut Pro X w/ LUT Utility.

Here I used Angenieux 20-120 T3 zoom lens to do a focal length test for her face, shot angles test, skin colour test and tint test for the camera.

Photos from the shoot

Diffused key light with a bounce and a different light for the background (using F&V Lights K4000 LEDs)

Soft key light from behind with just a little fill from the front (white balance of the key light and the fill is the same that way).

A little DIY project. 1x1m grid for the diffusion frame. You can see on the cupboard near the frame how it affects the spill.

So I wanted to see how the Anamorphot preforms on another popular zoom lens. Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L on a Metabones SpeedBooster. But unfortunately that lens is useless in combination with the Anamorphot. I don’t know if it is the SpeedBooster or the lens design itself but the lens vignettes even at telephoto focal lengths and even at 105mm it produces strange blurred artefact on the left. And it looks like it is impossible to focus at this setting.

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L at 24mm (17mm)

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L at 35mm (25mm)

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L at 50mm (35mm)

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L at 70mm (50mm)

Canon EF 24-105mm f/4L at 105mm (75mm)

Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G at 17mm

Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G at 20mm

Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G at 24mm

Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G at 28mm

Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G at 35mm

Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G at 45mm

Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G at 55mm

Nikon lens is usable from 28mm on so the lens is not only usable for a recce lens but would also be great for a main shoot. When we finally did the shoot we decided against using it as there wasn’t enough time. It is a screw on anamorphic adapter so you need to change it whenever you change the lens. It also wasn’t compatible with all Samyang lenses that we had. So it was only used in one shot at the 0:28 seconds into the movie.

Here is where the problem starts.

The app first applies all the effects before it applies Color Grade under Color. When you apply LUT you are applying effect that most of the time crushes the blacks and/or highlights. That means that it can only be applied to the perfectly shot footage. But we all know that is easier said than done. Log footage looks very flat and is as such difficult to determine correct exposure. The best way would be if you could set exposure on a monitor with LUT applied (like Odyssey 7Q) or use a light meter like Lumu (I’m having one on test at the moment and will write a review soon). But sometimes you don’t have the time or you just have to shoot as light as possible and you have to judge the exposure with the help of build in histograms or zebras.

This shot was shot underexposed to protect the highlights of the molten metal. It was shot on Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera w/ SLR Magic Anamorphot 1.33 X – 50 lens and SLR Magic CINE II 35mm T1.4 taking lens in raw mode. It was than converted to ProRes in Resolve with protect highlights option enabled. Footage was than imported to Final Cut Pro X. When you apply the LUT it crushes the blacks (cause the shot was underexposed). So you should lift the blacks and mids a bit and than apply the LUT effect. But this is not possible because FCPX first applies effects tab and only than Color tab and those two tabs or effects in the tabs are not able to concatenate. Nick Shaw kindly corrected me on twitter that it is not concatenation but order of operations.

Crushed blacks. You can lift them but you would only be lifting the low part of histogram as it is and would not be getting any more information in the blacks.

But there is another way by using the Adjustment layer. This is the trick I learned from great Steve Martin & Mark Spencer at Ripple Training. You can download the RT Adjustment Layer Title from the Ripple Training site and learn there how to install and use it. The thing is now FCPX first applies the Color tab to the clip and only than the Effects that are on the Adjustment layer. So you can lift the blacks and/or lower the highlights before applying the LUT. This option has it quirks (mostly regarding the rendering), but is in my opinion the best method for working with log material in Final Cut Pro X.

You can see that the blacks are no longer crushed and you have lots of details in them.

As of version 10.1.2 of Final Cut Pro X you have an option to apply (in the Metadata settings view) a broadcast standard Rec.709 look up table to footage captured in log to cameras from ARRI, Blackmagic Design, Canon, and Sony. This works with high-dynamic-range and wide-colour-gamut footage in real time, but is the same as before when you applied the LUT directly to clip. You get crushed blacks and highlights on not perfectly shot footage and you can’t correct it afterwards in Color tab.

The package contained SLR Magic Anamorphot 1,33 X – 50 with SLR Magic CINE II 35mm T1.4 taking lens, 77mm Achromatic Diopter Set (+0.33, +1.3) and step-up ring set (49mm, 52m and 58mm to 62mm).

It came in a beautiful designed box reminding me of old movies widescreen formats logos.

The step up rings came in a pouch with lens back caps. Anamorphot has a 62mm native rear filter thread and you can use addition step up rings (49mm, 52mm and 58mm). For lenses with larger filter threads you can use step down rings but optimum results are not guaranteed.

The two diopters came in a beautiful leather hard box with red velvet innards and magnetic closing patent. Of course I had to take photos of all the items in the package with the Anamorphot on a Sony NEX-5N w/ Sony E 50mm f/1.8 OSS Lens.

The Anamorphot has its own focusing ring marked NEAR NORMAL and with it you can focus up to 1,5m without the diopters. The close focus is of course dependable of the taking lens. For now I have mainly tested Anamorphot with the  SLR Magic CINE II 35mm T1.4 lens.

If you don’t want to fiddle with the NEAR NORMAL setting you leave it at NORMAL and have the option to shoot from about 3-4m to infinity. NEAR setting allows you to shoot at closer distances than 3-4m. NEAR NORMAL setting at f/2.8 is a fine adjustment setting to set close focus from 1.5m to 4m. At f/4 it becomes 1.5 to 2.5m. You need to test your taking lens to determine optimal distance from camera in each mode. Manual states: “When focusing at close distances, first adjust the focus of your taking lens to achieve the sharpest image possible before turning the NORMAL/NEAR dial towards NEAR to micro adjust focus and find the “sweet spot”.” For shooting at even closer distances use the  Achromatic Diopter Set (+0.33, +1.3).

For the taking lens it is best to use prime lenses whose front element is smaller than 50mm in diameter. These are the lenses to be used at different sensor sizes.

17-85mm focal length can be used for S16 sensor.
20-85mm focal length can be used for mFT sensor.
35-85mm focal length can be used for S35 and APS-C sensor.
40-85mm focal length can be used for Full Frame sensor.

Recommended maximum aperture values:
f/2.8 should be used for 20-50mm focal length.
f/4.0 should be used for 55-85mm focal length.
f/5.6 should be used for 90-135mm (Trial and error) focal length.

I haven’t tried the lens with the Speed Booster and this will be the first thing I do when performing additional tests.

The lens has a blue coating to get famous blue horizontal flares and streaks.

The movie was shot last week when there was a heavy freezing rain in Slovenia which has caused widespread power outages and the closing of many roads across the country.

It was shot on Blackmagic Design Pocket Cinema Camera with SLR Magic CINE II 35mm T1.4 taking lens. The weather was quite challenging and it wasn’t easy to focus (one hand holding the umbrella) but with some help of a good monitor (SmallHD DP4) I managed to get some good results. I really like the flare in got with it.
It was shot at f/2.8 and ISO 400. No noise reduction was used in post. Daytime shots were shot in ProRes 422 (HQ), night shots in raw and than converted to ProRes (HQ) with highlight protection in Resolve. It was edited and graded in Final Cut Pro X with the help of a LUT Utility. The footage was squeezed to 1920 x 812 to get the correct aspect ration. I didn’t use any diopters for the close shots due to struggling with bad weather so some shots can get a bit soft.

Follow @Anamorphot on Twitter for details about buying this lens. At the moment there is a pre-order promotion for the Anamorphot 1,33x – 50 that ends ends on Feb 14th 2014 GMT +8 time in Hong Kong. A one time offer you would not want to miss.

First two are ungraded in FILM setting.

Other two have standard LOG to REC.709 LUT applied. Then I tried to raise exposure.

In raw it is easy. You can dial it in in raw settings. I raised it 1 stop and 2 stops. On ProRes clip I tried to simulate this by using Gamma. 0.03 on first and 0.09 on second.

Raw file holds the blacks a bit more but otherwise… Maybe the raw file is more prone to moire but it is hardly visible. There is also some strange fringing in the highlights so I can’t say raw is much better if at all when shooting underexposed at night.

If you wan’t to decide for yourself you can download the files and play with them.

raw (207MB) vs. ProRes (90MB) – right click and download

I must test it in daylight conditions with lots of light. And I hope editing of raw footage in Final Cut Pro X will be added soon.

The Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon with a range from 18 to 90mm on a Pocket Camera with a 3x crop factor equals to 54-270mm zoom. That translates to 27-135mm zoom on FS700 with 1,5x crop factor. The closest I can get to this in one lens is Canon 24-105 f/4 or the big Nikon 50-300 F/4,5 with a Speed Booster. But the Schneider is f/2 lens and as such perfect for walking around. It could be a bit wider but that is another story. I really love the flare on this lens as you can see. There are lots of it due to the big from element of the lens.

It has a not standard front filter diameter of 74mm so I had to add 74 to 77mm step up ring. The use of variable ND is paramount on this camera. Its smaller sensor means smaller depth of fields so you need to be wide open to get as much depth of filed as possible. The lens is old so it is advisable to stop down a bit to get more sharpness. You still get enough DOF as the lens is f/2 and closing it a bit doesn’t hurt much.

I had a monopod and a sandbag on this trip. I must say I don’t like the monopod too much for static shots like this. It is to wobbly. It would be better the have a tripod with me. But that is additional weight I have to carry around. Manfrotto 561BHDV monopod weights 1,9kg. ProPod sandbag is another 1,1kg. At the moment I have two tripods. One is Manfrotto 525 legs with 504 head (5,9kg) and another is Hi-Hat with old 503 head (4,9kg). So I would need a lighter tripod. The 502AM kit is 3,8kg which is a bit more than sandbag and monopod together and a bit less that my two previous tripods.

I shoot the movie in Film mode in ProRes (HQ) as I am eagerly waiting for the raw. It was edited in Final Cut Pro X and colour graded wight the help of LUT Utility and Osiris LUTs. The song is my own Sun raining which I did in GarageBand a long time ago. Enjoy.

UPDATE: The lens had some problems with focusing at infinity on wide end of the lens (wide open), but than I file the cheap C mount to m4/3 adapter I bought on eBay so the lens could screw closer to the camera and now it focuses at infinity at all focal lengths and aperture settings.

This camera has or had many problems and compromises. I was a bit worried while I was waiting for it about the black dots and white orbs, but then I saw that it can be firmware updated to correct this and my worries went away. My camera was already updated so there was none of that. The camera also supports only a few very fast SD cards. Sandisk Extreme Pro 64GB can shoot up to 37min in ProRes (HQ) codec which is enough for small shoots. You must have a second card to rotate the two and copy the clips of one while you shoot on the second one. When they enable raw recording, recording times will go down. If you look at the files John Brawley posted on the web (yeah, raw is coming soon), you can see that their file sizes are variable from 2,1MB  to 2,5MB for a frame. That means if you shoot 25fps, the minute of footage is from 3 to 3,6GB and you can record from 17 to 20 minutes of footage on one 64GB card. So I will probably need to add another card in the arsenal. This cards are not cheap as they go for around 110€ on Amazon. You will also need to make habit of buying a few additional disks for storing footage every month. And the camera doesn’t have a format option so you  have to remember to delete all the footage from the card when you copy it to the computer.

The camera also has a very small battery so it drains in about an hour. So I took Hawkwoods DV-F980L, 7200mA Sony style NP-F battery I had for my Sony NEX-FS700 with DV-CA12 Link Power Adaptor (2 Hirose and one D-Tap output). I than made a D-Tap to DC Power Jack adapter for powering SmallHD DP4 monitor when it is on FS700 and another adapter from 2.1mm DC Power Jack to 0.7mm one for powering Pocket Camera when the battery is on the monitor. The battery provided with the camera has only 800mAh capacity so this 7200mAh NP-F is going to provide 9 additional charges and that is more than enough to get me through the day. This powering solution proved to be great if not so elegant. You can get PowerBase from Switronix for powering but it will also look as it was bolted on and made in a hurry. At least my solution doesn’t add additional appendixes to the camera because unfortunately you need to have additional monitor on the camera which is my only rant with the Pocket Camera. The PowerBase goes for $105 or $155 with two Canon batteries for quadrupling the run time. My solution was 160€ for battery, power adaptor and some connectors and cables. You have to be careful not to have DV-CA12 Link Power Adaptor on the battery when not shooting for longer periods of time because it is always converting power to 12w and so draining the battery even if you don’t have the camera on. Of course I can always put smaller batteries on the monitor to lighten the load.

Monitoring is the only problem I have with this camera. Forget that the 3.5″ LCD isn’t the best (it could have better contrast and resolution for a monitor coming out in fall 2013) and that it flickers in low light situations and almost can’t be seen in bright sunlight cause there is no option for sun hood . What I really would like to have is the ability to swivel the monitor. If a small Sony NEX-5N can have a swivel LCD why can’t this camera have one. The camera could be just a tad bigger to encompass all additional hardware. Without the swivel LCD you have to hold the camera in front of your eyes at head height. This makes the camera shake if not using a stabilised lens. Or you can use a shoulder mount rig (from high end ones to the cheapest plastic ones) or put on additional monitor like I did with SmallHD DP4. But all this options make camera bigger than the name pocket suggest. I really liked swivel LCD on 5N and I could even put an sun hood on to block the sun a bit. At least the Pocket Camera has another mounting point (1/4 20) on the top where I screw a cold shoe on and attached the monitor on a small ball head.

I wanted the camera to sit a little more comfortably in my hands so I was thinking to add some handles. At first I used Half Inch Rails handlebar with handles but this brought unnecessary width to the rig.

The Pocket Camera has a LANC connector. As I got the camera I have had my FS700 serviced (4k upgrade and S-Log2) so there was a handle laying around. I was curious to see if the Sony Handle and the Pocket Camera were compatible and I was really surprised to see that they were. Record Start/Stop works and so I attached the handle to the rig with Zacuto FS700 Grip Relocator. Now I am able to hold the camera with the rig firmly at my waist level without the shakes and monitor what I shoot. It. Is a tad bigger to to fit in my pocket that is why I changed its name to Small Bag Cinema Camera.

Another problem with the camera is that many lenses extend lower that the base of the camera and are as such unable to be mounted to the camera when you have the tripod plate on (look image below where the plate and the lens almost touch). Many lenses have great width at the base, like Panasonic 14-140 ore even SLRMagic HyperPrime 12mm T1.6 with original lens gears on. That is why it is necessary to get a cage for the camera to raise it a bit. I like Viewfactor Contineo BMPC Cage but there are others too.

The footage is great. Schneider lens is beautiful. It has the organic feel of the old lenses. I really don’t like the look of the new sterile lenses. I did a quick flare test and looks nice but not so prominent that on SLRMagic HyperPrime CINE 35mm T0.95, but I must do a thorough test.

I never thought I would like a better codec so much. I always wanted FS7oo to have a better codec and now with the raw recording you can but it is not cheap and the camera with the recorder is big. But this camera is actually the size you can always lug around with you. And get great footage. I shot a music clip few weeks ago and used Pocket Camera as a B cam. The grading is so different between those two cameras (and FS700 wasn’t S-LOG2 enabled at the time) that I wish I shoot only with the Pocket Camera. Blacks are blacks now. No strange artefacts in the shadows. I the future I will do some tests with the LOG mode (FILM and S-LOG2) on both cameras to see if I can match them more in grading.

Sample frame from a recent music clip shoot (DPX download link).

After I checked the footage in RAW Viewer I exported the footage as SStP SR-Lite 422 (HDCAM-SR Lite 422 1080p25) 10bit codec which I than imported into Final Cut Pro X for editing (I needed SR Plug-In to be able to play the footage). I wanted to do a colour grade in DaVinci Resolve but FS700 Sony raw is not supported in 9.1.5 version of Resolve (next version 10 should have support for raw). The only option to do a grade in Resolve is an export to DPX which means large files (one 4k frame is 53MB) so I didn’t converted everything yet. In the future I plan to conform this edit to 2k and 4k where appropriate and properly grade it in Resolve.

The camera still suffers for it’s horrible purple fringing in some highlight areas and you can get some ugly artefacts but in think using 4k resolution of the sensor makes it a little less prone to it. I like the enhanced dynamic range and greater ability to grade that raw brings and I can hardly wait the time to have 4k raw option of my own.

I wanted to use the music of my favourite band but I still didn’t hear from them or the label at the moment so I had to write something on my own. I started with  GarageBand on iPad and than continued on the computer and I ‘m quite happy with the result especially as composing music is not my primary profession.

You can also download two 2k and two 4k files so that you can try colour grading for yourself. 4k files are a bit shorter as they are much bigger in size. Please attribute this blog (http://toomuchimagination.com) if you post your own grades anywhere and send me a link to my twitter.

A004C020_120109AB 4K raw footage (508MB)

A004C053_12010957 4K raw footage (285MB)

A004C013_1201095X 2k raw footage (342MB)

A004C044_120109O2 2k raw footage (230MB)

Let me first tell you about the shoot. As I started planning a month ago I had a few different things in mind. Then I saw some images of summer resort on flickr that movie maker Gunter Blokken posted when he went on holidays to Croatia. I got in love with the location right away and started thinking what could I shoot there. I knew my friend Gea, who I worked with on some previous project, does fire shows so I asked her if she would like to perform on this location. She was very keen to do it and we connected with Taja, artistic performer and Damir, costume designer all three from Teater Ponorelii to plan the shoot.

We scheduled to do a shoot on Wednesday. I was supposed to get the camera on Tuesday, so I went on location check a day before to see about the access to the location and specific spots where we could shoot. It was a deserted luxury resorts on the coast of island Krk in Croatia. The founder of the Penthouse magazine, invested 45 million US-dollars in the project and officially opened the Penthouse Adriatic Club casino located in the hotel in 1972. Today it is nothing but ruins standing lonely on the shore.

Sony unfortunately informed me that the camera won’t arrive until Wednesday. I knew that this will be another “take the camera out of the box and go shoot” situation and that there would be no time to prepare, familiarise with the camera or test the workflow. Wednesday came and the packages arrived at 11am. I quickly check if everything turned on and connected to each other and then went to pick up the crew and drove to the destination.

At the location I got to familiarise with the camera and the R5 recorder unit. As you can see the interface unit and the recorder add quite a bit of length (and there is a V-lock battery missing in the photo). I didn’t have the option to move camera plate further back where the centre of mass was so the rig was quite back heavy and a bit too much for my small Manfrotto 504 head. I decided that I would go handheld most of the time and hold it like a gun in my arms. I thought this would not be problematic as I will be shooting mostly slow motions of fabrics flowing in the wind and burning fire.

The camera has three S&Q modes when connected to the R5. Normal speed, 2k super slow and 4k super slow. 2k super slow motion is continuous at up to 200fps and you are only limited to the size of your card. 4k super slow was a quick burst of 4.28 seconds at 100fps which than translated to 17 seconds of footage. Then camera took around 10 seconds to write the buffer to card. Writing seemed quicker but I kind of missed the old 9 second buffer with end trigger because you can eat through the card quite quickly if you continuously record at 200fps and wait for something to happen. I think it would be great if there was an option to set the capture time to 8, 16, 32 seconds and use the same end trigger method as before.

A minute of 2k raw in Sony mxf format is 1.87 GB big so you can shoot around 270 minutes of footage on one 512GB card, that is 33 minutes at 200fps. 17 seconds of 4k raw is 2.12GB so that means around 68 minutes on one card or 17 minutes at 100 fps. You can see I was quite stressed knowing that I didn’t have a card reader and I would shoot mostly super slow motion. I was also in talks with Convergent Design to test their Odyssey7Q recorder (they changed their mind as the unit was still too beta) and the informed me that I could record on two 512GB SSDs 20 minutes of 2k raw. Their recording mode is Cinema DNG and as such quite big. I was quite surprised as to how much footage can I record in Sony raw format. I wasn’t sure if I recorded in raw or XAVC even though recorder said raw.

Another quirk was that you have to turn on two units before shoot. I didn’t know what was the power consumption of R5 so I turned it off when between the shoots to save the batteries and there was this one time I forgot to turn it back on. Of course I found out that it doesn’t consumes much power so I could have had it turned on all the time. Simultaneously recording to R5 and the SD card in camera (in HD resolution) only happens with normal speeds. 2k and 4k super speed only records on R5 unit.  The camera doesn’t tell you that you don’t have the R5 unit turned on so it can happen that you don’t record anything if you forgot the turned it on. You also need to wait for R5 unit to prepare when changing S&Q modes or again nothing happens and you record a lot of nothingness. I lost a few shots like that before I noticed that R5 takes up to 10 seconds to prepare for the S&Q mode you select when you change it. It would be great to know about kinks like that beforehand, but I didn’t have the camera sooner and I was learning on the go. By the time I got familiarised with the camera and R5 recorder the card was full and there was nothing I could do.

The shoot turned out great. As always we wanted to shoot too much material so there weren’t even time so take some behind the scenes photos. I still have to edit the clip myself but I have here (at the end of post) a few DPX frames and a few seconds of raw footage (file sizes are large so only 2k at the moment) for you to download so that you can play with the footage and grade it to your desires.

DPX frames are exported directly from Sony RAW viewer application with S-Gamut/Linear colour space applied. You can import them in Photoshop or any other image editing application. You can play with the raw files in Sony’s own RAW Viewer or play with them in Adobe Premiere, Avid Media Composer NLE  or various grading applications like Blackmagic DaVinci Resolve, Assimilate Scratch and others.

You can find all the info about working with raw in the Workflow Guide for the SONY CineAlta® F5, F55 & F65 RAW. You can download applications, plug-ins and utilities at Sony’s site where you can find link to RAW viewer and RAW plug-ins for Adobe and AVID. I only looked the material in RAW viewer and converted it for offline editing an I have an old MacBook Pro with no ability to run Resolve and the Final Cut Pro X at the moment doesn’t support native editing of Sony raw files.

I did a quick colour grade on the frames below in Apple Aperture. If you go over the image with a mouse or touch on touch sensitive displays (iPads, iPhones…) you can see the S-Gamut/Linear Colour Space applied at the export of DPX file.

Download links, only 2k movies are be available to download at the moment (be patient with the downloads as I don’t know how the server will hold). If server holds I will also add 4k raw downloads:

4K DPX frames (150MB)

2K DPX frames (96MB)

A004C013_1201095X 2k raw footage (342MB)

A004C044_120109O2 2k raw footage (230MB)

Please attribute this blog (http://toomuchimagination.com) if you post your own grades anywhere and send me a link to my twitter.

Update: If you want to use Final Cut Pro X you have to export the files from RAW Viewer as SStP SR-Lite 422 files and install SR Plug-in for Mac in order to import SStP footage into Final Cut Pro X. It says that you also need to rewrap SStP (.MXF) files to QuickTime (.MOV) using SR Viewer application software but I didn’t have to do it. You can than import it to FCPX and use them in project. But they are limited to 1920×1080 resolution at 10 bit. I hope Final Cut Pro X quickly enables native editing with Sony raw files.

I loaded my most used picture profile on my camera.

Black level +2
Gamma Cine4
Black gamma – range middle, level -2
Knee – point 105%, slope 0
Color mode – type Cinema, level 8
Color level +2
Color phase -2
Color depth – R 0, G 0, B 0, C 0, M 0, Y 0
WB shift – all 0
Detail  – level 0

I used the same profile on the other camera. I just changed gamma setting to S-LOG2. I used MIR-I 2.8/37 M42 and Sony SEL16F28 16mm f/2.8 lenses because these were the only lenses I had in pairs. I used the same rig I used on previous shoot where I needed several cameras shooting simultaneously.

I asked my lovely friend Polona to go with me on a golf course to practice her golf swing on a driving range.

I used completely the same exposure settings on both cameras. Both had ISO set to the lowest setting possible depending on the gamma selected. S-LOG2 had ISO 2000 and CINE4 had ISO 640. That is why I am sceptical about the high ISO value at S-LOG2 gamma as both had quite the same highlight levels except black were substantially higher with S-LOG2. So you cant say that you get additional 1 2/3 stops when shooting S-LOG2 as you need it to expose the footage properly.

I did a quick colour grade on the footage. Mostly bring the blacks down and lift the highlights, lowered the saturation on CINE4 and lifted it on S-LOG2 to bring it more together. I really like the colours in the S-LOG2, especially in the skin tones.

Here is the clip so that you can decide for yourself and a download links below with ungraded S-LOG2 and CINE4 clips (they will be removed if there will be too much load on the server).

Download area:

ungraded S-LOG2

ungraded CINE4

I am still waiting for AXSM reader so that I can capture the footage from 512GB card so I can’t talk about shooting 4k and 2k footage, but I did some tests with two cameras simultaneously to compare CINE4 with S-LOG2 and I also did some tests at high ISO values with the new firmware.

As you know this camera lowest ISO setting depends on the gamma curve used. CINE2 uses ISO 320, CINE4 ISO 640 and the new S-LOG2 ISO 2000 as the lowest setting. I wanted to test the noise levels at different settings so I incrementally raised ISO setting at each gamma which and I compensated the exposure with adjusting the shutter speed. I noticed a strange thing for the first time. It is awkward for me not to have noticed this before as I have this camera for almost a year now and I was also one of the beta users before it was presented at NAB 2012. You can change the ISO setting in increments of 1/3 stop  (320, 400, 500, 640, 800…) but you can only change shutter in kind of 1/2 stop increments (1/50, 1/60, 1/100, 1/120, 1/150, 1/215, 1/300, 1/425, 1/600, 1/1000,… at 50i format, I didn’t check 60i format). I guess it is hard to notice this if you only use four shutter speeds according to frames per second you are shooting (180° rule) 1/50s for 25fps, 1/100s for 50fps, 1/215 for 100fps and 1/425s for 200fps.
So as I increase the ISO values by 1/3 stop (2000, 2500, 3200, 4000,… ) in shortened the exposure time for 1/2 stop (or so cause there are some times 1/3 stop changes possible). That is why the images are getting darker the higher the ISO value it is. I don’t think that this strange behaviour changes the noise values much.
I was also surprised with the high lowest ISO setting when using gamma S-LOG2. ISO 2000. That is 1 2/3 stops brighter than CINE4 lowest ISO 640 and 2 2/3 stops higher than CINE2 lowest ISO 320.
The exposure values doesn’t look that much different. Highlights are in the same values only the blacks are higher but that an also be due to different gamma setting. It is difficult to judge without more knowledge and more thorough testing. I should just shot a grey card at 50 IRE to know more clearly. The change of base ISO setting also helps with shooting high key (histogram on the right side) as the images come out better when graded if you shoot a bright as you can with highlight protection and then lower the blacks as they come out less noisier.
I ended the S-LOG2 test at ISO 25600 as there was a bug in a firmware where you set the ISO to 32000 in the menu but it changed to 64000 when shooting. CINE4 tests go from ISO 640 to ISO 16000 and CINE2 from ISO 320 to ISO 8000. I shoot mostly CINE4 gamma and I didn’t want to go higher that ISO 1250 before. Looking at this footage I might go to ISO 5000 (S-LOG2), ISO 2500 (CINE4) and ISO 2000 (CINE2) without using any noise reduction software. This tests are completely unscientific and are based on my observations by eye and not using any instruments.
I didn’t do any comparisons with the old firmware just with the new 3.0 one. And I can say that I will be using higher ISOs in the future as the images look cleaner. Maybe this is all because better downresing of the 4k sensor to HD resolution.

Here is the video so that you can decide for your own. The noise is somewhat hidden in the Vimeo compression and you can’t download the original ProRes file that I uploaded, but you can see where the noise kicks in.

Update: You can download the shortened ProRes (LT) file (each ISO setting is 1 second long) to see for yourself. I don’t know how long my server will hold it cause it is a large file and it definitely will be a slow download so be patient. If it starts so behave strangely I will remove the file. 

The camera looks beautiful. It’s quite heavy but the ergonomics are quite interesting.

You hold the camera for the battery and press the power on button below. With the same hand you also press the shutter when you want to shoot.

The lens looks o.k. with no scratches or fungus. Aperture blades are clean. If you want to use it on a c-mount to micro 4/3 adapter you have to unscrew the motor that controls the aperture which leaves the lens a bit exposed (I would have to find a cover for the exposed part) but I think there won’t be much problems with that. It also resolves the problem which is frequent with big c-mount zoom lenses. They are too wide at the mount end of the lens. C-mount has a flange depth of 17.52mm as opposed to 19.25mm flange depth of micro 4/3. That means that the c-mount must be recessed in the adapter and that can be problematic for the lenses that have wider ends and have to be modified to fit in the adapter.

This lens is not to wide at the mount end even though is quite a big lens as it has a constant aperture of f/2.0 throughout the all focal lengths. I have this test to check if the lens would cover the Super 16mm circle of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera. I fitted it to my Sony NEX-5N camera and calculated the difference between the crop factors.

This is how it looks on the NEX-5N at 18mm. Quite a bit of vignette on 1.5x crop Super 35mm sensor.

But if you calculate for the 3x crop factor of the Super 16mm sensor it fits perfectly. The lens covers a bit more than what is needed which eliminates the the vignette and anomalies of the lens at its edge.

It is not as wide as I would like it. 18mm translates to 54mm (full frame) on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera so it is a perfect normal lens. But I would need another lens on the wide end from 8-16mm.

This is the lens at 90mm. There is even less vignette on the tele end it almost fits my NEX.

This focal length translates to 270mm lens (full frame) with aperture of f/2.0 which is quite impressive. Now I need to search for wider lenses with c-mount. It probably won’t be a zoom lens as they are big and expensive. Maybe a small vintage lens. I will see. Definitely will need a Tokina 11-16mm as would be also perfect for the Sony NEX-FS700. I could even go with the Panasonic 12-35mm f/2.8 with the stabiliser. Will let you know after I do some more research.
Until than I hope to shot something on the 16mm film. If you want cooperate or help in any way please let me know. Until then.

Here is the link to the vote page.

Shooting between the beautiful pine trees of Karst country with beautiful Polona and Anže.

Thanks to all the crew Polona, Anže, Tjaša and Dino and of course my love Irena for the voice over in the finished movie.

I wanted to test the new car mount rig, my friend Polona got the car over the weekend and Sony wanted me to test its new FS700 camera. Why not combine all this things in one story. No slow motions, just a couple of friends, nice car and some romance. I did try the car rig before to check good mounting points on the car, I went to check the locations for our shoot, so when the day arrived we were prepared.

I mainly used the new lens from SLR Magic HiperPrime CINE T0.95 for the romantic scenes as it is perfect for this kind of stuff. Soft backgrounds, creamy bokeh. The lens was also very kind to the skin. I really enjoyed working with it. I put an old lens gear from shoot35 on the lens as the lens has quite small radius and using zip gears from Half Inch Rails wouldn’t be enough for Genus Follow Focus to make contact with the lens. I also used Fader ND on the lens for finer control of the exposure in relation with the build in NDs. SmallHD DP4 EVF helped me with the critical focus on razor thin depth of filed as everything was shot at T0.95. The camera was rigged on Half Inch Rails S2 Run ‘n’ Gun rig and placed on the new Manfrotto 504HD head which performed perfectly.

It is obligatory to register to be able to vote and the page is not performing great. It is sometimes unresponsive, but I would be really grateful if you could make the effort to register and vote.

The movie is at the moment 21st of 149 in the Creative category. But I need a few more votes to win so please share with your friends too after you vote. Thanks again and be patient with the unpleasant registration process.

Here is the link to the vote page.

First thing that got out was that Convergent Design presented the new line of monitors Odyssey 7 and 7Q with ability to buy additional drives and recording codecs which transforms the monitor in a recording device. They also partnered with Sony to enable the option to record 4K from FS700 and 240fps in 2K continuously (after the firmware upgrade) directly to the Odyssey 7Q (high end one priced $2,295) with two 960GB drives. There is no info at the moment if you can record on smaller drives (Convergent Design are unsure at this time and will publish full compatibility after testing) and the price for the recording codec and the drives but it looks like a cheaper path than Sony’s option with HXR-IFR5 interface unit (around $2,000) and AXS-R5 Recorder ($5,350). You wont be needing HXR-IFR5 interface unit to record 4K (as confirmed by Scott Webster, Key Account Manager for Sony Professional Solutions New Zealand). The cable will go directly from the camera to the Odyssey 7Q.

So the next thing we wanted to know is about the firmware upgrade. In this interview with Juan Martinez, Senior Product Manager at Sony, it is revealed that the camera will need to have a hardware level upgrade (around 1:30 in the video below) at their service facilities and a firmware upgrade to be able to record in 4K. We don’t know about the price of this service at the moment but it will be available in July.

The best information that got out was that there will be other things that will be included in the firmware update (around 7:00 in the video below). One of them is the ability to shoot in S-Log and therefore achieve greater dynamic range and better image. I can hardly wait for it cause I am sometimes not quite satisfied with the image quality that comes out the camera.

So all that is left is to wait and see for the official announcements to come out.

Update (with the Convergent Design prices):
Odyssey 7Q $2295 (US Price)

High Performance Convergent Design SSD’s (US Price)
240 GB $595
480 GB $1195
960 GB $2195

FS700 Support: $1495, $75/day rental rate (US Prices)
HD/2K Raw up to 240fps (.dng format – Cinema DNG),
Quad HD/4K YCbCr Uncompressed up to 30 fps (.dpx format) This option scheduled to be release in August, 2013

So the cheapest option with the Convergent Design hardware would be $3790 without the SSD’s. SSD’s range from $1190 for two 240GB and $4390 for two 960GB drives. It all depends if the smallest disks will be able to record higher Raw bit rates.

2nd update:
According to tweet from Convergent Design any two disks can record continuous 240fps, so the cheapest recording option for FS700 is $4980.

It shoots on SD cards and has a removable Nikon battery. The LCD is fixed which is bad but you can’t have everything.

You can also use new micro 4/3 lenses with optical stabilisation, auto focus and aperture control as the mount is active.

The LCD isn’t touch enabled as it is on it’s bigger brothers but the menus are simple and I hope easy to control. A sun hood will be mandatory for shooting outside.

Active micro 4/3 mount and small sensor size brings a lot of possibilities for using different kinds of lenses.

LANC control, headphones, microphone, micro HDMI and aux power. Not much and pro as they would like to sell it but enough if you would like to attach some accessories to the camera. There even seem to be a time lapse interval option.

The price is 940€  and I preordered it from CVP. I hope that the cameras will be shipping in July as stated and there won’t be such a backorder delay as it was with their previous cameras. I plan to use the camera for some remote work in hard to get places, maybe some green screen shooting (raw codec and great depth of field is perfect for that) and it will always be with me to shoot some family moments or stock footage.

Below you can see unveiling of the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera on this year’s NAB with great Dan Chung from News Shooter.

The guys said that the water wasn’t to clear that day and I had no additional lighting besides pool lights. I was also shooting at 100 fps (1/200s shutter at F/2.8) to cope with constant moving of the water so I had to raise the ISO to 1600 and than used denoise filter in post.

Good first try which will I hope will become even better.

Camera in the housing in the dry studio.

I had a few good tips for the shoot from @VisionWrangler from twitter and one was always test the housing at home and at the location without the camera before every shoot. So I dipped it into a baby bathtub.

Me during the shoot. It is quite difficult to swim, hold the camera and shoot yourself all at the same time.

Both camera and me survived the first dive.

Thanks to underwater hockey team DPA pH. Next time I will bring lights and a friend in a bikini.

Update: I had a question from the reader. Here is my answer.

Q: This is Cheong from Hong Kong. I’ve read your blog about the FS700 with Ewa-Marine underwater housing. It is really nice and great to see the gear able to swim. For the reason I got a high speed shooting which need it inside water. I would like to know is it able to adapted 77mm lens like Canon 17-40 f4? Because I saw it come with 67mm filter thread adapter only. Any other parts inside?

A: I wouldn’t know if your lens would fit the VFS7 underwater housing but I was using it with Nikon AF-S DX Zoom-Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G IF-ED for my video.The lens is quite big. 77mm filter size (I was using it without the supplied filter thread adapters), and its dimensions are 85.5 x 110.5mm (Diameter x Length). When zoomed out to 17mm it even expands a bit more. I taped the zoom so that it wouldn’t slip and everything was o.k.

The colour of the spot light and the flare added a hint of blue colour to the brown eyes of lovely Ami.

Ksenja looking strict. Like the spot wasn’t behind her but in front pointed directly into her eyes.

The woollen cap on Ajla kind of gives you the feel of cold winter and the spot behind a low winter sun warming her.

I really think the photos of Ami turned out as my favourite. She looks really playful on them like she is really enjoying.

Tereza had the most beautiful eyes of them all and I like how they match the colour of the flare.

I really like the colour palette of this photo. Hair, skin and dress in beige, and again the lovely eyes matching the colour of the blue light and the flare.

Žiga checking the photos. It was very difficult for him as he had to be in sync with the model all the time so that her head covered the backlight spot at all times. Designers Ema Bavcom, Eva Jančar Kalan in Saša Nemec checking that their creations looked their best on the models. Ami waiting for her turn.

This was the setup. The hall where we shoot was very narrow. I used two 800W lights diffused with 1x2m frame on the left and 1000W light with soft box top right on the boom stand. Directly behind the model was 500w fresnel spot.

Lights were stretching towards the centre of the hallway which was troublesome for photographer as they were constantly in the way.

This was kind of perspective of the photographer. Lots of doors on both sides meant lots of corrections in the post. I’m glad I didn’t have to take photos in portrait orientation as I don’t like them like that. I prefer my photos in landscape orientation like movies that is why I cropped them to 1:1.78.

The eyes really stand out on this photos especially as Irena has very light coloured irides (irises).

I am planning to shot a short spec soon and I need some photos like this for it. So I asked my friend Gigia (who is coincidentally pregnant too) to pose for me to build up the look I need for the movie. As I had to bring the studio to her place I was limited in equipment so the set up was quite similar except for an additional light that lit the white background.

Lovely Gigia in improvised studio looking beautiful helping me brush up the technique.

For the third shoot I actually met with the girl who will be playing in the movie and she came to my newly temporary studio to shoot the actual photos for the movie and to test her in front of the camera. The setup stayed mainly the same with large softbox directly over the camera. One light was behind her (camera left) for the kicker light on the hair and the shoulder and two lights directed to the background so that I didn’t have to brighten the background a bit more in post.

I really like how this photos turned out. Gea really has attractive facial features. I would like to explore more of this kind of portrait photography as you can really get to know someone face like this. The subtle changes in the look when they smile, open or close mouth, lift or lower the chin. It really helps to prepare for the main shoot.

I was recently testing lots of different CFL lighting options and started hating them after I found out there are many color inconsistencies between lightbulbs. To equalise them all to the same color temperature would require a color meter and lots of time and correction filters. I hoped that the same brand of lights would have the same temperature but they hadn’t. So I was back on open tungsten lights that bring the best bang for the buck. I had a few from before. Ianiro 1000w Red Head, Minispot Fresnel 500w, Cosmolight 2000W and Photoflex 1000w with softbox and grid. I got another pair of 800W Red Heads with softboxes and dimmers and that was it. Another important piece of equipment was boom stand to place a light directly over the head.

I mainly set up the lights and wait for photographer Žiga Zupančič to do its job but I couldn’t just sit still so I took a few photos of my own with Sony NEX-5N and did a few shots with Sony NEX-FS700. The two lenses I used were spectacular SLR Magic HyperPrime CINE T0.95 50mm and 35mm. They were perfect for the job as you can see from the photos and video. Creamy backgrounds, shape, shallow depth of field. The things you would expect from lenses this fast.

Alice in Wonderland from Peter Prevec on Vimeo.

As oppose to the 50mm T0.95 this lens is not full frame lens and as such is not compatible with Leica cameras even though it has an M mount. Why M mount then? It is in a way an intermediate mount that you can adapt for use on many mirrorless systems. When buying the lens you specify the system you want to use the lens on (mFT mount, E mount or X mount) and they provide you with a adapter you need for that system. And this is the best M mount to E mount adapter that I used until now.
The lens is a big and heavy compared to the other 35mm lenses I used before and it weights 762g (822g with filter and adapter) which is around 200g less than 50mm T0.95. This lenses are expected to be heavy as they have all metal housing and they have lots of glass inside due to fast aperture. It uses special delicate glass so there is a special cleaning cloth provided and it is important that you don’t use any other cloths. I was also advised to put on a filter (which I normally don’t as I believe that clear filters you put in front of the lens for protection only makes the image worse). It has a 62mm thread as the 50mm one. This special glass is used due to wide angle and it is more expensive, hard to order, process and handle. The cost is kept low due to crop frame cover circle. The lens will be priced $1349 (with $100 introductory rebate) and if you want to preorder write to support@slrmagic.com.
The lens focuses past infinity (hard stop) because there are differences in the E mounts according to the manufacturer and this eliminates the problem. I can barely fit the lens (adapter) on NEX-5N but it goes as expected on FS700. You could say the mount on my 5N is more tight but I had another M42 adapter that I could fit on the 5N but couldn’t fit on the FS700 so I had to pile the adapter a bit if I wanted to use it with the FS700.
The lens has build-in metal sun hood that you pull out and a metal screw-in lens cap. This is the one of the rare things that bother me on this lens (remember that I had to fit the lens with a filter) because often the filter doesn’t stay on the lens when removing the cap but it screws off together with the lens cap. That is why I ordered an ordinary snap on lens cap for the lens.
The lens has minimum focus distance of 0.23m, minimum aperture T16 and 11 circular aperture blades which is one less than 50mm one. The rounded aperture blades are responsible for the creamy feel of the bokeh.

The frames on the left are from HyperPrime CINE 35mm T0.95 and the one on the right from CINE 50mm T0.95. Aperture were T0.95, T1.4, T2, T2.8. You can see that 50mm lens at T1.4 still has rounded defocused highlights but you can start to see aperture blades at the same aperture on 35mm lens. I guess having 12 blades has its advantage over 11 blades.

What I found perfect on this lens is the amount and the quality of flare. This flare is even better than my previous best looking flare lens (MIR-I).

Not all car headlights flares look like this, but I guess this not only depends on the position and direction of the camera but also type of bulbs in car headlights.

There is also some strange thing happening when the 35mm lens is wide open. The aperture blades open more than some metal parts that hold them in place and you can see them at certain angles in the out of focus highlights. So you can say that the lens opens past its widest aperture.

The right circle in the middle has some indentations on right side. You can see the metal parts that produce them on the top photo.

Metal housing of the lens is better than the 50mm one. SLR Magic addressed the main objection I had with the previous lens. I ranted that the lens had no gears even though it is called CINE lens. And this lens has them build in. I wish there was a way to add them to my 50mm, not as additional plastic (zip on or other) but build into the housing.

There is less purple fringing of the highlights at night (street lamps) than on 50mm but this can also be due to wider angle of view. (Click on the frames below for full resolution).

There is also some blooming of the lens wide open and I would advise the to close the lens to at least T1 which is just a bit under its specified widest aperture. There is also some tinting on the edges between bright and dark parts of the image in the out of focus areas. If the focus is in front of the out of focus object the tinting of the edge is green and if the focus is behind the tinting is purple. The images below have increased saturation and vibrancy to the max to make the problem more visible.

Focus point is behind the window on the photo above and in front of the window on the photo bellow.

I would advised closing down the lens to T2.8 when shooting landscapes at day with lots of trees or white sky but that shouldn’t be a problem as it is normal that you close the lens when shooting landscapes.

Where this lens excels is shooting portraits and other organic subjects. The lens is very sharp. It is perfect for wide portrait shots (medium close up). When shooting a wide shot the background is still defocussed enough so that the subjects stands out.

Another great application for this lens is high speed shooting. Wide aperture is perfect for getting that extra stop of light when shooting with higher speeds (like 200fps on FS700) when the shutter speeds are faster. Shooting snowflakes in 200 fps out of a car.

I really like this lens in my arsenal and it is a perfect companion to the 50mm lens. It is true that they have the opposite positions of the focus and aperture ring, but that doesn’t bother me too much. Both lenses also extend a bit when focusing. 35mm lens has a tighter focusing ring which is great.

I also didn’t noticed any breathing of the lens when focusing which makes this lens perfect for shooting moving pictures not just photos.

In short time that I have this lens it has become my go to lens for both NEX-5N and FS700 and I sometimes wish I had two so that I wouldn’t had to change them from one camera to the other all the time. It is a super fast nifty fifty for Super 35 format cameras like the NEX system.

Now I would like SLR Magic to make a 24mm and a 85mm version of this lens but I was told that 24mm T0.95 APS-C lens would be too expensive and hard to design. But I can always hope for a 85mm. And for 24 I can pick Samyang 24mm T1.5 CINE lens and put a Speed Booster adapter on if I need even faster and wider lens. But for the other two (35mm and 50mm) they already have the speed booster installed. :) Very sharp and very bright just as I want them.

Few photos from camera tests with the beautiful model Maja.

Location scouting photos both shot at night.

This is the rig I was using for most of the shots. Six DSLR cameras. Two Nikons on the left and four Canons on the right. It was a pain to set them all. Composition, exposure, focus. I found out that the Nikons were more similar between high end and low end models and I don’t just mean the location of a Start/Stop button but also labelling the buttons. Nikon had simple Lv text in a square for Live View on a lower right side on the body to set the camera to video mode. Canon on the other part had a few different locations and markings for the Live View and Start/Stop buttons. On 5D Mark II and 1D Mark IV which would probably be the most used cameras it even had the same button designated for Live View on one camera and Start / Stop on the other. This really made my shooting more difficult and at times I was really angry at Canon. I don’t know if now with newer cameras thing are better. So user friendliness (if I can even say that with a DSLR camera) is better on Nikon cameras. Other than that cameras performed o.k. Images were great. I I nailed them and they didn’t need much colour grading they were great. But having to deal with so many different cameras grading was a must. And this proved to be quite difficult. The images don’t hold together that well. I also finished the movie in 720p as the Nikons were limited to 1280×720 resolution in movie mode. All in all I’m glad that we have now proper video cameras with large sensors and I don’t have to use DSLRs anymore.

Maja proved to be really patient with me not minding walking around scantly dressed while I was messing with the cameras. I also took some photos of her with Nikon D3s and 85mm f/1.4 lens, perfect for taking portraits.

The photo below was shot with 24mm f/1.4 lens which quickly became one of  my favourite lenses.

Maja posing with all seven, err… six bodies.

This were all the cameras, lenses and accessories that I used for the shoot. I also had a friend Dino Schreilechner helping me with the setups and he also took all behind the scene photos.

I really didn’t like messing with all the user unfriendliness DSLRs can bring.

I used Glidetrack slider for some shots. Cokin Grad NDs and Fader ND were essential for getting the most out of the cameras and lenses I had. For the fill I used Photoflex LitePanels.

Thanks again to all who supplied me with the gear: Nikon Slovenija (Nikon 3Ds, Nikon D300s, AF-S NIKKOR 50mm f/1.4G), Samo Vidic (Canon EOS 5D Mark II, Canon EOS 1D Mark IV), Foto Format(Canon EOS 550D, Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM), Luka Stanovnik (two Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM lenses) and my father Milenko Prevec (Canon EOS 7D, Canon EF 50mm f/1.4 USM).

Video was edited in Final Cut Pro X. Music was done in GarageBand using Apple Loops. Title was tracked in Apple Shake. All photos were graded in Aperture.

This is my lens arsenal at the moment (I am waiting for another special lens, but I can’t tell you about it yet so come back later). Nikon 35mm f/1.8, 50mm f/1.4, 17-55mm f/2.8, 80-200mm f/2.8 (all F mount); SLR Magic HyperPrime CINE 50mm T0.95 (M mount); Sony 16mm f/2.8, 50mm f/1.8 (both E mount); MIR-I 2.8/37, Helios-44-2 2/58, TAIR-11A 2/135 (all M42 mount); Fujian TV LENS GDS-35 f=35mm 1:1.7 (C mount) and Samyang Mirror lens 500mm 1:6.3 DX (T mount).

All lenses were at their wides aperture and pointed to a 500W spot light that was about 4 meters away. I shot the tests on Sony NEX-FS700. The only colour correction I did on the footage is set the shadows and highlights to 0 and 100 IRE respectively.

Older lenses have fewer coatings and are more prone to flare. Such are all M42 mount lenses and Nikon 50mm. HyperPrime also has a beautiful flare. Zooms obviously also flair more because of their more complicated design. Sony’s have the worst flares. Samyang mirror lens has very particular flare as is because of its special lens design. The most beautiful flare for me was from old russian MIR-I 2.8/37. Front convex element and poor coatings are perfect flare hunters. It is a copy of the Carl Zeiss Jenna Flektogon design and is’t build like a tank. It won the Grand Prix award at the Brussels World Fair in 1958. I don’t even know when and where I got the lens but you can find quite a few on ebay for cheap. It was originally made in M39 mount so be careful when buying. At the end I also did a test closing the aperture all the way and you can see that the flares almost disappear at f/16.

Option of using all those different mount lenses (M42, M mount, F mount, C mount, T mount) on Sony NEX-FS700 E mount camera is another proof of its versatility and it opens the door to all those old and inexpensive lenses with great organic characteristics. But be careful as there are also lots of rubbish out there.

The same mountains under which Apache warriors fought with the greedy white Americans.

The canyon where the battle between Apache chief Intschu-tschuna and Old Shatterhand commenced before he joined the Apache clan.

Sony NEX-FS700 with Røde NTG-2 mic on a Manfrotto tripod. As we were shooting into the sun I put a Cokin ND grad on to lower the light values of the sun.

The next location was next to the sea so we slept the night in a beautiful Marina resort (map below). The Dragon’s eye (Zmajevo oko) is unique water system in the Adriatic coast. It is a salt water lake on the peninsula. It is a closed ecological system with the same anoxic characteristics as the Black Sea, Framvaren Fjord in Norway and crater lake Pavin in France. At one time in 1997 the lower anoxic layer rose over the whole lake which became white and opaque and all the living organisms in the lake died. This is very rare incident but nevertheless a legend about a sleeping dragon appeared and it is said that the dragon is waking up when something like this happens.

This was the closes ever that we had from hotel to the shooting location.

Overlooking the Dragon’s eye. I had minimum gear at the spot as it was very hot so using Hoodman sun hood was essential if I wanted to use build in LCD. I didn’t want to bring rails and lens support with me for the heavy 80-200mm zoom, so I opted for a lightweight 135mm f/2.8 russian M42 lens and for extreme close ups Samyang 500mm f/6.3 mirror lens.

We also had a DJI helicopter with 3-axis gyro for a GH2 camera for aerial shots.

Last location was on the Kornati islands, Veliki Garmenjak. Small distant island with great cliffs for diving.

All in all we saw some beautiful locations, Orlando made some great jumps and I hope to shoot something similar soon.

I checked the location the night before and choose the right spot for the shoot. There was a cross at the point where the sun rose behind the mountain which adds some mysterious atmosphere to the shot. I bought black polymer solar filter of ebay to safely shoot at the sun. I used Sony NEX-FS100 and NEX-5N for some B-roll footage with Samyang 500mm f/6.3 mirror lens, Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 w/ 2x teleconverter for the close ups of the Venus transit.

Editing and grading was done in Final Cut Pro X. Music was done on iPhone app Mujik.

This was my first trip to the Black Sea. We drove to Sofia, Bulgaria with a car and than took an airplane to Varna because the roads between this two cities are very bad. Full of holes as I have later seen with my own eyes. I have never seen so many cars parked at the side of the road with a punctured tire.

Obviously the best transportation vehicle is a cart pulled by a horse.

The event that we went to shoot was Red Bull Cliff Search at the coast of Black Sea with Orlando Duque and Todor Spasov. First location wasn’t at the sea shore but a bit into the land. Wonderful Rocks or as the locals say Chudnite Skali. It’s a rock phenomenon, a massif consisting of some rock needles up to 50 meters high. The limestone was formed by the effect of water and wind. There is a road going beneath so there are also there tunnels dug through. The rocks are very crumbly so climbing was difficult and dangerous.

The position was such that the perfect lightning for the shoot was late in the afternoon but we couldn’t wait as there was a bad weather prognosis so we did what we could. Sadly I didn’t get the NEX-FS700 on loan from Sony so I was sometimes trying to shoot some additional footage with the NEX-5N equipped with Nikon lenses and a sun hood. This was also an option to try my new Samyang 500mm f/6.3 mirror lens.

Both were proved to be great tools for capturing the footage. Bokeh on the mirror lens is very specific (donut shaped) and can be very ugly but sometimes it can provide additional visual detail in the image. Shooting 50fps at full HD resolution is an option many other cameras and DSLRs don’t have and using the same mount as on FS100 and FS700 is very convenient to say the least.
The weather prognosis was correct and we were abruptly stopped in the afternoon with heavy rain. So we packed as quickly as we could and drove to the hotel. I was capturing the lightnings out of the car during the drive and I managed to capture one on camera.

The next morning was the time of the Venus transit and I captured it on NEX-FS100 and NEX-5N but will write about it more in its own post. The second location were the cliffs on the Black Sea coast and the drive there was very picturesque. Decaying suburbs, agriculture land with lots of wind turbines.

Finally we arrived and the scenery there was astonishing. Cormorants sitting on the rocks, cliff itself… the beauty is hard to describe.

I was again providing additional footage with NEX-5N on my old Glidetrack slider which is very good if you don’t put a heavy camera on it. Sun hood was invaluable and additional external monitor would be even better if I wouldn’t broke the HDMI connector on the camera a while back.

In the afternoon we went to the nearby Cape Kaliakra which is a natural reserve where dolphins, cormorants and seals can be observed. We didn’t see any seals but have seen plenty of dolphins. There are also the remnants of the fortified walls here and it is a place of many legends. There was also a military zone on the cape.

Last day we were also on the cliffs. I had to climb a bit to get some shots but otherwise the location was easy. In the afternoon we had to shoot some interviews and b-roll shots.

Clip turned out great. I wanted to link the long version of the clip as there are some sequence shots that I did in post production, but it was for internal use only and they only put the short version on Red Bull official You Tube channel so I can only show you some frame grabs.

The two shots below weren’t done on locked off shots. I was using Shake for stabilising and tracking the shots.

Through the last months I had a few occasions when I had to speak in front of the camera (Introducing the Sony NEX-FS700, FS100 training BluRay Trailer). I wasn’t quite satisfied with my performance so I decided I would train myself to appear more relaxed in front of the lens. As I am also traveling a lot shooting for Red Bull I figured out that I could use staying in all those beautiful hotels to my benefit. So I started to film myself talking about gear and this is the first of the movies that came to life. It is not the first recorded, but as I am still training not all will be released as I’m still not satisfied with the results.

There is another astronomical phenomenon next week and as I tried with others (Trinity – Moon, Venus, Jupiter, Lunar Eclipse 2011 and Solar Eclipse 2011) I will also try to do a short clip documenting the phenomenon. I figured from previous movies that 200mm or 300mm lenses won’t be enough. First I thought about a teleconverter. Using a 2x extension would make my 80-200mm lens a 160mm to 400mm. I bought it and tried it. As I said in the video you reallyended to be careful with the camera shake. And the footage is a bit hazy. Maybe I just didn’t focus correctly or the differences using teleconverter on NEX-5N and FS100 are really that big. As I still wanted to have a bigger image of the sun I decided to also buy Samyang 500mm mirror lens f/6.3. It’s a catadioptric lens with fixed aperture. It’s design doesn’t presents beautiful bokeh as you get donut shaped highlights but the subject in focus is great. It’s perfect for shooting sun or moon. I bought special black polymer filter for the sun as it is very dangerous to look at the sun unprotected.

I hope you like my video blog. I know there is room for improvement. See you after the Venus transit.