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.

SPOILER ALERT! Please see the movie first as there are some photos that can spoil the viewing and reveal the end.

No more. My first short movie after a long time and as I can tell the first short movie that was shot on Sony’s new camera NEX-FS700. Everything fell together perfectly. 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 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.

Tjaša Kokalj was in charge for the make up and I was really pleased with her work. She is very helpful in front of the lens and also behind the camera so I was really glad she joined our caravan.

The first location turned out not to be perfect for our shoot. The wind started blowing really hard and after two hours we need to find a new location if we wanted to shoot anything. This set us back for a few hours and I was a bit afraid that we couldn’t shoot the whole thing in time. Luckily we quickly found the new location an shooting continued. Of course I couldn’t use any footage from the previous location.

The car was waiting for its time to come so that it could show its acting abilities.

As we were short on time I didn’t complicated the shots with dolly moves and so I operated mainly from the tripod. Polona and Anže who are not real actors turned out to be the perfect choice as they acted better as I would expected. They are not a couple and they had to act quite a difficult intimate scene. But who would complain lying on the blanket in the beautiful scenery, cuddling and caressing each other. (: Even the fight scenes didn’t present any problems for them. Men obviously have a natural gift for strangling women and women have it in their blood how to hit a man with a stone. (:

I had to coach the actors on some action shots as I had a vision how would everything look at the end. They didn’t need any instruction with romantic scenes.

We had overcast weather which was not perfect for scenery shots but was perfect for medium and close up shots as the light was diffused. We did fill the shadows a bit on some shots with Photoflex LitePanels.

We continued to our next scene as soon as we finished the first. This was the last scene in the movie when we found out that she actually killed him and now needs a place to bury him. It would be easier if he would be chopped to pieces as he barely fit into the trunk but we managed somehow.

The day was nearing the end and we needed to shoot all our car shots with her. I quickly rigged the camera to the car and we started shooting. Here I used the kit lens as it has a optical stabilizer and it is versatile enough for the quick style shooting I did here as we needed to end before the sunset. I would need another suction cup for better stabilization as the camera did wobble a little and there are more mounting points on the handle of the camera. Maybe next time, now that I know.

Some configurations are sturdier than others and you really need to test them all and try different angles to achieve the best results. High school physics did help a bit here.

For the last shots I needed to shot the car from the ground. Here I used a Glidetrack SD slider as the camera is small and light enough. We were lucky we had walkie talkies as we needed to communicate when and how I needed the car to drive by me.

At the end we finished on time and I think we did a good job. So a big thanks to Polona Kostjukovskij, Anže Likozar, Tjaša Kokalj and Dino Schreilechner. No slow motions were harmed during the production of this movie.

Actors!

Photos: © 2012 Dino Schreilechner and Tjaša Kokalj.

We have also shoot some behind the scenes footage that will be edited as soon as I can.

Until then you can also watch the other two movies that I shot with the FS700: Racing with planes and Fizzy drinks.

UPDATE: I forgot to tell you more about the postproduction of the shots.

I edited and color graded the footage in Final Cut Pro X. The footage graded perfectly as I was using Frank’s picture profile (Black level +2, Gamma Cine2, 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). There was some little amount of stabilization dialed in, but not much as I don’t like the appearance of wobble in the shots. Music was composed in the GarageBand on the iPad. I am really starting to like this combo for creating short songs for my videos. I recorded the voice of my lovely girlfriend on Tascam DR-100 with Røde NTG-2 microphone. Audio was also mastered in Final Cut Pro X if you can call it being mastered there as there is a big gap to be filled there in the software.

If you want to see how this idea about a girl and her car come to be you can check the photo shoot I did with Polona a few months ago with the same car.

I had a few ARRIsun HMI lights in my trunk from previous shoot that were paid until morning. I didn’t want them go to waste. It was 1 a.m. of the last day with the Sony NEX-FS700 as I only had the camera until morning. So I said to myself why not try to shoot some more slow motions. This time, the all known super slow motion shots of pouring drinks. I quickly set up one ARRIsun 18, an 18kW 1.8kW flicker free HMI, in my dining room with some black background, put Sony’s 50mm f/1.8 OSS lens on the camera to test it too and start shooting. Everything was shot at 200fps and you can see some flicker on some of the water drops shots. Don’t ask me why. Later I kind of said to myself that it would be easier to shoot everything with somewhat closed aperture, not fully open at f/1.8, as it would still leave me enough depth of field and I had enough light, but what was done was done. I kind of fell in love in the HMIs and now I’m already looking where to get some cheap ones.

Røde NTG-2, Tascam DR-100 and my beautiful girlfriend, who kept the baby silent, helped me record the foley.

As it was late and I had a really tough weekend behind me I had quickly finished, but I think I got enough footage for another movie. Some will say it is still too long again, but I kept it below 2 minutes this time. (: Enjoy!

All photos were taken with an iPhone.

Here it is. In all it’s super slow motion glory. This movie got recorded a few hours after I got a pre production Sony NEX-FS700 camera. UPS should bring the camera until 12 o’clock so I thought I had some time to familiarize myself with the camera as I was scheduled to meet with the rider at 3p.m. But the camera was late. I had only one hour to go through some settings to prepare for the shoot. I checked the slow motion settings. Decided that shots over 200 fps (I shot in 50Hz mode) had visible artifacts and as I wanted full 1080p signal decided that I would not used upscaled resolution frame rates at all. I also checked picture profiles. I had a special one dialed in the camera from Frank Glencairn and that is the one I used.

For the most part handling the NEX-FS700 is the same as the FS100. I got quite used to that camera – if it had some quirks I didn’t notice them. You feel more secure with the new camera than the slightly plasticky FS100 – less afraid that something might happen to it as it is built more ruggedly. The new handle is well built and a great addition – now you can actually hold the camera properly with the handle and do some low angle shots. The camera also looks much better sealed so I wasn’t too afraid something would go wrong in all the dust that was floating around. All in all I like the ruggedness of the camera and it survived all my intensive stress tests over the weekend.

It was shot completely in 200fps, except a few shots (that is why it’s a bit long, but I wanted to show the footage so you’ll probably excuse me). Controlling the Super Slow Motion mode is a breeze. You have a button on the body which selects between regular frame rate, S&Q (slow and quick) from 1 to 50fps (or 60fps depends on the settings) - in same increments as FS100 (updated) and Super Slow Motion. I only shot at full 1080P resolution so I didn’t test beyond 240fps. Reduced resolution didn’t interest me. You can record 8 seconds at 240fps and 9.5 second at 200fps (at 50Hz setting) and you end up with 1 minute and 15 seconds of super slow motion footage. You can set the trigger to be at the start, middle or at the end of action. I choose end trigger as you can wait for action to happen. You don’t need to expect it. When triggered the camera starts to write from the buffer to the SD card and plays fact the footage at slow motion. This takes around 30 seconds (I never timed it so I don’t know exactly) during which time you cannot record more footage. You can check what you filmed though. I normally don’t like watching the footage in the middle of shoots as it wastes time, but it was nice to show the talent to see what they are doing and looking yourself in 8x slow motion is very interesting. You can of course also cancel the save operation if you feel that better action will happen and start again. If you cancel the operation the file ends where you pressed cancel and it doesn’t delete the whole file. The camera doesn’t record the sound in slow motion modes so I additionally recorded some footage at normal speeds.

I shot it with Nikon lenses. 80-200mm was supported with Zacuto lens support. I used shoot35 follow focus and SmallHD DP4 to help myself with focusing. The camera was rigged on Half Inch Rails S2 Run ‘n’ Gun rig on Manfrotto 540HD head.

Movie was edited and lightly color graded in Final Cut Studio X. I imported the footage and converted it to ProRes for easier workflow as my Mac is becoming a bit slow. Music was performed on GarageBand for iPad.

A big thanks to Klemen Jerala, Tjaša Kokalj, Dino Schreilechner and Blaž Novak for all the help.

Some of the shots were used in the official Sony NEX-FS700 film.

Photos: ©2012 Dino Schreilechner

I have a few more movies to show you so come back at a later time to see more. You can even subscribe to this blog via email on the right.

First is about a girl and her car. This shot was recorded on SLR Magic HyperPrime CINE 50mm T0.95 lens. The creamy bokeh perfect for this scene as the sequence is about her memories. I helped myself with nailing the focus by using Genus follow focus and SmallHD DP4 with its great new peaking function.

Two shots from the car were made using a car rig a described in previous post. For this I used Sony’s kit lens 18-200 as it has a stabilizer. It is very important how you place the suction cups on the car as a small change in placement can make or break the shot. The first shot also has a small CFL light (powered by converter) on the co-drivers seat to lighten the shadows a bit.

For the front car shots I lie down in the trunk of another car with camera on a Hi Hat with Manfrotto 504HD head and some dense foam. I also used the kit lens. There were some problems with the car head lights as they are LED lights and they are prone to flickering.

Some obligatory slider shots. An old Glidetrack with Manfrotto ball head and Manfrotto 577 Quick Release plate.

This shot was made from a hill with an old Sigma 70-300mm F4-5.6 APO DG Macro lens. It was the only 300mm lens I had at my disposal and it turned out o.k. for this shot.

The second movie will be about a motocross rider. Filmed with Nikon 80-200mm and 17-55mm lens. Everything was recorded in super slow motion at 200fps (50Hz). It will be hard to make a short movie out of the footage as every clip is a minute long. (:

The last few clips were made in my kitchen under ArriSun 18 HMI light. I had the light from another shoot in my trunk, paid for them till the morning and I thought: “Why leave them useless in my car?” Let’s use them. Black cloth for the background and some fizzy drinks. I shoot it on Sony’s 50mm f/1.8 OSS lens. Great little lens. I like more and more every day.

This are all frame grabs from the video on Vimeo and can as such present some compression artifacts.

UPDATE: Frank Glencairn was using the pre-production FS700 before me so he left me a special picture profile in the settings. He said it is something between G-Log and K-tone. I quickly tested all the profiles that were pre set on the camera and found this one the most pleasing for me. I didn’t have time to test some of my settings. So here it is. First custom picture profile from Frank Glencairn.

Black level +2
Gamma Cine2
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

You can see the shots again in motion here.

FS700 launch film contains footage from Gavin Elder, James Tonkin, Den Lennie, James Miller, Frank Glencairn and myself.

Description of my footage used in this clip will follow later in the day.

And of course two more photos from the shoot.

Photos: ©2012 Dino Schreilechner

P.s.: Sony kindly asked us to wait with the release of our own extended movies  till after Easter, so coming Tuesday I will post a first movie.

I shot two short movies and a few interesting clips during the short period of time I had the camera and will have them up on my blog later this week, because I have to wait for the official Sony video (which I am also a part of) to come out first.

The new camera is FS100′s bigger brother. Its design and feel is similar, with some major improvements. Most noticeable are build in ND filters which add to the size of the body but help with the ease of use. No more fumbling with the screw on variable NDs. The camera is also more solidly build and has a rugged handle. It has a HD-SDI for proper monitoring and off board recording. The most important feature of the camera is its ability to shoot at high speeds at up to 240 fps in 1080p resolution. This camera is a true world camera as it is 50Hz/60Hz switchable. Maximum speed when shooting at 50Hz is 200 fps, and 240fps at 60Hz. When triggered the camera records around 10 seconds of footage at desired format (24fps, 25fps,…). The camera can also do higher speeds at reduced resolution, so I didn’t bother to check this option. 10 seconds of footage at 200fps translates to stunning 75 second of world coming to a still.

Of course I wanted to shoot slow motions as much as I could so I decided to record fast moving motocross rider on the first day. The off road terrain near Ljubljana’s airport was tough. There was no rain for quite some time and the track was hard and dry. The air was filled with dust and as soon as I saw that it was settling on the camera I got a bit scared. I didn’t want to ruin the camera in the first few hours. But the camera performed flawlessly and the hard environment didn’t prevent me from capturing great images. I used Nikon lenses and they turned out splendid.

The next shoot started nicely for the camera. Peaceful rural scenery on Kras. Pine trees, sun and breeze in the air. I had a couple of friends helping me with the acting and we shoot a romantic drama with a twist. I used SLR Magic HyperPrime CINE T0.95 for the romantic parts of the movie. The lens turned out to be a perfect fit for the camera. Images were stunning. I also used Half Inch Rails rig for attaching accessories like SmallHD DP4 monitor and Genus follow focus. This combination really helped me nailing the focus.

But of course I couldn’t help my self to stress test the camera even more. I attached it to the car using a car rig made out of various Manfrotto and Avenger parts. This time the model was beautiful Range Rover Evoque, driven by my friend Polona. For this I used a kit lens 18-200 as it is light and it has an optical stabilizer. The shots turned out great even though the streets can be really bumpy in these parts of the world. 

All in all I’m really satisfied with the camera and I’m glad Sony decided to let me play with it.

You can find more information on the official page:

http://www.sony.co.uk/biz/product/nxcamcorders/nex-fs700e/overview

All photos ©2012 Dino Schreilechner.

Mobile setup

Lens performed beautifully. Fast aperture allowed me to record the footage with no gain at available street light. Focus was smooth, easy and using a follow focus really helped with nailing the focus even though it was hard at f/0.92. We were a crew of two, Tjaša and myself, very mobile and low profile. We did it fast and easy. More info about the lens in my previous post. You can preorder the lens here if you are as excited about the lens as I am.

Look deep into my eyes. You are sleepy.

I think this situation is where this lens really excels. Sharp object with creamy backgrounds and beautifully rounded highlights. It really makes you shoot all the time at night.

Edited and graded in Final Cut Pro X, music was done in GarageBand on iPad.

Enough words. Let the video speaks for itself.

Light just pours through this lens.

I’ve been using it now on all NEX systems that I could get my hands on (NEX-5N, NEX-7, FS100) with the help of Metabones Leica M mount to Sony E-mount adapter. I tested this adapter few weeks back with a few Leica lenses shooting swans on the river Drava.Leica lenses preformed perfectly on the adapter and I thought that there would be no problems with the HyperPrime lens. But this is one heavy lens. 968g compared to 500g of the heaviest on the test, APO-Summicron-M 90 mm f/2 ASPH. Enough to make adapter behave less sturdy than on lighter lenses. There is some wiggle room at the locking pin and the leaf springs that hold the lens in place are not so stiff as I would like to. Of course I’m just exaggerating so that you can picture the flaws yourself. Real world use of the adapter for the lens is good enough and not bothersome at all. But I wonder if this would also be the case on other adapters, Leica cameras or SpaceCam Leica M mount for Red Epic and Scarlet. I can guess that original mounts are better than adapters because adapter, at least the one that I have, is probably a bit thinner than it should be so that it definitely works with every lens at infinity but that can cause the lens focus beyond infinity which brings a new set of problems.

Heavy weight champion

But enough about adapters and let us continue with the lens. It has a built in sun hood and a screw on metal lens cap. Unscrewing the cap every time you want to use it can be bothersome, especially if you are also using an ND or any other filter on the lens cause it can happen that you don’t only unscrew the cap but the filter too.The lens can present some purple fringing wide open (I don’t know how else would you shoot with this fast lens than wide open) but it depends on the camera and capture mode (photo or video).
I have tested it on Sony NEX-5N, NEX-7 and on NEX-FS100. At first I got a little scared when I saw the fringing on the 5N but then I found out that it is only pronounced on the back LCD when previewing. It is not so noticeable when you look at the photos or videos on a computer. NEX-7 and FS100 also have less fringing. I also heard from other testers that there can be even more fringing with the Leica Noctilux-M 50 mm f/0.95 ASPH. but I haven’t tested it yet. Maybe later this month.
And now to the last rant before I start to praise this lens. There is one word in the lens name that bothers me. CINE. I don’t think this name quite fits this lens. I would expect a few things for the lens to be named that. Gears on the focus and aperture ring, focus radius larger than 90° and some kind of option for lens support. O.k. You can solve that last one, but the first two are a must.On the positive side, aperture is declicked and both focus and aperture rings have firm rotation and the stay where you left them.
As I said before this is one fast lens and its bokeh is very creamy thanks to 12 aperture blades. Object in focus really stands out and you get this 3D effect that is often mentioned with Leica lenses. You may think that I wrote about many more flaws than praises. But in the end I really like the lens and it has become my go to lens. I just don’t take it of the camera. My little NEX-5N looks like a lens cap on it but it stays on all the time.You can see from the photos below the beauty of its image rendering. They were all taken with the 5N. Only exposure, saturation and white balance were adjusted where needed but no sharpening, vignetting or cropping. Click for better resolution.

Stary night

First think I wanted to do is shoot stars. It is perfect for this. If you wanted you could even do it handheld. It would be better to have a wider lens for this kind of work, as I did some of my best night time lapse work with Nikon 24mm f/1.4, but having aperture wider for more than one stop sure helps a lot too.

Grass in wind

Sometimes it is just too difficult to know what you have in focus and to nail it like this grass in wind. Depth of field is really narrow. At a distance 70 cm (27,6 in) the depth of filed is 0.73 cm (0.29 in) at aperture f/1.

Sign

Sign in sign

Shooting at day requires a ND filter. If you would like to use the built in hood than you need to have a set of 62 mm filters. I bought an ND4 which is enough for photography. When shooting video I will use Fader ND with step up rings.

Red room

Thoughtful Dino

Of course this lens is perfect for low light portraits. The focal length, wide aperture. Faces just stand out from the background. Bokeh is creamy, out of focus highlights are rounded with faded edges.

Robot Stars

Magnification factor of this lens is only 1:14 as it only focuses to 70 cm, but this is normal for fast lenses. You can still get some nice still life photos if you get the focus tack sharp as it is very difficult as mentioned above. You can also see some purple fringing in the foreground highlights.

Loving couple

CINE lens is also great on set locations. This is a shot from recent commercial. I was a director of photography and this was just a quick shot behind the camera. Unfortunately I wasn’t able to use the lens for the shoot as the rental Sony F3 didnt have an M mount but I sure would like to have a lens like this on the set.

More to come. I also did a short clip Where is my bike? with Tjaša Kokalj, the prettiest European on Miss Universe 2007, so the sooner I finish writing here the faster I will upload the clip. Two frame grabs below with color grade applied (click for full resolution).

Shiny lips

Gazing look

Yesterday was another great astronomy night. Crescent Moon paired with Venus and Jupiter on evening sky. They were very close together. This time I was doing time-lapse with two cameras. Old and trusty Nikon D200 and new Sony NEX-5N. I was using Nikon 80-200mm f/2.8 AF-D, Nikon 50mm f/1.4 D and Nikon 35mm f-1.8 G lenses. Nikon has interval timer shooting build in and I used Gentled IR trigger for NEX-5N. It’s a great little device responsible for me being one of most creative NEX-FS100 owners across Europe as stated by Sony. Everything was shot in RAW color corrected in Aperture and then exported cropped to 1920 x 1080. The images were then converted to movies in Quick Time 7.

Edit and sound was done in Final Cut Pro X.

Crescent Moon

Moon and Jupiter

SkySafari + (iPad app)

Leica M9 w/ Leica Summilux-M 35 mm f/1.4 ASPH.

I wanted to see if the lens adapter is sturdy enough. I bought some cheap adapters of Amazon for Canon and Nikon and their quality varies. Some lenses can be somewhat loosely mounted. I said that I need to go one step better and test some higher range adapter and Metabones brand presented it self to be an interesting option. I ordered one of eBay and got it quickly.

Shipment from Hong Kong

As expected adapter preformed flawlessly. I guess the form and design of Leica M mount has something to do with it to. It is still bayonet type as Nikon and Canon are and it’s no breech lock type as PL mount is but it still looks sturdier than other bayonet types to me. And Leica lenses fit perfectly on it. Flange distance of Leica lenses is only about 10 mm longer than on NEX lenses so that means that adapter is only that much wide. In comparison Nikon mount is almost 30 mm deep so using it on small cameras as Sony NEX-5N can be bulky. Small Leica M adapter and lenses are perfect match for NEX-5N.

Freezing Dino

Sad Hugo

Both photos were made with Sony NEX-5N and Leica Summilux-M 35 mm f/1.4 ASPH. lens. Maybe the evening light was just perfect but they both look great to me. Dog has tack sharp whiskers and out of focus parts are creamy. Out of focus highlights behind Dino are in perfect circle. Of course I also wanted to see how the lenses perform when recording moving pictures. I put them on Sony NEX-FS100 and point the camera at some swans and other local birds swimming in the cold river Drava.
Weather was perfect. Low sun coming from behind the subject. Quite difficult to focus in glaring sun reflecting from the water. But thanks to SmallHD DP4 new focus assist function shots were most of the time in focus. I shot everything handheld. I helped myself using Half Inch Rails RnG S2 rig, from Sam Morgan Moore.

Run and Gun Half Inch Rails S2 rig w/ SmallHD DP4 monitor

Even the 90 mm lens is small.

From the top the camera looks really big.

It was difficult to focus with the lenses being so small, so using them on bigger camera can be challenging. I didn’t have any ND filters that small so I had to stop the lens down a bit. I did notice one quirk of the camera thought as mentioned before by my college Frank Glencairn, Green ghost effects.

Frame grabs from the footage - green ghosting on the woman

When there was strong light shining into the camera there were lots of green ghosting seen in the footage. Frank was using different lenses with Heliopan ND filter and it seems that the filter is amplifying the ghosting, but I was using the lenses without the ND filters. So it has got to be some weird coating on the filters in front of the sensor (IR or OLPF). At first I thought I was seeing some burn in in the SmallHD DP4 monitor as the light was quite bright, but then I remembered Frank mentioning it on Twitter the other day. I have to ask some friends at Sony if they know about the issue and what could be the cause for it.
I used Frank’s G-log B picture profile for better dynamic range so the footage is coping quite good with extreme contrast. I was using the new 1.1 version of the profile.

Me being careful not to fall into water (©2012 Boštjan Lah)

Shooting the birds (©2012 Boštjan Lah)

Focus assist on DP4 made things easier (©2012 Boštjan Lah)

I shot everything in 50 fps slow motion. I recorded some sound with the enclosed microphone so that I could use some location sounds. Having the setup so small I could record the people feeding and photographing the birds and they didn’t mind or they didn’t want to get away from the camera as they just took me for another tourist shooting the scenery.

The video was edited in Final Cut Pro X. I color graded it using Magic Bullet Mojo. Additional sounds were produced on iPad using an app Animoog.

New major update

I like that they are continue with the development of the app. I don’t have any multicam project in the works to test it’s new abilities. What was most interesting for me is ability to convert Final Cut Pro 7 projects to Final Cut Pro X with new application 7toX for Final Cut Pro. I won’t go into strangeness that a third party developer made this possible and lack of interest from Apple to implement this ability on their own. I guess they have other priorities.
I immediately downloaded the app from the AppStore. It promises translation of the project in three easy steps. It wasn’t so easy for me. That is because I thought that the app would behave differently. I had some projects at work (reportage from the Gorenjka chocolate factory) where we only have Final Cut Pro 7. I wanted to move the XML file and use a footage that I captured myself at home with Final Cut Pro X and hoping it would reconnect the files automatically. But the problem arrived at the moment of the translation. If the media file was not present at the same location as in older project it translated the clip to Generator file and as that impossible to reconnect. Help pages said that you need to have all the files online throughoutthe process. I thought that you only need them where you export the XML file, but you actually need them where you translate the XML file to FCPXML file. As soon as I found out what could be the problem (I tried lots of different exports of XML file, capturing the files locally, renaming them, renaming the path in the XML file and other stuff) I waited for the next day, moved the footage with Media Manager to an external disk drive and as I tried the same thing today everything worked the same as promised. Three easy steps.

Old timeline

New timeline

Project is now in the Final Cut Pro X timeline. It needs some polishing with the organisation of the files on the timeline as their was some audio files that were not linked to the video and there was some messy stuff going on. But everything was quickly solved with Revealing the clip in the Event Browser and than replacing it with the same one plus the audio. Of course I need to colour grade the footage again. But that is all.

Search...

… and replace

I would just like to add that I use a Frank Glencairn’s G-log picture profile for a Sony FS100 as you can see from the lower two frame grabs. The first is without the picture profile and you can see that there is a lot of blown highlights coming from the outside but there is hardly any information in the mixing machine where the chocolate is mixed. After I set the camera to the G-log there is much less blown highlights but there is still the same amount of detail in the blacks. I would consider this shoot saved by the G-log. Thanks, Frank. I will try to write more about the Picture Profile with some tests at some later time, but don’t hold me to it.

No picture profile

Frank Glencairn's G-log picture profile

Here is the video (Final Cut Pro 7 version):

Update: I am late to this, but after I closed the Final Cut Pro X I could never again opened it without crashing the app. It is all due to some error in the imported project, because when I take it from the Final Cut Projects folder the app runs smoothly as before. Only if the project is there the app crashes as soon as I open it. I hope that Apple or Assisted Editing fix the bug as soon as possible. But I guess the project is lost for me and I would have to make all the changes again.

This combination of a beautiful girl and a car proved to be a deadly combination later on as we shot a short movie No more for Sony’s presentation of its new camera NEX-FS700 with them in the leading role.

They would come to Slovenia to shoot an interview and then record some b-roll of me sharing a tip/trick or some insights into using the FS100. Of course I was flabbergasted (I never thought I would ever use this word). They wanted to come to Slovenia to shoot an interview with me and put it on BluRay together with Phillip Bloom, Sam Morgan Moore (I have his Half Inch Rails S2 Run ‘n’ Gun rig) and Den Lennie (from F-Stop Academy). I didn’t know the rest of them, but have later found out that I once saw a great movie from James Miller about adjusting a 8mm projector to digitalize an analog film (The Projector – 8 mm direct to 5D MkII) and that I was using Frank Glencairn’s picture profiles for FS100.

I quickly arranged for a day off at work. I told them what I need it for, but they thought I was joking.

I booked a hotel for Den and James with a beautiful view over Ljubljana so that they could also shoot some time lapses from the room.

And so it came the day they arrived from Germany where they were interviewing Frank Glencairn. We went to dinner and on a quick tour around my home town Ljubljana as we discussed the next day shoot.

I was so nervous the next morning as I never was before. They came to my apartment with heaps of equipment. Two FS100s with lenses (they did the interview with Canon 24mm f1.4 and SLR Magic HyperPrime 50mm T0.95), a slider, tripods, a set of Dedo lights, steadycam and more. My living room quickly changed to a full blown studio. When Den started to interview me my stage fright quickly disappeared and I think that the interview turned out quite o.k.

Then we needed to film a tips and trick section. As my speciality on the BluRay were to be car rigs we went to some beautiful location near Ljubljana to record me rigging the camera to a car. This took place in the vicinity of a lake Rakitna. There they used the steadycam for some of the shots. I really wasn’t nervous at this point. I was in my element and was enjoying it. At the time I hadn’t got a proper car rig as I have now, so many mounting points on the camera really helped with stabilization of the camera. The shots turned out great. I would just like to add that using a optical stabilizer on the lens sure helps a lot (also keeping the weight of the whole rig with a camera down) but sometimes you can see strange moves of the image when the road is not straight and there are a lot of turns. Stabilization tries to correct the beginning of the turn but than realises that this is not possible and than ends the stabilization so you can see some strange sideways movement.

My part was finished and all they need to shot is some B-roll footage of the city where I live. They liked the scenery so much that they used most of it for the trailer. I was their guide through the city and James let me use his SLR Magic 35mm f/1.7 and HyperPrime 50mm T0.95 lens (which I also used to shoot the photos below). I fell in love in both lenses and have since bought both of them. Meeting and hanging out with the guys was great. Especially being part of what they do on the internet. Den also shot a part for his F-Stop academy lectures in my living room.
As it turned out Sony was very pleased with my part as they offered me to test their new camera NEX-FS700 a few months later and they send a pre production model to me in Slovenia to shot some footage for the promotion of the camera. You can see the finished trailer at the end of this post.

Photos: © 2011 Peter Prevec, Dino Schreilechner

The first thing I bought was Manfrotto 561BHDV monopod. With it I could have a smallest stable news gathering kit possible. If serious sound wasn’t needed that is the smallest stable kit to carry around with me all the time. Monopod isn’t the smallest one but it has a decent head (701HDV). I also always use Fader ND on the lens so that I can leave the aperture wide open and to keep the shutter in the 180º rule (1/50s for 25fps and 1/100s for high speed 50fps).

Smallest stable video recording kit here with Nikon lens and Fader ND.

Next thing I bought was a audio recorder Tascam DR-100 to use it as a dual-system audio because NEX-5N has no audio inputs so you need something more serious to capture good quality sound. When using with FS100 this recorder is unnecessary, because the camera already has XLR inputs, but it would also be very handy combined with an accessory described later down the post.

Tascam DR-100

Next thing was the rig itself. After many decision making evenings I decided to choose a Half Inch Rails rig from British below cameraman Sam Morgan Moore. I bought a Rig RnG S2 15mm that can be adjusted to my needs. It offers great flexibility and with addition of other parts creates countless possibilities that suits every mans needs.

Here is the Sony NEX-5N camera with Nikon glass, SGPro follow focus, and Half Inch Rails Run 'n' Gun S2 rig in my favorite small setup.

Here is the rig in shoulder mount setup waiting for monitor and camera. You can also see double-system audio w/ Røde NTG-2 microphone.

Next I needed a HDMI monitor. I want it to be the right size. Small enough to carry it around on difficult locations and big enough so that I can focus easily with it. SmallHD DP4 EVF fell into this category. Small enough to be used as a EVF and big enough to be used as a monitor. Perfect for handheld or shoulder mounted and of course useful even in studio situations. I can’t set enough great stuff about them. Their support is fast and helpful. They really want to satisfy their costumers and they respond to our needs.

Boxes full of SmallHD.

Here is me using the Sony FS100 w/ SmallHD DP4 on difficult location in the canyon of river Soča filming for Red Bull.

Fully rigged FS100 w/ HIR S2 rig and SmallHD DP4 EVF filming a broadcast commercial for Telemach.

Half inch rails Shoulder Pads. They make for a cofortable shoulder mount while being super compact and low profile.

Another photo of a fully rigged FS100 ready to be picked up for some shoulder action. The boy is my intern, learning to be the best filmmaker ever. (:

The same setup minus the tripod, shoulder mounted. Nice looking girl in the car is the boys mum checking on how I treat my interns.

Last thing I bought was something I always wanted to have since I saw a Wim Wenders movie Lisbon Story about a sound engineer Phillip Winter trying to help his director friend recording sound for his silent movie about Lisbon. The movie also has great soundtrack by Madredeus.

Big package from CVP.

My girl was very happy with the contents of the box as was I.

My very own Røde boom pole, Røde Blimp windshield and a Dead Wombat. It's a great companion with the Tascam DR-100 for recording location sound.