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Black Magic: Official $1,995 raw cinema camera topic, series 2
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  • I´ll try to find the proper topic.. upload a few samples.

    Check here: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2207/17.5mm-f0.95-voigtlander-topic#Item_158

  • Can you upload them to a site and post links? I think it's topic relevant as people would want to use them on the camera.

    You also have a point about early SLR 12's versus current.

  • Thanks for the offer, I've had time with the 17.5mm, just speaking from my experience.

    That´s exactly why I´d like you to take a look. I know there is quite a bit of fluctuation in the quality of the 12mm slr magic, especially early on but it would be interesting to see if there is a similar kind of fluctuation with the 17.5.

    I´m sure you could say off the cuff if my results are similar to your experiences. If not, then that might warrant a thorough test; but that´s a whole different kettle of fish of course!

  • @RRRR

    Yeah, I can't really agree on the SLR 12/1.6 not being usable wide open. But different strokes for different folks and that's all good! I think the 17.5 is the only fast option right now anyway until someone does something about that, so even if you treat it as a 1.2 or 1.4 you get mileage out of it.

    It's not about the focal plane, it's just that the lens is soft in general wide open. It shows through in every way. =T

    Thanks for the offer, I've had time with the 17.5mm, just speaking from my experience.

  • @kholi, I´ve had both the 12 and 17.5mm and seen plenty of footage from the 25 wide open. The 25mm IMO is unusable wide open because of its fringing.. it´s also softer than the 17.5 hands down. Soft is not always bad, though. A 25mm voigt shot at f0.95 really shines through in an edit, in a bad way due to it´s purple fringing. The 12mm IMO is unusable (on a gh2) below f2.8 unless it´s for details or a facial shot f.i. where you only make use of the center sharpness. Don´t get me wrong - some lighting can induce fringing on the 17.5mm as well, and fringing can be mitigated by how you set the focus.

    The voigt´s focal field is REALLY narrow, which makes it very difficult to use wide open. For night shots (low budget) I would not think twice about it, however. For day shots I would not use a wide open aperture in general.

    If you send me a pm I can mail some quick samples, for comparison.

    Still waiting for the bmd cam to arrive, so I can´t do any comparisons between cameras..

  • @RRRR

    Nah, I doubt it's a bad copy. For whatever reason, it's only the GH2 filmmaking community that feels the Voigt 17 and 25 are actually okay wide open. IF you search the internet, most people are completely unhappy with performance wide open. It was the first thing I noticed about the 25 and the same applies to the 17.

    They're both almost unusable wide open, to me.

    The 12/1.6 is pretty solid wide open given the focal length and aperture, and especially given the price.

  • @johnbrawley Sounds like you got a bad copy, because the one I´ve got can be used wide open at infinity without hesitation. In some conditions it can be pushed towards displaying some abberrations and flaring is obviously not the best wide open.. But my copy feels sharp enough wide open already. So if most of your shots where directly into the sun I might understand your results but it really does sound like you didn´t get the best copy...

    In my experience the 12mm looks good at 2.8 and above.. (definately useful for closeups at larger apertures). But it´s also considerably softer in the corners on the gh2 (which I used it on) relative to a smaller sensor, so it definately favors the BMD cam and the gh3 f.i.

    Edit: Pm me if you want some stills samples wide open, for comparison.

  • @RRRR I was surprised too. The 17.5 I had was very bloomy wide open. I shot most of the shots in this video at about F2 which is where it looked useably sharp to me. Even on the screen on the back you could see it mushing up when you got it wide open. Just low contrast and soft.

    I was expecting it to outperform the 12mm, though most of the 12mm shots when the sun was up was at F4 with an ND 9.

    The 12mm was actually really sharp and a good performer.

    JB.

  • Slightly off topic: I wonder if John Brawley and some others have bad copies of the voigt 17.5 judging from the comments on vimeo.. In my experience it´s sharper and more well controlled wide open than the 12mm slr magic (wide open) and much better than the voigt 25mm wide open.. The 12mm does look very good on the BMD cam though, it has to be said.

    There doesn´t seem to be too much jello either, handheld.. (at a glance)

  • Handhelded footage of the BMCC MFT w SlrMagic 12mm T1.5 and the Vöigt 17.5mm T0.95.

  • it was the x-mas lights, we couldn't find a 144 degree shutter angle to combat the flicker

  • @shian, again thanks for the test. simple and to the point. I thought cam 1 had some strange shutter behaver at some point, now that I see its the BMCC I´m a bit surpriced. could it be that its not using shutter speed but shutter angle and i was a bit off?

  • @shian

    Thanks for doing these videos. Just got done with part 3 and there's a lot of nice info in there that you can't find in other reviews.

  • Despite all the things I didn't like about operating the cam, I LOVE the focus assist! The double tap to zoom in, and repeat to zoom out is VERY cool! But a little warning overlay that you're in focus mode would be nice.

  • I'm sure you figured this out or already knew this, but if you're spitting material out of Davinci you can switch from 24 to 23.976. There's a very obvious difference in Cadence between the two.

    Not sure what software you were using though, so. I noticed the same thing when I first started working with footage, the switch cleared it up but I often forget to do it during delivery.

  • Included are some thoughts on shooting with the BMCC and it's footage.

  • part 2 is live now -

  • ....so, here's what I need: (and we'll see if the BMC works for my purposes)

    I need a camera that will let me "get away with more". That is to say that when I'm off with my exposure by a little bit....I can still "save the shot" in post. Now....sometimes nothing and no-one can save me from myself, lol.....but I want a little more room. Here's to hoping that BMC does that for me.

    ps....thanks for posting the vid Shian.
    pps....in the second test shot, camera 2 is 5DM3. The "soft image" really hurts on that one.

    Cheers!

  • Details are on the vimeo page.Let the vitriol begin. And definitely download the file. Vimeo really skews the results.

    Not the most polished, professional test ever, but we had 1/1000th the budget of Zacuto, and very little time. We do our best to stress the BMCC, 5DMKIII, GH3, and Hacked GH2 in a High Dynamic Range shootout.

    We went to some lengths to mess with the framing so as not to have the sensor crop give away which cam is which; primarily so that you'll focus more on which one(s) you like instead of trying to identify each cam. These comparisons have been graded down to the lowest common denominator to be as "equal" as possible. But in Part 2 we'll show you the raw footage.

  • @shian always admired your lighting and camera skills. I'm looking forward to the end-of-the-world shootout. I'd say the clips were shown in order of price. (if I'm wrong, I'd be even more happy than I am with the awesome gh2). Also, did you light the scene for each camera - or did you use a single light setup. Continuously great work shain. thanks.

  • A teaser for the shootout between BMCC, GH3, GH2-I, and 5DMKIII - Results Show coming soon.

  • "As for the micro four thirds model, it's ready to go, however the problem is I feel until we are shipping a whole bunch of EF model cameras, there is little point building any of the MFT model."

    Huh? Why the frak not? What an absolute dog's dinner of a product rollout!

  • I'm loving the RAW quality of the BMD cam. Don't love shooting with it...at all. It's a horrible pain in the ass. Video coming later this week of the shootout with colleague @CollierLandry where we set the BMCC, 5DMKIII, GH3 and GH2 Intravenus against one another in a narrative hi-contrast, hi-DR challenge - 16:1 to 64:1 contrast ratios being tested.

    This is a still from the BMCC RAW 64:1 test series - only thing that's been done to it, is a curves adjustment to bring the blacks down. No conscious fill light was used. The fill you see is from lights that were set behind me that happened to be creating a very soft fill, and were reading around 3-4 EV versus the hair light which was at 11EV.

    image

    Denessa BMD CU (0.00.04.17).png
    2400 x 1350 - 3M
  • They said that they would do a run of EF mount lenses and get back to us, they also said they wont do any MFT's until that initial run of EF cameras is done - therefore hopefully MFT manufacturing starts in January.

  • @robmneislon I think they can (BMD) but the sensor company can't. The big issue is the vacation coming along, so the production will be down. (Christmas / New Years) The strange note is that if the problem is fixed, why are they not in full production.. this confuses me.