HD200, Zork, Nikon 80-200 2.8 ED fitment

[Sean Adair]

One reason the EOS lenses are not used with adapters for other purposes of course is the lack of a manual f-stop ring (like newest nikon "g" lenses). I realize Eric and Paulo are on top of this, but keeping it in the thread here.

Surely you still have back focus adjustment behind the mounting flange on the JVC which allows room to adjust the equivalent "flange to film" distance?

The stills look great Eric! It sounds like your rig is capable of handling this magnification with stability. I'm looking forward to seeing some of these clips "in motion"! I bet the surfers would look great shot at 60p for 24p playback.
REAl slo-mo looks so much better than interpoloated frames, and this amount seems perfect for many sports activities.

[Eric Gulbransen]

Hold on to your pants, Sean. It's uploading now. I did not, however, overcrank the footage because it didn't fit the mood of what I was creating at the time. And believe me, I had planned on doing so. I'll post some raw panning overcranked footage tonight.

Yes, the zoom IS manageable (even the 300mm fixed - which all of those grabs were taken with at distances ranging from 1 to 200 yards). It is not impossible to pan/follow and it is not impossible to find your subject (although I plan to mount a scope shortly, to help when things get rushed - which they always seem to do). It does, however, take some pretty serious effort to frame the subject right. I'm the first to admit I don't have it down yet.

[Sean Adair]

Originally Posted by Eric Gulbransen

.... It is not impossible to pan/follow and it is not impossible to find your subject ...... It does, however, take some pretty serious effort to frame the subject right. I'm the first to admit I don't have it down yet.

God bless the editing machines! No one gets it right all the time. Perseverance conquers.
I think you'll appreciate this stuff though:
http://www.loveearth.com/uk/film
click on "making of" then "Blue water, white death"
Actually a great site to explore. It's the feature project for the team that did the Planet Earth series.

[Philippe Fayt]

Hi Eric and others,

Thanks again for your excellent contributions on the topic. Most wanted.

Eric, you mentioned in an earlier post picture quality problems you noticed when using the Zoerk adapter with your Nikon lenses:

"2 - (not solved yet) - The Zoerk adapter is machined from aluminum which is coated with some type of matte black finish. This is fine, but as you will see in my attached image, not all of what you get is finished in matte black. The actual Nikon mounting ring, which quite nicely is replaceable, is raw aluminum. I took this shot of it using a flash, so you could tell how differently the two surfaces reflect light. It is this raw aluminum ring which I both have been told, and do believe, is the source of a reddish flare that shows up sometimes near the bottom of the frame. I'd say it shows up about 10% of the time on average - and only when you are shooting at a certain angle from your light source."

This reminds me this earlier comment by Andrew Young regarding the Zoerk adaptor with Nikon lenses (http://dvinfo.net/conf/archive/index.php/t-91655.html):

"There is however one signifiant problem with this adaptor - it leaves the silver flange that surrounds the entance to the imagers exposed and this causes bad internal flares under certain lighing conditions (contrasty backgrounds). You may need to blacken your flange, or get Zoerk to modify the adaptor, or choose a different brand. The adaptor needs a black collar like the back of the Fujinon that keeps stray light from hitting the flange."

But as James Ewen then added:

"The Nikon-JVC adaptor that MTF (Mike Tapa) engineers is already blacked inside and doesn't seem to have a flare problem."

This would make Tapa's adaptor a potential valuable alternative to Zoerk adaptor. Would someone agree with that from practical experiences?

Also, Eric, how would you compare the picture quality out of your 80-200 2.8 ED at telephoto end (200 mm) vs. the 300 2.8 ED (besides the reach of course)?

Thanks.

[Eric Gulbransen]

Philippe, thanks for the research. I too remembered reading from this same thread but could not find it again. Nice work Hound Dog! Now if we could just find the thread where somebody had found the solution... I have been to the "Gun shop" but got nowhere.

I am finding no trouble with the 80-200 at full zoom. I'd say the two are pretty much on par with each other. One major difference is the red flare is more pronounced on the 80-200, but not necessarily at 200. It's more which direction you aim it, and at how much light. The other major difference is finding your subject. Once you get the hang of it, which does take some time, you won't struggle too bad with the 300. But Brian Luce and I shot a surf competition together this past Saturday and Brian's struggle with the 300mm "Rhyno Chaser" at first reminded me of how difficult I found it originally. I plan to mount a scope which should solve that problem. Already have the parts on order.

[Eric Gulbransen]

OK all, things are getting interesting. Thank you again, Philippe. In the interest of eliminating the red flare all together (with no black magic marker) I took Philippe's lead and ran with it - all the way to London...

I mailed Mike Tapa of MTF Services and got a very interesting, quick response. I'm not sure if you are allowed to copy and paste entire email communication here, so I won't, even though Mike offered. Apparently Mike was working at Optex as a design engineer when he and Zoerk were "In a race to finish the JVC to Nikon adapter before the the HD100 came out." Apparently Zoerk beat Mike to the punch because Optex went belly up and Mike wasn't quite tooled up to finish the adapter on his own. But he finally did finish it, and apparently now this adapter is his most popular product. Mike assured me that not one of his adapter users has ever complained to him about any "red flare."

Mike then went on to add:

"One difference between the two adaptors that fellow forumers may be interested in is the orientation of the lens in my adaptor.
You will find the lens datum arrives at 45° towards the "operator" side of the camera ie, not under the mic !

Oh, and before anyone asks:

Canon EOS to JVC can't be done,
Canon FD to JVC can't be done.

But, I am working on a simple mechanical Arri PL to JVC, should have the prototype up and running soon."


We'll have a Mike Tapa MTF Services Nikon/JVC adapter here shortly, to test. So hold the phone Alice. Soon as Mike gets it here, we'll all have a much clearer idea of what our options are.

[Sean Adair]

Very exciting. I'd actually gone as far as getting a quote from Mike before - the price appears to be almost exactly the same.
I guess one critical thing will be if the fit tolerances are as tight as you describe on the zoerk.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Sean, I just looked at MTF's webpage and the "Nikon to HD100" adapter is $185.00, Zoerk is $389.00

[Philippe Fayt]

185 in £ Paolo, which makes 247.413 EUR.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Thank you Philippe, I didn't see any currency info.

[Sean Adair]

right, plus shipping, came to basically the same.

[Eric Gulbransen]

Update, I heard from Mike Tapa that he's been run dry on his adapters. New shipment coming in this week, then he'll send one out. Other than that it's been raining like hell here for days and days so I've shot nothing - except for a quick hour today before the rains came again. Found some egrets and watched them through the 300mm. Couldn't figure out what they were eating exactly, until I checked the footage!

If you look closely you can see the trademark purple haze around the high contrasty edges of the egret on the right and the background. Being that every lens I have put on this HD200 gets that fringe in extreme conditions (whites on blacks, or darks), I am growing suspicious that perhaps this is not a lens situation at all. I think it's the camera.

Anyone care to share some knowledge on this?

FYI the guy on the right is worse because he was shot a bit overexposed. I took that shot down a bit in post, but included it here to show the struggle. Typically I'd try to shoot these troublesome snow white guys underexposed, then bring them up in post - which I did to the fisher king. Works out much better this way. As you can see the two shots look just about exactly the same in the end, only the one shot overexposed is pretty well screwed as far as the purple fringe.

Oh and good lord I thought I had ugly feet?

[Sean Adair]

Still great shots Eric. I think you are well within acceptable technical specs for real world footage like this. Video has it's limitations, and I'd be very curious to see another camera perform better anywhere near this price range.
I might have missed it, but have you tried calibrating the HD-200's white shading for you nikons (and confirmed preset with your 16x)? It could factor in to something like this - I won't say likely, but possibly ;^).
There's a 3rd party fcp filter that detects and masks CA (by selectively de-saturating hi-contrast edges I believe). I haven't tried it, but I can look for it if you're interested. Processing footage is an extra hit of time, and can potentially degrade the footage, but some existing light conditions will stress the limits of any optics and camera. Even film and exotic glass can be pushed to it's limits. What we can do is learn how to extend the limitations, and know the range for acceptable results.
BTW - acceptable is a moving target. If the content is amazing, acceptable can be pushed quite far - if the content is mediocre, well....

Which brings me to a burning question.
What do you want to do when you grow up, GoGo? :)
I mean this is in the most warm and jocular way of course!
I think you have already established that you can get spectacular footage of wildlife and remote live action sports. Do you have a project with this type of material in mind? Plan to accumulate and sell stock footage? Hope to attract a producer/contractor? Probably deserves a new thread !

[Eric Gulbransen]

First off Sean, "GoGo" will never grow up. He'll look older and move slower, but he'll never grow up ;- )

You are right, it's a new thread - but a truly burning question. Where does all this go..

My Mom once told me, "Do what you love, and do it your best. Everything else will fall into place." I feel like calling her to ask, "What place?"


As of yet I have never used a plug-in filter for anything. When I was at Paolo's he mentioned plug-ins too. I don't even know where to look, but I'll start now.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Sean Adair

Processing footage is an extra hit of time, and can potentially degrade the footage, but some existing light conditions will stress the limits of any optics and camera.

Processing the footage, in our situation, is something that I believe should be part of the "budget". Unless of course you are shooting something run-and-gun for the local newscast, CA would be the last of our concerns :)

If you shoot other types of videos I would suggest to include post-processing and color correction as part of the process. There is just so much be gained by doing so. If done correctly, CC can be a truly amazing tool and one that doesn't degenerate the image. The secret is to avoid transcoding. I posted here before that editing and outputting your clips in HDV doesn't prevent transcoding and recompression.
We know that the latest version of FCP Studio has Color built in but you don't need that in order to do CC without data loss. To tell you the truth I have been using AfterEffects for quite some time and the color correction tools that it has are as good as anything that is out there and the processing at 16 or 32 bits makes CC a perfectly safe operation.

So, instead of shelling out more money for an upgrade that I barely need, FCP Studio 2, I use tools that I can run from my MacBookPro at satisfactory speed and that can output my clips as well as any other high-end product.
The secret is to avoid recompressing. There is a great tool that can import an FCP sequence into AE: http://www.creative-workflow-hacks.c...ut-the-hassle/
The script creates a comp that links directly to the original clips, similarly to what FCP does, but it uses AE layers. If you want to follow this path use FCP to do the editing, avoid transitions and CC or other effects. If you need to get crossfades and such in the sequence to get an idea of the timing then put the crossfade but then remove it before outputting to SE. Or duplicate the sequence before export. To export from FCP for AE simply use the XML exporter. Close FCP. Open AE and use the FCPtoAE script. Switch you AE project to use 16 bit, or 32 if you have the horse power. Use any of the plugins included in AE for optimal quality CC without data loss. Color Finess is great, Levels and Curves are excellent. Personally I found Magic Bullet Colorista and Looks the easiest and more powerful combination.

Regardless the tool, add an adjustment layer on top of your clip, add the CC tool of choice and tweak away. You will be guaranteed to preserve all your color information and by turning the adjustment layer on or off you can do a quick comparison with minimal if any rendering. Given that I often get to AE to complete my editing, the tools is just too flexible and easy to use, CC in AE comes basically for free and the 16-bit processing guarantees that I don't loose precious data. I found that the results are consistently superior to whatever I get from the NLE.