Getting the most out of the 16x stock lens

[Alex Humphrey]

Well I'm thinking long and hard about a new lens, but I'm getting better results with the 16x lens recently, even at full telephoto. On a bright day, shooting 24p 1/48th of a second with ND2 on, it's still too bright to keep the aperture around f4, and creeps up to f11 or even 16, and the image goes to hell quickly. I havn't broken down yet to get a good ND filter, thinking I might get a 17x or a 13x lens in the near future, but I shoot some footage recently at a rodeo with 50% cloud cover, so I easily kept the lens between 4.5 and 5.6. I shoot 24p 1/48th with Detail to MIN. So in this jpg (saved 60 in photoshop) there is still the tell tale CA on purple/green. I found the 16x really falls apart above 50mm and with a small aperture falls apart at 80mm So I'm surprised that I even shot this tight, and got as good of an image as this. I'm sort of tempted to get a good Hoya ND filter to combine with my electronic ND filter to tame more scenes. now from 7mm to 40 I think the 16x is fairly good.

I'm getting some footage from another user in a few days of a 17x shot last year, so who knows about settings, it will be nice to see some 17x vs 16x footage. So if anyone has any 17x or 13x frame grabs they would like to post with aperture settings and detail and focus marks, please feel free to show us your best/worst.

[Alex Humphrey]

This was shot 24p 1/60th ND2, Detail -9 or Min, aperture 5.6 or maybe as small as 8?, Focus on #9, focal about 40mm or so. Edge to edge pretty good.

[Mat Thompson]

Yep that second shot is pretty clean! Its just a shame its so hard to get images to hold up edge to edge. So much of the lens is just wasted huh! In that respect I really miss the x20 of my previous cam the XL2.

[John Sirb]

Alex I just switched my 16x for a 17x on my 200. First reactions, a more meater lens than the 16. I haven't had a chance to check but to me it seems much wider than the 16.
servo much better. the front elements also look 'healthier' .

IMHO, a much better lens than the stock 16

[Eric Gulbransen]

Originally Posted by Alex Humphrey

I'm getting some footage from another user in a few days of a 17x shot last year, so who knows about settings, it will be nice to see some 17x vs 16x footage. So if anyone has any 17x or 13x frame grabs they would like to post with aperture settings and detail and focus marks, please feel free to show us your best/worst.

Took these today Alex with the 200 and the 13X. Seat of the pants differences from the 16X right off the bat:

The 13X is heavier. Longer. So much more substantial. Makes you feel like you purchased something, professional.

It seems (to me at least) to render color differently. Images are richer. For example, this image is exactly how it came from the camera. Example

Sharper images, hands down. Example

You can go to full zoom (which is only 48mm - which equals the 16X's usable long range, in my opinion) and the image does not fall apart. Example(shot at 48mm).

I'm not an optics guy, but the 13X's blue sky sure seems cleaner than the 16X shots I've taken. I usually get a "fair" amount of noise in clear blue sky (no gain, minimum detail always).

Finally (for now) if you have EVER tried to zoom in on something black, that is soaking wet, out in the high noon bright hard sunlight, then you know what I mean. It's a horror. Every place bright light reflects, it turns purple. Here is a horror shot for you, shot with the 13X (does very well to fight CA in comparison). These guys were really thrashing so the image is blurry. Example

[Shaun Roemich]

Thanks for those, Eric! I may need to consider the 13x now instead. How is the barrel distortion at full wide?

[Alex Humphrey]

Eric: Thanks for the images. As you get more, please post em! Also let us know aperature settings as well.

I used the 13x at the JVC HD show in San Francisco in 2006? 2007? Killer lens. JVC had a HD200 with a 13x up against a Panasonic HVX-200, HPX-500, Varicam, sony's HDV as well as HD-Cam. All where piped directly out to the new JVC HD studio monitors, and we we encouraged to use all of them and directly compare. The HD200/250 paired with the 13x did circles around all of them. The Sony HD-Cam came very close in most respects (a lot more expensive option though). The biggest issue I see with the 13x lens, is that the lens is now probably better than the HDV codec. I believe that's why some indie producers are using a JVC with a 13x lens, component output to a laptop and RAID or a tower RAID capturing in a less compressed format. Other producers have used the 17x as well. Only the first adopters used the 16x. If the 13x was $3,000 I would already have one. I'm hoping the 17x is better enough to justify the $3,000 and not spend the $6,000 for the 13x.

well Just got my Hoya HMC ND2 filter to help out my 16x lens, and another user sent me some 17x frames from last year that I will post tonight or this weekend. (aperatures unknown) My first thoughts of the 17x (never having used it or seen more than 20 seconds of footage, so my opinion is HIGHLY suspect) is that it didn't look tremendiously better than the 16x at the prime spots for the 16x lens, but it's usable lattitude for aperature and focal range was at least doubled. so it seemed a lot more usable, though maybe only slightly better than the 16x at it's best? So any 17x/16x users chime in on that one. So a budget minded person might get really good with knowing the limits of the 16x, not get the 17x and save an extra 6 months for a 13x? Hey, is there a doubler for the 13x like there is for the 18x?

[Eric Gulbransen]

Originally Posted by Alex Humphrey

So a budget minded person might get really good with knowing the limits of the 16x, not get the 17x and save an extra 6 months for a 13x? Hey, is there a doubler for the 13x like there is for the 18x?

That's what I did. I used to hate the 16X. But then I did the math on it. It's an absolutely amazing lens (in it's range) for $500. Surely good enough to buy you time if needed. I don't know Alex, I'm a carpenter by day. Run tools through my hands all day long. While I will admit that ultimately it's your creativity that limits you, I have to add that using better tools sure gets you places you might otherwise never reach. I'd save a while longer..

[Brian Luce]

Originally Posted by Alex Humphrey

If the 13x was $3,000 I would already have one. I'm hoping the 17x is better enough to justify the $3,000 and not spend the $6,000 for the 13x.

Alex, if I'm not mistaken, the 13x can be found 2nd hand for about $4500.

[Alex Humphrey]

Well, I just shot some footage yesterday of the 4th. Thought I would share.... By controlling the aperature more closely these days... Keeping the aperature 4.5 to 5.6 for everything which means ND2 for daylight all the time, and occiasionally a Hoya ND screw on filter.. (not used in these pics.. I thought I would share.

Duck is 40-45mm f5.6 24p 1/48th ND2 focused around 30 feet....
Duck2 is 80mm f5.6 24p 1/48th ND2 focused around 30 feet
Fireworks 50-60mm f4.5-5.6? 24p 1/48th ND0...

I think Duck 1 looks killer, Duck 2 looks very good for 80mm with the stock lens. From experience using f11 or even f8 at 80mm is WAYYY TO SOFT. The firworks lack any normal fringing...

So Just to beat a dead horse, ND2 for daylight through sunset for everything to really get the most out of the lens.

Now in unrelated news.. I'm editing some footage shot with a Canon a1 24f. Not a bad camera. I've heard nothing but good things about the camera so I was interested in playing with it a little. It was funny to see that the lens (yes it's nice) is only f2-f9. I don't know if there was any weird limiter on... but perhaps why it looks sooo good to so many people is that even on manual, there is a limited f-stop range. The f11-f16 and even the f1.8 was simply not available. So dummying down the camera further to keep it most users having better footage. I understand that, but I also like the idea of having a couple extra stops at either end just in case I need to. Also I think it was 1 or more stops less dynamic range, even on the 24f cinema mode. I'll post some pics here if anyone is interested. Short story, though it's a nice camera, and no problems capturing at all, I'm still happy I spent the extra money for my JVC. and now that I'm getting better results with the Stock 16x lens... I'm not suffering buyer's remorse anymore... Well that and getting the HD-100 Hard Drive is killer. I highly recomend that. transfered 2.7 hours of footage to my mac in 16 minutes.

[Alex Humphrey]

Well it's raining and I have the day off... looking at dropping some coin on a new lens real soon... but wanted to do a test that I thought about the other day. Resolution test of a 16x to plot out the BAAAAD CA at 88 and 40mm. I mostly wanted to limit or eliminate the left and right hand side of the image's soft focus that seems to happen even with the 16x lens at it's sweet spot. I looked around online for a resolution test chart to download and print decently and gave up. I went into a word doc and filled up an entire page with perios. (.) and printed the paper. I placed it on my wall, lined up my HD110 with 16x and zoomed in to 88mm and set aperture at f4. usual center sharpness and ugly out of focus sides. then changed the shutterspeed up and down to change the aperture. Results? At 88mm the best center to edge sharpness was around f8 to f11????? Hmmmm The over all image still seemed fairly sharp. Hmmm.. Checked at 40mm and the f5 seemed to be the best over all. I'm betting at the wider the lens goes, the bigger the aperture. If anyone is interested I'll capture some frame grabs.

88mm f11 (small aperture is counteracting the CA of the lens?)
40mm f5.6
20mm f4
10mm ??
5.5mm ??

[Alex Humphrey]

Here is a couple of the frame grabs I did at 88mm from wide open to f16. I didn't bother white balancing (sorry everyone) and the exposure I picked an auto exposure (hence roughly 18% grey, but not white balanced) Regardless it doesn't really have much to do with the CA blurry sides. I find it morbidly humorous that I try to hard over the last year to keep my aperture at f4 at all lengths, and I think this fairly convincingly proves at longer focal lengths the better aperture is closer to f11 than f4.

At 88mm f11 seems is much sharper from corner to corner than f4
At 40mm f4 seems to yield a much more pleasing image than say f11 that lacks contrast compared to f4.

Both images below are 88mm. f4 on left and f11 on right. Click on each thumbnail for new window of each pic, then click again for full resolution.

[Alex Humphrey]

Well just tripped over a Fujion T17x5BRM4 lens on ebay that I now have on my JVC HD110. It should not be confused with the current Fujion TH17x5RM lens though I believe it is very similar. the T17x vs TH17x meaning the "H" for High Definition so it implies that the older T17x was updated in someway to be blessed with the "H" as I remember from the FUjinon nameing sequence. My hour testing with the older pre-JVC-HD camcorder lens is very good. It has virtually none of the CA that the 16x has at 85/88mm at any aperture though it is more focus critical.

Why do I even revisit an old post of mine? Well because these older Fujinon lenses are not on anyone's radar and I got mine for under $300 with no one bidding on it. Oh yes, Varizoom remote, and JVCHD110 camcorder match up to the the cable/pins and works flawlessly. The only negative is the Fujinon Wide Converter WCV-82SC that was specifically designed for the Fujinon 16x does as expected NOT fit the T17x as it doesn't fit the TH17x. The Filter is deeper than the threads to match the recessed TH16x lens. No biggie.

If anyone is interested I'll do some static frame grabs of the CA at 85mm compared to the 88mm between the T17x and TH16x respectively.

[Alex Humphrey]

Well here are some semi-static tests comparing the kit lens TH16x5.5BRM to the T17x5BRM4 (that I believe pre-dates the TH17x5BRM that was an option until it was updated to the XT17x4.5BRM lenses.

My gut tells me the SD lenses used on JVC/Panasonic before their HD camcorders where using the same T17x lenses that where updated to TH17x when the HD100/110/200 cameras came out. If there are any differences I would bet it had to do with updating any multicoating and the name. If anyone can chime in please do. But so far it looks as though if you see an older JVC/Panasonic SD 1/3 camera with the older T17x5BRM lens on it, put it on the buy list.

the T17 seems to act about the same as theTH17x did when I used it. Basically at it's worst is about the same as the kit TH16c lens at it's best. there is 90% less CA fringing. My Nikon lenses also show about as much fringing, so i'm thinking it's about what you can expect to get out of a 1/3 chip at longer focal lengths.

So far pointing the lens out the window the image looked better at all focal lengths and apertures. I've lowered my sharpening from Normal to -5 and could easily go to MInimum and still look and feel sharper than the TH16x ever looked at any length.