Music Video Link: HD100/M2/Nikons

[Miklos Philips]

Originally Posted by Taylor Wigton

Redrock Micro loaned me thier new follow focus setup, which worked quite well. You can learn more about it on their website, but they came up with a very smart method of attaching gears to ANY kind or size lens. A nice whip to top it off.

I removed the servo zoom/iris control on the fujinon and attached one of thier lens gears to the Fujinon (no M2) and so the Redrock follow focus system does double duty. Works excellent shooting with or without the M2.

Thanks Taylor. Very cool and cheaper than the Cavision one I was looking into! I'm now going with a system with the Letus35 HD100 adapter and Nikons with a full complement of a rod system, matte box, follow focus, hand-grips, etc. this rig is going to cost me around $2,200 - around half of the 16mm cine lens JVC adapter- and will allow me to use my existing Nikon lenses with an upright image in camera with the HD100. Plan on shooting a short film in the spring with this rig and a feature later this year. Will post footage when I can.

[Joel Aaron]

Originally Posted by Miklos Philips

Letus35

One thing to note about that adapter is it uses a Canon 50mm lens as a relay lens and that shrinks the field of view. So a 50mm Nikon lens out front will have the FOV of a 100mm or so. That gets rid of all vignetting very nicely, but it's a pain if you want wider angles.

[Miklos Philips]

Originally Posted by Joel Aaron

One thing to note about that adapter is it uses a Canon 50mm lens as a relay lens and that shrinks the field of view. So a 50mm Nikon lens out front will have the FOV of a 100mm or so. That gets rid of all vignetting very nicely, but it's a pain if you want wider angles.

Yep. It ain't a perfect world. It's a 1.9X magnification, but one can get an 18 or 19mm Nikkor lens on eBay for $200, so if you have a 22 or 28 mm on top of that and then a 50 and so on you will have a range of usable lenses with the equivalence of a set of 35, 40, 55, and so on up... (these are rough numbers).

[Stephan Ahonen]

Canon makes a 10-22mm zoom for EF-S mount cameras. If the adaptor accepts the EF-S mount (slightly different than regualr EF) then you can get all the way back to a 20mm equivalent, which should be plenty for all but the most insane wide-o-philes.

[Paolo Ciccone]

Originally Posted by Stephan Ahonen

Canon makes a 10-22mm zoom for EF-S mount cameras. If the adaptor accepts the EF-S mount (slightly different than regualr EF) then you can get all the way back to a 20mm equivalent, which should be plenty for all but the most insane wide-o-philes.

For small spaces 20mm is not nearly enough, I shot a bedroom scene with a Fujinon 3.3x17 set probably at 10mm and it was just right. But the problem with using the Canon lenses with the M2 is that their aperture is controlled electronically. The M2 doesn't have an interface for that so there is no practical way to use the Canon lenses wih the HD100. The Nikon alternative is better since you can simply grab the iris ring and set it where you need it.

For the cost and the inconvenience at this point it's just easier to rent a 1/2" or 2/3" camera with a high-end lens like the Fujinon Cinezoom and grab all the shots that require shallow depth of field during a weekend. MHO, as always :).

[Miklos Philips]

Paolo, I think we were talking about the Letus35 not using the M2, but in either case you're right since it looks like that lens is only made to work on " the EOS Digital Rebel series or 20D and 30D SLR cameras." (info from B&H) But it would be interesting to try it out since the Letus has a rear iris control as well and if the lens simply stays open wide it could work, though the focus puller will kill you. :-)

[Paolo Ciccone]

Hey Miklos.
OK, I was going by the title of the thread but the issue is the same. Also, wide open might not always be the right option, iris control is needed. As the owner of a few Canon still lenses I would love to be able to use them with the HD100 but the fact is, it's too much trouble. Having to buy several Nikon lenses makes this option (Letus or M2) pretty expensive. At that point, if I need shallow depth of field, I think it would be simpler and cheaper to group the shots together in the schedule, if possible, and shoot them with a 1/2" camera like the Sony F-350 that we used on "El Papel". Given that we verified that it has shallow depth of field, the rental for the camera plus the lens should cost you less, if all s done in a weekend, than the "gizmo" and lenses but, more importantly, will give you a setup that is easier to handle and that works as expected. The good thing about the 1/2" format is that it allows you to use 1/2" and 2/3" lenses with a simple adapter and it gives you the choice of using a very wide array of cine lenses. I'm mentioning here just as a possible alternative, my comments are not meant to say that the M2 or similar deviced don't have a place. I'm just considering from the point of view of convenience and cost in the case where you need to buy a lot of Nikon glass.

[Miklos Philips]

Paolo,

I'm going to debate you on this. As far as I know an F350 XDCAM HD will run you about $500/ day and if you want to achieve that shallow depth of field look you'd want to get a set of Digiprimes, Zeiss or Fuji, a set of which will run you about $600+ / day or weekend, so altogether we're talking over a grand. Not to mention that your entire post workflow would be disrupted and would need to be re-evaluated as opposed to the HD100. If we're talking rental, I can go high and rent a mini35 adapter with a full Zeiss Superspeeds for about $650 for a weekend/ $1850 for a week. Having said that, I'm trying to put a usable system together myself I can own since I have a series of projects coming up this year and it's great not to have to rent anything, just grab your gear and go! :-)

[Paolo Ciccone]

Hey Miklos, no problem, debate is how we earn knowledge :)
I don't know how much the Letus device costs but the M2 is, the last time I checked, about $2K. Without lenses. Then I would need to buy a few Nikon lenses so I expect the cost to go up abother grand or more. So we are in the range of $3000/$3500. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
A Fujinon 10x10 E series zoom, the same used by Lucas and Rodriguez, costs you $650/day. You can get the C-series cinezoom that works very nicely, and that costs 1/2 the price, for less than that. You can probably obtain to get a wide-angle ENG lense for a nominal fee at that point. With the Fuji C-series zoom you have a very high quality lens that will work in most situations as a set of primes and costs you probably around $350/day.

Regarding the post workflow I disagree with you. The acquisition of footage with teh F-350 is a snap, if anything it takes less time to do a FW transfer (tested at about 55% of realtime speed) of the footage from the F-350. The DVDs cost about $30 each with about 90 minutes of recording time. So, yes, the costs is not small but it simplifies the work significantly compared to what you need to do to use these devices. If you already have a bunch of Nikon lenses then it's a different story.

[Miklos Philips]

The Letus is $900. The rods, follow-focus, etc. what I mentioned above will bring the total up to around $2,200. I do have a nice set of Nikon lenses from a 28mm up to 500mm I'm basically covered, including a 100-500 zoom which should be amazing becoming a 200-1000mm on the HD100. I can't wait to try it out. The only thing I need is a nice wide angle I can use. From what I'm seeing I should be able to pick one up for around $200 used on eBay or Adorama or B&H, etc.

Thanks for the info on the F-350. I think still, if one has the HD100 camera body already it might be more cost effective to get a nice alternative lens rig with cine lenses that will give one the shallow depth of field "film-look", especially if one is to shoot for more than one weekend. The ROI is good.

[Taylor Wigton]

Originally Posted by Paolo Ciccone

......if I need shallow depth of field, I think it would be simpler and cheaper to group the shots together in the schedule, if possible, and shoot them with a 1/2" camera like the Sony F-350 that we used on "El Papel"..... Given that we ++verified++ that it has shallow depth of field, the rental for the camera plus the lens should cost you less, if all s done in a weekend, than the "gizmo" and lenses but, more importantly, will give you a setup that is easier to handle and that works as expected...... The good thing about the 1/2" format is that it allows you to use 1/2" and 2/3" lenses with a simple adapter and it gives you the choice of using a very wide array of cine lenses.

I too think the F-350 is a great camera. Excellent post workflow with those next proxies for making offline edits. Overall, the camera is better then I would have expected and I am excited for another shoot with the XDCAM HD. But- you have sorta derailed this particular thread a bit. If the XDCAM has a 2/3" sensor and was the same price as the 350, then there may be some merit to your argument. Maybe. 2/3" CCD's matched with Digiprimes or Fujinons, Canons, wide open at T1.6 will generate a DOF equivalent to T2.8/4 split in 35mm Cinema Cameras, assuming the FOV of both the 2/3" lens and 35mm lens had identical FOV. But even if this was a reality, I do not see the cost of the 2/3" camera being in the same realm as the 1/3" camera. We're talking about apples and oranges here. 1/3" HD with 35mm Lens adapters are something in a class of their own. Sure, the 350 has shallow DOF as you "verified." But lets not go overboard here Paolo: Every time I use 1/3 or 1/2 inch sensors with ANY lens attached (even a 2/3 inch lens using an adapter), and I am trying to generate nice falloff in the background to pull out the subject that I am shooting (shallow DOF) I am ALWAYS forced to not only shoot wide open, but drag the camera away from the subject really far and zoom way in to the end of the barrel, and only do such a thing if I am using an excellent tripod head. Sometimes even the best tripod head is still not something that should be moved with extreme caution as ANY movement is magnified 100 fold.

So no, I'm sorry but the F350 XDCAM is not really an alternative to shooting drama with 1/3inch HD and 35mm Lens adapters (assuming you know what you are doing). This is from a fiscal and practical standpoint.

And I'm a bit unclear about grouping the shallow DOF shots together and renting for a weekend??? Productions are all over the place, and the some last one day, some last a week, months, whatever. Directors want all sorts of things at any given time, and a production in mid-stream is a moving train that has little patience for these groupings of shot changes that you mentioned. It's all about moving fast and getting into a rhythm. So I am totally baffled about your statement there.

In any event, the point of this thread was how best to use 1/3inch HD with lens adapters and 35mm lenses, and then how best to deal with the content in production and post, and finally, how best to output the final project to a UNIVERSAL standard such as HDCAM, DIGIBETA, BETASP, etc for clients, broadcast, and film festival delivery. There are alot of people on this list who are interested in this (I think) so lets try to keep the post on THIS THREAD relevant to the thread itself.

I will post a couple emails that have been written in the past few days as they are pretty interesting and will hopefully get this thread back up on it's feet.

All the Best, Taylor

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Taylor Wigton

I will post a couple emails that have been written in the past few days as they are pretty interesting and will hopefully get this thread back up on it's feet.

Sorry, at DV Info Net we have a policy against posting private emails for public display. Thanks in advance for understanding,

[Taylor Wigton]

Originally Posted by Chris Hurd

Sorry, at DV Info Net we have a policy against posting private emails for public display. Thanks in advance for understanding,

10-4, no problem Chris.

[Taylor Wigton]

http://www.collectiveent.com/UUDOWN_webQt.mov

Level 3 post has the beta version of the firmware that will allow for the Miranda HD Bridge Dec+ to uprezz to 1080PsF 24 HDCAM from the conformed 720p mpeg stream. Without this firmware upgrade, the GOP structure will create hiccups in for the Miranda and you will drive yourself crazy trying to figure out what the hell is going on. I will post the firmware version number asap, because it's imperative if you are going to use the HD Bridge.

HD100 content looks great at 1920x1080..... yikes!

[Taylor Wigton]

Exported from FCP using QT movie, make move self-contained. RT 10 seconds.

http://www.447productions.com/720p24HDV.mov

http://447productions.com/AIC.mov

This is the first NATIVE file that I have put online of the HD100/M2, and it's the first 10 seconds of the music video. 40mb total. I can also upload the ungraded file as well but in general, I want people to come to their own conclusions regarding the quality of the setup as seen in it's native size, framerate, Codec, etc. Otherwise, everything looks pretty good or pretty bad when you apply compression for the web or show things small.

No sharpening tools have been used. The only tools in FCP were the 3 way Color Corrector and the waveform to bring the whites that were btw 100-110% back down just a few notches to just below 100% in some cases in this clip. I was surprised at what I could recover in the whites, and happy with the look of the grade overall. The image did not seem to "fall apart" as we had anticipated b/c we did not export to another codec.

As far as I can see, there are no lens abberations or other odd things that I am aware of. I used this clip because the focus does not rack and it allows you too look all around the edges of the frame for edge to edge sharpness. The suitcases and skirt have nice edges to help see if the sharpness is acceptable.