So NAB is all over for another year and even with a team of three covering the event it’s impossible to check out everything that you would like to. Here’s a quick rundown of a few lenses and filters we thought were interesting but either had no time to video or felt was sexy but not appropriate to the news shooter:
Redrock Micro's V.3 follow focus
First up is the new Redrock Micro follow focus v.3 which was shown last year in prototype but is now working and due to ship soon. It’s a big improvement over the popular v.2r and we’ll wait and see how much that has added to the cost.
The LCW 4x4 fader filter kit
Birns and Sawyer were showing the new 4×4 ND fader from Lightcraft Workshop. This matched pair of filters is similar in concept to the Schneider vari-ND we filmed earlier int he week – but comprises two 4×4 filters instead of just one and a screw-in. Designed to be used exclusively in a Mattebox I’d be interested to see how it compares to the Schneider.
The D-Focus lightweight mattebox
Budget follow focus makers D-Focus were showing a nice prototype budget mattebox. It is pretty lightweight and has a swing away option. Price is not set yet but I’m told it will be very competitive.
Century PL converted Canon 17mm TS-E lens
Next up is this lovely looking PL conversion by Century of Canon’s 17mm tilt shift lens. Quite how you attach a follow focus to a tilted lens I don’t know, but it looks sexy none the less.
If you have to ask the price you can forget it
Fujinon showed a cine lens that simply rocks, sadly it weighs more than my kit bag and costs more than some luxury cars. Again not one for the news shooter but oh so nice.
Tokina 11-16mm NEX mount conversion
A Japanese manufacturer was showing the popular Tokina 11-16mm lens professionally converted to NEX mount. This is easily done with an inexpensive convertor but this is a proper conversion with proper aperture markings. It would be ideal on the upcoming Sony Nex FS-100. Sadly it’s not going to be cheap.
Stripes anyone?
Lastly if you can’t afford any of the other new gear at NAB then maybe you can simply dress up your old lens with a tiger striped skin from lensskins.com.
Somehow I missed this until right near the end of the NAB show. Schneider have decided to bring out their own vari-ND filter solution using their high quality glass. I find vari-ND filters essential for my daily work and am really glad to see a high end solution – albeit at a higher price than existing filters.
Essentially a high quality matched pair of polarisering filters, one circular and one linear, you can vary the amount of neutral density across a claimed ten stop range. Unlike some other variable ND filters Schneider claim theirs will remain sharp on a 200mm lens (on a 5DmkII).
The Schneider Vari-ND solution
The set comprises a 77mm screw in circular polariser and a 4×4 linear polariser which is held in a custom Lee filter holder which allows the filter to rotate.
The filter holder is made by Lee filters
I have bought this kit for my personal use and hope to be doing a test soon.
Since getting my shiny new 1DmkIV I’ve been rebuilding my standard go everywhere kit to accomodate the new camera. The 1.3x crop factor has been seen as limiting by many who have got used to a ‘full frame’ body like the 5DmkII. Some users have sited the lack of good, fast aperture wide angle lenses and it is true there are few options. I’m specifically going to focus on video here but much of this applies to stills too.
The widest Canon f2.8 zoom is the 16-35 f2.8L II, a fine lens but when put on the 1DmkIV it becomes the 35mm equivalent of approximately a 21-45mm, certainly not too shabby and probably as wide as you need to go in many circumstances. It also takes 82mm screw in filters and also takes a Mattebox easily. However if you do want to stray wider the options are more limited. I have a Canon 17-40 f4L which is also nice but not quite as wide or as fast aperture as I’d like.
Canon make the 10-22 f3.5-4.5 EF-S lens which sadly does not fit the 1DmkIV as its only designed to fit the 7D and other EF-S mount bodies. It can be modified through surgery to fit a 1D body but it hardly seems worth it as it is still slow aperture and it will of course vignette.
Canon do offer the very nice 14mm f2.8L II lens I recently used for my horses shoot in Singapore, its very sharp and quite compact, however it is also has a very bulbous protruding front element that you can’t easilty get a filter onto. For video this is problematic as Neutral density filters are pretty much essential for daylight shooting at wide aperture whilst maintaining a shutter speed between 1/50th and 1/125th for natural looking motion. Front filters simply can’t be fitted to the Canon 14mm and the only option is to put filter gels behind the lens where there is a slot – not convenient.
Sigma and Tamron both make cheaper fixed 14mm lenses but neither is as sharp as the Canon and they have the same issues with filters. There is apparantly a remarkably inexpensive Korean manual focus 14mm f2.8 from Samyang coming out as well but I’ve never tried it.
Many stills shooters have adapted the Nikon 14-24mm f2.8 for use in Canon, I have this lens and the appropriate adapter from 16-9.net but its a bit of a faff for video and not a cheap option either. On the plus side filter makers Lee have developed a filter holder to fit the front of the lens so ND and ND grad filters will be no problem. There are also some interesting home brew filter solutions for that lens.
Then there is the Sigma 12-24 f4.5-f5.6, lovely and wide but very slow aperture. I also have this lens and for a corrected (non-fisheye) lens it is about as wide as you can go and is very sharp. On a bright day its fine but no good for low light.
There are also a multitude of non-corrected fisheye lenses like the Canon 15mm f2.8 or Sigma 8mm f3.5 which some people ‘de-fish’ in software when shooting stills, however I’m really not sure how well that would work in video.
Which leads me to my current best solution, the Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 which I originally purchased for my Eos7D. Now this is a very sharp EF-S crop factor lens designed for the smaller 1.5 crop so it doesn’t cover the whole 35mm frame. It is f2.8 all the way through and has a nice wide manual focus ring.
Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 mounted on the 1DmkIV
When fitted to a 1DmkIV it vignettes heavily at the 11mm end but when you start zooming in the vignette goes. By about 13mm its virtually gone and you can use the lens normally even when stopped down to f16. It really is quite sharp even in the corners and shows only minimal Chromatic abberation. The AF in stills mode is pretty average but in video I’d manual focus anyway so this is not a problem. Essentially what you have is a usable range of 13mm to 16mm which in 35mm terms would be approximately a 17-21mm f2.8.
Why would I choose this lens over say the Canon 14mm for video? simple – the Tokina has a 77mm front thread which can be used with screw in filters or in my case a Genus Wide Angle Mattebox (from about 13.5mm with no problems using an adapter ring, you can probably get 13mm with flexible cloth nun’s knickers instead of a fixed ring). You can also fit the popular Genus 77mm Fader ND filter to this lens but it will vignette from about 14mm, still pretty good.
Genus 77mm Fader ND filter fitted to the Tokina 11-16mm
Until Canon bring out something better this is currently the most practical fast aperture ultra-wide angle for video use on the 1DmkIV. I hope this New Year will see other innovative lens options and a Canon 14-24 f2.8 has been long rumoured, I just hope whatever comes out can take filters.
Matt Jasper, a cameraman for the UK’s Channel 4 news, picked up his Canon Eos7D this weekend and promptly rigged it up with some cool toys so he can use it for ENG. He’s planning to blog here about the experience of changing from a big, heavy ENG camera to a 7D rig, stay tuned. Here’s a quick video we did as his first instalment.
Products from Canon, Redrockmicro, Genus, Zacuto, Zoom, Sony and Pinknoise systems.
So here is my first attempt at filming with a production Canon Eos7D just one hour after receiving it from my local camera store. Starting at 10pm I spent about 2 hours in total filming this in the Nanluoguxiang Hutong in Beijing, mostly at around 1600 to 6400 ISO. At first I had a few problems re-adjusting my head to the different button layout to the 5DmkII but by the end of the shoot I was getting used to it. The camera feels great in the hand and I get round to doing more testing and analysis later. For now I’m happy that it is producing the kind of results I want and at 25p, all ready for broadcast. For the news shooter this is the last major hurdle to proper production, there are other issues like sound and aliasing, but this was the big one and so we can rejoice. Several of my broadcast TV collegues are now interested in using these cameras for news coverage.
In my unscientific gut feeling test I think the images from the 7D in low light are slightly noiser than the 5DmkII but still amazing considering Beijing’s dark streets and dim lighting. Its a shame this isn’t a full-frame sensor, but its not a deal breaker for me.
Picture style was set at neutral and the whole thing was edited in Final Cut Pro with no colour correction, the reduced from 1080p to 720p in MPEG streamclip with just a slight contrast and saturation tweak. I’ll try and make the 1080p version available soon on Smugmug.
7D with Genus d-slr bars and mattebox, z-finder and Zoom H4n
Lenses were the Canon 50mm f1.2L, 35mm f1.4L and the 70-200mm f4L IS. I shot mainly handheld attaching my Zacuto Z-Finder straight to the camera, then added a prototype of the new Genus d-slr bars supporting their wide angle mattebox to prevent any excess lens flare. I also shot using a small Redrockmicro shoulder rig at times as well as on my fantastic Miller DS-20 tripod. Audio was from a Zoom H4n feeding the camera audio directly using a custom cable from Pinknoise systems (living with AGC to speed time in the edit).
When I shot the my original ‘One night in Beijing’ test reel on the Eos5DmkII ten months ago I new the whole video game had changed irreversibly. The 7D is the next logical evolution of the 5DmkII video capabilities, apart from the lack of a full frame sensor and the resulting low image noise, it does all things just that little bit better.
