Review

When I was approached by Scott Cantrell of Tapeworks Texas to review and assess the aspherical lens for the Sony PMW EX3 by Zunow, I was pleased to assist.  Scott and indeed all the personnel at Tapeworks, offer a higher level of customer attention than any of our other vendors.  This combined with their competitive pricing has made Tapeworks our first point of contact for equipment acquisition.

Now to the lens itself:

Basis of the test

As we have also been using the Fujinon XS8-4AS-XB8 wide-angle lens specifically designed for the EX3, it seemed this was the best comparison.  If it were to compare favourably to a task-specific design then this would give video professionals the best assessment.  The images were assembled on to a DVD, which is available at Tapeworks.

The images acquired were fractal for the most part with complex and varied texture and were shot in varying lighting conditions.  In addition, the test sequences chosen varied from close (1 meter) to mountainous areas at a range of a mile or two.  The full range of field of view and focus were captured.

Physical build

When I first opened the box for the Zunow I was struck by the fact that this is a very substantial piece of glass.  It is well made and possesses a simple and robust bayonet locking method for direct connection to the standard 1/2” Fujinon lens for the PMW EX3.  This is true example of the benefits of “keeping it simple”.   Mounting did require the removal of the protective UV filter that was installed on the Fujinon lens. There is little doubt that this adapter would provide a long period of service.

Due to the fact that it is aspherical and is meant to cover such a wide range, it is comparatively heavy.  The Fujinon XS8-4AS-XB8 is lighter than the WEX-075a Fujinon XS8-4AS-XB8 combination, however this does not preclude its use as a field adapter.   If it would be used for prolonged periods one may become a bit concerned about stresses to the lens mount on the camera.  This is most likely not an issue as the most likely use of this adapter, and indeed its benefit, is that it can be mounted only when required.  For those who feel the PMW-EX3 is too light and should feel more substantial, attach this adapter and you will have the weight your desire.  As an aside, as we will frequently trek into very remote areas carrying significant amounts of gear (often in hostile circumstances) the light and agile capability of the EX3 is welcome.  The WEX-075a is of course lighter than the Fujinon XS8-4AS-XB8 and much easier to place in backpacks, etc.

There is a distinct advantage to the approach of using a wide-angle adapter, as it does not involve the removal of the lens and therefore exposure to dust and the elements.  There are several times in the past when this would have been a most welcome part of the kit.  To prove the point, during the tests a few particles of dust inadvertently found their way on to the lens mount and are visible in shots of the sky.  We left these particles in the final images to make the point.

The lens hood that comes with the WEX-075a is roughly the same size as the Fujinon XS8-4AS-XB8 as would be expected.  Here again design simplicity was key with a straightforward slip on and tighten method of attachment being used.  The lens caps are of the slip-on type but are adequately snug.

Considering the value and price point of this lens and its greatest potential use for the field, I would like to have seen a more protective case rather than the nylon pouch that is provided.  For our purposes it will require more protection.

Image performance

A series of four tests were conducted to test the characteristics of the Zunow adapter against the Fujinon wide angle.  Each test was conducted with no Neutral Density on the first test during which the full range of the zoom function would be employed and then a subsequent identical test with a neutral density of 2 set on the PMW-EX3.

A variety of image surfaces were chosen in four separate lighting conditions.  Test Number Four was conducted with a strong backlit situation to attempt to force Chromatic aberration to be apparent.

In all tests the following characteristics were consistently observed:

The Zunow adapter provided a surprisingly sharp image especially when considering the large amount of glass being introduced into the image stream.  In some cases it would rival the purpose-built Fujinon lens.  On some images of relatively small objects in motion, the difference in clarity between the two lenses was difficult to distinguish (if at all).

Of course with a large aspherical adapter there is a tendency for distortion to form in the corners and depending on the degree of magnification, along the outer edges as well.  While the Fujinon lens held the clear advantage in this regard, the images made with the Zunow were still useful and the distortion hardly noticeable when the images were not being “zoomed”.  Corner distortion was also most apparent on those sections of the image, which were highly fractal.

As regards the equivalent focal lengths are concerned, the Fujinon actually allowed a wider angle of view whereas the Zunow enabled a closer focus when fully zoomed in to the subject.

A remarkable and distinct difference between the two lens arrangements was the narrower depth of field achieved by the Zunow adapter.  It was in fact a most pleasant surprise, which yielded some above average images.  This characteristic was naturally most noticeable when a narrow field of view was used and the Neutral density on the camera was set to 2.  The bokeh is acceptable and perfectly usable for a video lens.  It was certainly more dramatic than the Fujinon lens.  Therefore this could be used in certain circumstances when the use of a 35mm adapter is not available.

There was a difference between the two lenses in regards to contrast and colour representation.  The colour presented on the Fujinon was more vivid and the contrast more in keeping with the camera settings.  The characteristics of the Zunow however were well within adjustment tolerances both on the camera settings as well as in post-production.

Chromatic aberration was only apparent in several conditions and only in the outer extremes of the image, as one would expect.  It was however far better than was expected.

Summary

Some may feel that putting an adapter up against a dedicated design lens to be a bit unfair, however I would assume that at the price point, that would be the consideration most videographers would be making.   Therefore I felt it was important to see if such an adapter could serve the professional to an acceptable standard.  To me the answer is yes, under certain circumstances.  Indeed as previously mentioned, it would be extremely handy in the field and can be quickly applied when needed.  Certainly the unexpected benefit of a narrow depth of field provides a creative solution to many situations.

If one is aware of the potential shortfalls of using an adapter of this size, it can be of significant value.  In our case it will not replace the Fujinon lens but is being seriously considered for inclusion in our field kit.

Well done Zunow.

Review Provided By:
Philip E Hewitt
Seventh Victory
P O Box 1123
Qunicy, CA 95971

(( Disclaimer – Powered Production was not paid to post this review nor did we conduct the tests of the equipment, TapeWorksTexas is a friend of ours, and is who we choose as our vendor in the Houston, Texas area.))

The Teeth Of The Tiger – Part Two

Let me be transparent at this point about my motives. I’ve shot a lot of video for TV, Indie films, YouTube, etc. and I’m buying into the idea that you can make a great looking film with HD DSLR cameras.

I’m coming at this as a film guy who’s shot and worked around a lot of 35mm motion and stills and medium format – hyper SDoF and heavy grip trucks. I know it takes more than a camera and some fairy dust post tools to be a film, not just look like a film.

But, for those of you who came up shooting fast and easy video with fixed lens 1/3 chip cameras, there are probably a number of areas you have not considered. If you want the film look, the Colonel has a few secret herbs and spices you need before it goes from home grown to the big time. Here are the big ones.

1. Lenses

You can see for mile from here – if you forked over the dough for a good prime lens. The $100-200 ‘kit lens’ that came with the camera is entirely useless. As soon as I slapped on my shiny Canon 50mm 1.4 lens, I realized why I had paid nearly $900 for it. And no, the 50mm 1.8 won’t cut it either. Once a crew I know of threw their 1.8 to the ground, smashed it up and used it as a ‘Lens Baby’ alternative. This is appropriate behavior.

Canon make a 50mm 1.2 L lens. If I was dumb enough to put that on my camera, I would have to sell a kidney and buy that and forsake my 1.4. Why? Because you can REALLY see the difference in quality between the different levels of lens. And you can’t go back. And your audience can see it too. Even on the ‘interwebvimeotube’

Vincent Laforet has a large collection of L lenses, and it shows in Reverie. It’s part of the reason that video created such a stir.

You will need 5 prime lenses and 2 zooms. You will probably invest $5k-$10k depending on where in the world you live. I would suggest the 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 100mm, 10-22mm and the EF 70-300mm.

The faster primes will get you a sharper image, better color rendition, SDoF and low light performance the zooms can’t touch.

The zooms will get you out of trouble time and again when the distance between the subject and the camera is fixed. Like the other day when shooting a waterfall. With only a 50mm prime, I was forced to ford the river and setup in the splash zone…

2. Sound

According to George Lucas,  the audio is at least 50% of the motion picture experience . And it is typically the most abused aspect of video production. Pfft, radio lapels are not God’s answer to every situation. Most DSLRs are poor sound recorders. It’s not just the inter-channel crosstalk that you get from a 3.5mm stereo jack (wha? It does what?). It’s also the lack of manual recording levels, the REALLY compressed sound quality, the lack of any other meaningful control, having to menu dive for whatever control there is…

Look, if we keep our 35mm film paradigm in mind, record the sound separately if you can. Buy a reasonable portable digital recorder (most things around $400 US and up) and stick it to your camera. They record and run all day on SDHC and a few AAs. Due in part to better design and a better recording format, it will sound better. Imagine that…

Oh, and trample those blinking iPod ear-buds and get some full cup headphones (closed back) like Sony’s MDR-7502 (sort of a standard, like Avid once was- more because everyone had one, not so much ’cause it’s the best).

Use this software: PluralEyes to re-sync picture and sound in post without the tedium.

If you treat sound separately, chances are you will get a sound recordists, or pay more attention yourself, resulting in better sound and therefore a better film.

Don’t ever use a built in mic (or on camera shotgun) if you can possibly avoid it. Get the right mic on or near what you need to hear. Think, people. Think. For the love of Pete, stop using the 20c mic built into your DSLR unless you need it to sound like it is under water in a submarine.
Oh, and stop editing and mixing on those Logitech computer speakers. Man (or woman), up and get some studio monitors! You don’t edit on a 1960′s portable tele – if sound is 50%, then spend the dosh on some real speakers.

3. External Monitor

I will tell you now (if you have not already discovered), that the screen on the back of your 550D is not as bright as you need in broad daylight. Even in subdued light, ambient light will make it hard to judge anything on what has to be the shiniest (and most nose-fog catching) screen made to date.

Zacuto leads the way with a strap on (ahem) viewfinder gadget…look, I’m a pretty normal human being, my head being attached by a short neck. If you pan the camera more tha 30 degrees in any direction you have to move your whole body to maintain a good seal on the eye cup. Turn 90 degrees, and you will consulting a contortionist for help or a chiropractor for salvation if you did it without thinking first.

Get a monitor on an external arm (I likeManfrotto magic arms, half the price, longer and versatile mouting options).

Get a Hoodman shade or whip something up out of black foam-core and gaffer tape. The DV Rebel should endeavour to home-brew at least 25% of his/her kit.

The 550D has a neat zoom in feature with pan and scan to see a 100% magnification and check focus – but you can only use it OUTSIDE of record mode.

4. MatteBox and Follow Focus

I listed them together because it’s silly not to buy them as a package deal – and if you have a mattebox, there is nowhere for your fingers (unless you look like ET) to fiddle about with the lens. Your arm and wrist will be on an unnatural angle all day if you try and rack focus on the lens body. It will annoy you at first, and hurt if you go all day.

And you need the mattebox for 2 reasons. The first is: it’ll look cool. Yep, I said it. You are going to have a Dickens of a time explaining to your client that you ditched your old AVCHD camcorder (that looks 4 times larger) to shoot on a teeny tiny 550D with a lens that WON’T EVEN ZOOM!

Slap on the mattebox, call it Digital Cinema (and unlike Panasonic, who coined the phrase) as you could really project this stuff at the movies (ask the boys at Zacuto). Rodney Charters,  a fellow Kiwi and DOP of 24, validated what we all suspected when he shot episodess on little video cameras and the only complaint was that without the mattebox the actors felt unsure – nothing about image quality.

The second reason: lens flare. You can have the best (or 2nd best, in my case) lenses on your trusty tiger of a DSLR – but like every camera in the world, stray light off axis kicking back down the lens will wash out color and create uneven brightness or slow pulsing in the case of moving light sources.

Unless you are J.J. Abrams shooting on anamorphic lenses for sci fi, light kicking back down the lens is bad.

35mm guys have used matteboxes for decades because it improves the picture quality (not because it looks cool- that’s for people on the other side of the camera).

If you can handle the bulk, get one with actual matte inserts to match your lens collection. Get the side flags and french flags. Use them when you are on a tripod or shoulder rig. Derig for handhold in tight spaces – a french flag has a built in desire to lobotomise lead actors – this can be bad for the DV Rebel who is probably not paying talent and needs them to stay happy.

5. Filters

I list this separately so you will pay attention. Your video camera came with ND filters built in (if you didn’t buy it at Walmart). I hope you used them. SDoF is totally dependant on wide open lenses (large apertures of f1.2 and friends). If it’s bright outside, you are stuck with an exposure time of 1/50th and the lowest you can con the ISO is 100, you are going to have to stop down to f16 or so. Suddenly the whole world is in focus and you are not getting 2″ of focus you need to see the tears on her cheeks, but not the bus in the background…back to video – blehck. (Blehck – noun – the feeling in the pit of your stomach when things stop looking like film and start looking like it was shot on a 12 year old’s Flip Mino).

You will need Neutral Density filter (ND) and Graduated ND filters. And a few of them. Magic Bullet II does such a good job of color grads in post, I would hesitate to use a colored graduated filter on the camera unless I REALLY new what I was up to (i.e. I was Storarro incarnate).

UV filters are important in my neck of the woods – we have very little ozone layer in New Zealand – so lots of sunburn and UV mucking up the sharpness of colors.

A polarizer is a great investment, and if you have read this so far, you probably know what it does, otherwise wikipedia (it’s never wrong!?).

Filters, like lenses, are not cheap, and you get what you pay for. Get the glass ones for $50. If you get those gelatin / plastic ones, be sure to call me so I can make you an offer on those L lenses you will be wasting.

Remember, you will probably need a mattebox to hold them. Then you will look cool

6. Motion Artifacts

No really, there will be some. Keep the camera still, and let things move about the frame. If you move the camera about excessively (even less some times) you will get judder and false / soft edges that even YouTube won’t hide. Part of this is the (relatively) low speed at which the CMOS is read from top to bottom. This is what leads to Jello-cam – the earthquake effect of moving the camera to fast particularly in a horizontal direction.

Rodney Charters suggests this will lead away from throwing the camera about and getting a decent tripod and composing shots again. Finally, after 20 years of MTV / NYPD Blue (how old am I) camera-as-blind-man-with-flashlight-shooting, we might be allowed to used a tripod again. I blame Garret Brown for getting us used to the camera being far more mobile, but not giving us all a free Steadicam to do it right.

This is one issue that’s going to hamper us until Scarlet and similar cameras with higher data rates and faster chip read rates join the fray.

This is your wake up call to ditch the plastic tripod and get something in a nice carbon fiber with a real fluid head. It’s also a challenge to ‘video’ people to spend a little time thinking about holding the wide-shot longer instead of lunging for the mid-shot.

I am personally looking for a miniature geared head.

7. NLE Fun And Games

Being cheap, and not wanting to randomly fork over anywhere from $400-1000 every time a software company has the itch to make money and release an update, I am one of few, the proud, the Vegas Users who is still on version 8. Version 9 is when they discovered fire…I mean H.264 – that wondrous format that makes cheap video a reality for so many cameras and formats.

Vegas 8 on Windows7 (blast it, paid out again) is not great – h.264 support is kinda iffy in places. Trying to run footage from the 550D at 32bit into Magic Bullet Editors (yeah, another oldie, but I paid for it, you pirate scum!) at 1080P makes even my Quad Core sag and I get about 10fps playback before I add plug-ins. Sad.

This is mostly my fault, and I know I need to consider a MAJOR upgrade. CS5 is…well, it’s fast, but it’s still Premier (and adding the word ‘pro’ is marketing BS).

For those of you jumping to DSLR, upgrade or die. Hey, it’s not mini DV out there any longer, and you will have to update to the latest version of…well, probably everything.

And consider using an intermediate codec like CineformHD or ProRes if you are serious about release formats, color correction, etc. Just ’cause your NLE can play the file natively does NOT mean it’s safe to edit in that muck.

8. Lighting

Really want the “Film-Look”? – it ain’t just the 4 magic ingredients mentioned in part one of this ceaseless rant. And it ain’t celluloid with sprockets running through a heavily modded sewing machine with a bottle of Zeiss’ finest on the front.

Cinematography is about lighting, framing, motion, complimenting the story, motivation for lighting and movement…it’s all the stuff you learn at film school while you are waiting your turn to seize control of the class to produce your opus.

One of these that you can beg, borrow, steal or (gasp) purchase is lights.

Get some good ones you won’t have to make a joke about in your director’s commentary.

At least get a couple of Lowel Totas, some reflectors and a couple of Pro-Lights.

I would personally say get 3 Arri Fresnels of a matching size and couple of big ones – say 3×300 watt, 2x 650 watt and a 1k. Then you can light large areas with one light and get in close with the smaller instruments. Less moving around for your basic lighting, and easy finesse.

Fantasy over for some of us (’cause all my money is going on lenses and a new NLE), use some light / reflector / well placed flashlight with some diffusion. Go and read ‘Painting with Light’ if you really want it to look like a movie.

Video is fraught with washed out, flat, under/over exposed, just plain badly lit junk.

You finally have a camera that can see in the dark- great!  But you can improve on the floodlighting in the subway with just a small battery powered lighting kit.

Tiger, Tiger Shining bright,
in the darkness of the night…

A long time ago in Sydney, Australia, I was a humble camera operator and film school grad who was heartbroken when I worked out that it cost $250,000.00 to hit the road as an owner/operator shooting BetacamSP and that there were over 1000 crews competing in a town of only a coupla million people.

You might not understand that price – but back in the 90′s it was nearly $90,000 just for a camcorder body (Sony BVW 400a). Add the price of a lens, batteries, tripod and the obligatory SUV to drive the ‘talent’ around in, and I couldn’t bring myself to go the ‘industrial route’ and invest in SuperVHS – little better than U-Matic.

I opted for Hi8 and a shiny Sony VX5000 – I got a lot of little jobs off that camera and rented for anything ‘real’

I’ve owned a succession of cameras from the shallow end of the pool ever since. I think a Sony TRV-8 MiniDV handycam was the best of the bunch. Great pictures, tiny camera, good lowlight, cheap…

And with the advent of editing your own work (Premier 1.5!) and color correction (Magic Bullet Editors) suddenly we could care about image quality again.

But try as we might, the new generation of Coppolla’s “fat 12 year olds” just couldn’t cut it with the big boys.

They had wonderful HD images which just looked (and I’m sure Kodak coined the BS term) “Film-like.”

And in the 2000′s, we all started wandering on the same path, in search of the holy grail – “The Film Look”, which Kodak assured us we could only get on film. I have 2 things to say about that: Epic, and Alexa.

So I went back to film. One time. Super8. Long story- no result. The cost was astronomical,  but I continue to love what Super8 birthed on the unsuspecting music video scene – crapulence. That grainy, interpretive, weaving, flickery, indeterminate, smokey, loveliness that is the ‘grunge look’.

How could I get that look? Ah, now you know why my favorite camera of the past was a standard definition, single chip handycam in low light…Step one of the film look, almost.

The path to righteousness, ahem, the steps to “the Film-look” turned out to be:

1.) Progressive images – not interlaced. Thanks to Adobe Premiere defaulting to this whenever it had to change the playback rate of footage or move it – if you slowed your film by .01% Premiere re-rendered a progressive frame that looked… filmic.

2.) 24 frames per second – NTSC was just too damn clean at 30, even PAL at 25 was not quite there. We needed the herky jerk of 24.

3.) Color Correction – Before Magic Bullet, CC was a mystical art practiced by few  (hey, Stu was doing this stuff before feature films were doing DI regularly). With faster computers, GPU support and a masterful stroke from Apple (giving you $25K worth of Color for free with Final Cut) now anyone with half a clue can do CC. Just use the presets if you really don’t know…

4.) Shallow Depth of Field- The one you couldn’t (really) do with software and electronics.

Three of these things could be achieved in camera, if only such a camera existed – freeing the DV Rebel to make films that “looked like a film”.

No really, I sat through a few SXSW winners that had great stories, great soundtracks, but just didn’t look…well, we used the word “expensive” back then because SDoF implied 35mm film and buckets of cash.

Stu Mashwitz, in his masterful work “The DV Rebel’s Guide” first mooted the Panasonic DVX100 (I had a B version) as the ultimate rebel’s camera – it shoots (sorta) 24p (sorta p, sorta 24) and with a bit of care in post…magic, or poor man’s 16mm – depending on your perspective.

Then along came a couple of guys on DVX User with some spinning CD blanks and old Nikkor lenses…gasp – through the murk and moire you could get SDoF. Stick one of these confabulations on the front of your DVX100 and be instantly translated to Nirvana…the mystical realm, not Seattle.

Now we had a true holy grail to pursue. One of those guys on DVX User realized that and started Red Rock Micro. It turns out the 24p with good color correction is half of the film look (and Magic Bullet could do all that with software!). The other, much sexier, half was Shallow Depth of Field.

Like a tiger in the jungle, she was elusive, captivating, hard to pin down, and many hunted her. Unfortunately, just like the Holy Grail, many perished or suffered in the quest with rigs that ran your exposure down to 50 ISO, cost three times as much as the camera or were ten times longer than your rig was wide (see cumbersome in the dictionary).

Then Vincent Laforet gave us “Reverie” – in all it’s 30 Fps compressed glory. Half of us said “You can’t shoot on a compressed format”, and the other half remembered that if it looks good, people will watch. Vincent won, by the way, with 24, House M.D. and even Lucasfilm using the 5DmkII.

And after a mob with pitchforks and burning torches assembled at the gates of Canon, we even got 24 frames per second. Wasn’t that nice of them?

Yes, after a year of staring at wonderful show reels full of 2″ Shallow Depth of Field images (SDoF), and then laughing at guys with 4′ long camera rigs, I made the plunge to DSLR.

The only problem was that a 5DmkII is a little on the expensive side for a true DV Rebel.  Enter the Canon 550D (part of the Rebel range in Canon’s own parlance).

What makes the 550D so great is that it allows for shallow depth of field, it shoots 24 frames per second progressive, and in a true high definition 1080 format. It also has built-in sound (sorta) and only $1,500  Pacific Pesos ($800 in the ol’ USA).

So, I would humbly suggest that the 550D is the official DV Rebel camera of 2010. Red will sell 10,000 Scarlets, but Canon can sell that many 550Ds in a week. And the first Scarlet (at this time) will ship with a 2/3″ sensor- inferior SDoF performance. And it will cost a whole butt load more than a 550D. Understandably. DV Rebels are a scrappy lot, and if there is a cheaper option that actually looks better in some ways, the choice is obvious.

So, the day finally dawned that I needed a new camera. I spent the day with the Sony NX5 – a “proper” video camera- balanced audio in, full control of exposure, zoom and focus, sorta broadcast video format- .as I said, a “proper” video camera. It made “proper” video looking images of it’s 3x 1/3″ chips too. zzzzzzzzzzzzzz zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I ran to the nearest photography store and got the 550D, vowing never to spend 3 times the money to be “proper” and boring again. I drank the kool-aid – “If it looks good, people will watch.” I plunked down the dough to ride the tiger. And only a couple of weeks in, I’ve felt like that famed Indian peasant who rode the tiger more by accident than design.

In part two, I will share some of the joys and some of the perils of shooting on the 550D. Tigers look great, but they have teeth. If you forget about the teeth, you get eaten. But it’s worth the ride.