Ryan Patrick O'Hara
01-21-2011, 08:01 PM
Today I attended the BandPro F3 open house, and got to play with the camera. It was a pretty nice little cam, light weight and etc. Handling it, it's built and feels like a prosumer camera, meaning it really feels like an HVX200 or Ex-3 on steroids. Meaning it didn't feel like a rugged studio camera, but it felt super light, fast, and versatile. So you've got an HVX200/EX-3 form factor/setup with a S35mm chip sensor. Pretty cool hybrid type feel, if you ask me. Same plasticy molded body, but with some serious connections and buttons. I want to thank the helpful staff at BandPro who had the patience to answer my questions and for letting me hog the camera for a small lens test!
The thing has more inputs and outputs than I've ever seen in a camera that size. Timecode in-out, dual sdi, etc. It was pretty darn sensitive and the image looked great. I was told the asa/iso was native around 800 and it could only be adjusted by units of gain. It had all the usual suspects as far as features. The LCD was tiny, but we also had a huge monitor, so I didn't feel inadequate. Someone else panned the camera furiously looking for wobble, and I have to say it was minimal. Leaps and bounds over DSLR's. And thank god.
The i/technology PL mount was operative. Worked with both the Sony 35mm PL lens, and my Cooke 32mm PL lens. I tried to get the BandPro employee to see if we could get the read out in exact feet on the screen, as the monitor simply showed a digital version of the focus scale and had a small bar which would tell you where you were. Kind of useless, as it was just a graphical representation of what I could simply see on the lens. I was hoping for a ft readout, so if I was focused between 10 and 15 feet on the barrel, it would say 13.5 or 12 feet, and I'd know where I was in the in-between void. Strangely enough the aperture said f/stops when both lenses were rated in T/stops... also taking this into account. Meaning the T/2 Sony lens would say F/1.9 when wide open, and my Cooke T/2.8 wide open said something to the effect of F/2.6 or something. I don't remember, but it was odd that it was reading in F/stops but knew so. It might be in the menu options to get a true foot readout and a T/stop readout, however it was not setup that way.
The PL mount was also very off. It's an adapter that attaches to the camera, and it needed to be shimmed desperately. The chart we were focusing on was about 30 feet away, but after critical focusing on my lenses (which are correct back focus) the readout on the barrel was like 18ft. It was pretty bad. The flange distance was very off, but is of course able to be shimmed.
Sony PL lenses.
The Sony PL was another big item of interest for me. It is what you pay for. The lens looks decent, optically. There was only one of them, so I have no way of telling if they are properly color matched... which is a big thing for me. After playing with it, I'd rather go with top-notch photography lenses, than these... unless they were color matched. But then again even if they are perfectly color matched... there's only three of them 35mm-85mm. WTF. Nothing below 35mm? I consider 25mm a nice lens, and an 18mm essential. Sure it won't be used all the time, but I can't imagine never being wider than a 35mm. Just me.
So here is why I didn't like the 35mm PL Sony:
It's HUGE. It's about as big as a RedProPrime. Seems unnecessary with all things considered. It's plastic. Through and through. Everything feels like cheap plastic... like it's made out of the same thing as the camera body. Yikes. The focus ring has more problems, mechanically, than any PL cine lens I've ever used. First thing I knew going in, was that the focus marks on the barrel does not have any accompanying 'line' marks. Thus if you want to set the lens on 10ft, I guess you just get the line in the middle of the 10. There is nothing that tell you the exact focusing mark. Perhaps if there is a menu option to display the i/technology as mentioned above, this won't be detrimental to production, but just a not well thought out feature. Next issue is back-lash. This brand new lens had gear backlash. Basically, when going in one direction, the gears are moving against each other, but if the gears aren't well fit together, there is a little bit of space in the gears, so when you switch direction the gears have a gap of space to pass through before they touch the other side of the opposing gear, thus there is a hard hit and it can jump the optics a bit inside causing a jump in the image. It's there, but not super horrible like some old lenses I have. None the less, I pulled the focus ring back and forth several times, and every-time I did so with any gusto, I could see the back-lash jump the image. If done carefully, people probably won't notice, but it shows the mechanics of a brand new lens being less than anything to gawk about. Not that it matters but there was a defect in the plastic gear ring on the aperture. One of the teeth wasn't molded properly and was warped causing it to block block the gap where the teeth of the opposing gear should go. Surely would skip off a lens motor or jam a ff. It was on the dumb side of camera, and perhaps is only an issue if you had a lens motor or FF unit for an iris pull on dumb side. Again, not going to ruin a production, but shows you the quality these lenses are built to. Both iris and focus rings turned just fine, however none of them with the strong and reassuring feeling of Zeiss, or the smooth silky smooth feel of Cooke. The Sony had a real friction like plastic drag feel and it rubbed kinda rough and I could feel some faint grit like feeling near one side of the focus scale.
What I liked about the Sony 35mm PL prime:
It is terribly affordable. The most affordable PL mount primes on the market, no doubt. They are T/2. The image is decent. I expected this much. I kinda knew the image would be decent, and the mechanics horrible. That's really the case. I didn't do any big lens tests, but nothing stood out visually when looking for defects. Breathing was actually pretty good when racking from 30 ft to 4 feet, comparable to much greater lenses. Despite the huge size, the lens was surprisingly lighter than it appeared, a positive effect of the awful plastic lens housing. I/technology... is awesome. I was surprised to see it on these lenses, but under consideration due to the lack of witness mark lines accompanying the feet marks, if they can get the feet to show up as a number on the LCD, this is a must if trying to focus off a measured mark! A must.
Over all, if this lens is a sign for how the others will be, even with the great price, it would be hard to purchase a set... It's a decent image, but unless they are color matched with more focal lengths on the way, I'd stay away.
I'd rather spend that money (7k) on Zeiss Nikon's, ZE's or Leica lenses. Sure they are photography lenses, and they lack many features cine-lenses usually have (mainly mechanics and color/contrast reproduction), but since these lenses perform so horribly doing those things, you might as well just buy the lenses for the image quality. Despite the Sony PL's not being bad in image quality, it's nothing to write home about in regards to the image and especially the mechanics. So basically, I thought the image of the Sony PL's was decent but mechanics pretty weak... I'd rather just go for top image quality and go top-shelf photography lenses versus bottom shelf cine lenses.
My .02. Go try these out for yourself, and for those new to PL lenses and proper cinema mechanics, I suggest you try a decent set of cinema lenses to compare these to.
The thing has more inputs and outputs than I've ever seen in a camera that size. Timecode in-out, dual sdi, etc. It was pretty darn sensitive and the image looked great. I was told the asa/iso was native around 800 and it could only be adjusted by units of gain. It had all the usual suspects as far as features. The LCD was tiny, but we also had a huge monitor, so I didn't feel inadequate. Someone else panned the camera furiously looking for wobble, and I have to say it was minimal. Leaps and bounds over DSLR's. And thank god.
The i/technology PL mount was operative. Worked with both the Sony 35mm PL lens, and my Cooke 32mm PL lens. I tried to get the BandPro employee to see if we could get the read out in exact feet on the screen, as the monitor simply showed a digital version of the focus scale and had a small bar which would tell you where you were. Kind of useless, as it was just a graphical representation of what I could simply see on the lens. I was hoping for a ft readout, so if I was focused between 10 and 15 feet on the barrel, it would say 13.5 or 12 feet, and I'd know where I was in the in-between void. Strangely enough the aperture said f/stops when both lenses were rated in T/stops... also taking this into account. Meaning the T/2 Sony lens would say F/1.9 when wide open, and my Cooke T/2.8 wide open said something to the effect of F/2.6 or something. I don't remember, but it was odd that it was reading in F/stops but knew so. It might be in the menu options to get a true foot readout and a T/stop readout, however it was not setup that way.
The PL mount was also very off. It's an adapter that attaches to the camera, and it needed to be shimmed desperately. The chart we were focusing on was about 30 feet away, but after critical focusing on my lenses (which are correct back focus) the readout on the barrel was like 18ft. It was pretty bad. The flange distance was very off, but is of course able to be shimmed.
Sony PL lenses.
The Sony PL was another big item of interest for me. It is what you pay for. The lens looks decent, optically. There was only one of them, so I have no way of telling if they are properly color matched... which is a big thing for me. After playing with it, I'd rather go with top-notch photography lenses, than these... unless they were color matched. But then again even if they are perfectly color matched... there's only three of them 35mm-85mm. WTF. Nothing below 35mm? I consider 25mm a nice lens, and an 18mm essential. Sure it won't be used all the time, but I can't imagine never being wider than a 35mm. Just me.
So here is why I didn't like the 35mm PL Sony:
It's HUGE. It's about as big as a RedProPrime. Seems unnecessary with all things considered. It's plastic. Through and through. Everything feels like cheap plastic... like it's made out of the same thing as the camera body. Yikes. The focus ring has more problems, mechanically, than any PL cine lens I've ever used. First thing I knew going in, was that the focus marks on the barrel does not have any accompanying 'line' marks. Thus if you want to set the lens on 10ft, I guess you just get the line in the middle of the 10. There is nothing that tell you the exact focusing mark. Perhaps if there is a menu option to display the i/technology as mentioned above, this won't be detrimental to production, but just a not well thought out feature. Next issue is back-lash. This brand new lens had gear backlash. Basically, when going in one direction, the gears are moving against each other, but if the gears aren't well fit together, there is a little bit of space in the gears, so when you switch direction the gears have a gap of space to pass through before they touch the other side of the opposing gear, thus there is a hard hit and it can jump the optics a bit inside causing a jump in the image. It's there, but not super horrible like some old lenses I have. None the less, I pulled the focus ring back and forth several times, and every-time I did so with any gusto, I could see the back-lash jump the image. If done carefully, people probably won't notice, but it shows the mechanics of a brand new lens being less than anything to gawk about. Not that it matters but there was a defect in the plastic gear ring on the aperture. One of the teeth wasn't molded properly and was warped causing it to block block the gap where the teeth of the opposing gear should go. Surely would skip off a lens motor or jam a ff. It was on the dumb side of camera, and perhaps is only an issue if you had a lens motor or FF unit for an iris pull on dumb side. Again, not going to ruin a production, but shows you the quality these lenses are built to. Both iris and focus rings turned just fine, however none of them with the strong and reassuring feeling of Zeiss, or the smooth silky smooth feel of Cooke. The Sony had a real friction like plastic drag feel and it rubbed kinda rough and I could feel some faint grit like feeling near one side of the focus scale.
What I liked about the Sony 35mm PL prime:
It is terribly affordable. The most affordable PL mount primes on the market, no doubt. They are T/2. The image is decent. I expected this much. I kinda knew the image would be decent, and the mechanics horrible. That's really the case. I didn't do any big lens tests, but nothing stood out visually when looking for defects. Breathing was actually pretty good when racking from 30 ft to 4 feet, comparable to much greater lenses. Despite the huge size, the lens was surprisingly lighter than it appeared, a positive effect of the awful plastic lens housing. I/technology... is awesome. I was surprised to see it on these lenses, but under consideration due to the lack of witness mark lines accompanying the feet marks, if they can get the feet to show up as a number on the LCD, this is a must if trying to focus off a measured mark! A must.
Over all, if this lens is a sign for how the others will be, even with the great price, it would be hard to purchase a set... It's a decent image, but unless they are color matched with more focal lengths on the way, I'd stay away.
I'd rather spend that money (7k) on Zeiss Nikon's, ZE's or Leica lenses. Sure they are photography lenses, and they lack many features cine-lenses usually have (mainly mechanics and color/contrast reproduction), but since these lenses perform so horribly doing those things, you might as well just buy the lenses for the image quality. Despite the Sony PL's not being bad in image quality, it's nothing to write home about in regards to the image and especially the mechanics. So basically, I thought the image of the Sony PL's was decent but mechanics pretty weak... I'd rather just go for top image quality and go top-shelf photography lenses versus bottom shelf cine lenses.
My .02. Go try these out for yourself, and for those new to PL lenses and proper cinema mechanics, I suggest you try a decent set of cinema lenses to compare these to.