Nyc Sg Pro - Letus Extreme Shoot Out

Tim,
Thanks for the stills, they are very instructive. I didn't have time or manpower to do such a nice test.
To some extent it is just what I would expect from these adapters in that the more diffuse the screen the prettier the bokeh, the gentler the contrast and the more light lost.
I agree that there is a place for both looks. The softness of the SG in these shots might be inappropriate on the wider shots in some pieces. That's why they save diffusion for close-ups in the movies.

I think if you had the Brevis up you would have seen a third alternative that went even further in the direction of the Letus. Crisper and more contrast. But less light loss as well.

I shot a piece with the Brevis with a woman who was in her 80's and we shot entirely through a 1/4 promist. It looked gorgeous and we were able to shoot in a ramshackle apartment that had practically no power largely with 600 W fresnels with diffusion. I needed every bit of speed but it wasn't as soft as I would have liked without the diffusion.
I expect I'll eventually keep 2 of these - faster and crisp - and slower and gorgeous.

With the HVX at "0" detail though you are not being entirely fair to the SG's potential. I run my detail at 2 or 3 with any of those adapters and even with a Naked HVX. Got that idea froim Barry. With the Redrock I had to go up to "7". Even at 7 though I never felt it looked "enhanced".

Lenny Levy
 
Lenilenapi said:
Tim,
I think if you had the Brevis up you would have seen a third alternative that went even further in the direction of the Letus. Crisper and more contrast. But less light loss as well.
Lenny Levy
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Hey, Lenny
My LE :kali: is on the way . It should be here by Monday I'll try my best to do some test (LE Vs. :nads:Brevis) by next week. I will be using Nikon 17-35mm and 80-200mm for this fire test.


TimurCivan said:
the rev2 is a bit faster...... at least mine is.

DAmmit... now i hafta buy ANOTHER 35mm adapter..... I have 3 already.....
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Timur,
You missed it. [SIZE=-1]This time I would like to invite you to join us on test. If you can bring your adapter, It will be really fun to play wit.

[/SIZE]
Tim,
Your Missing Nikon mount is coming my way.
And please take the metro this time, But wait $14 for parking spot... not bad





This will be Fun Stuff To Do When You Are Bored
 
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Lenilenapi said:
With the HVX at "0" detail though you are not being entirely fair to the SG's potential. I run my detail at 2 or 3 with any of those adapters and even with a Naked HVX. Got that idea froim Barry. With the Redrock I had to go up to "7". Even at 7 though I never felt it looked "enhanced".

Lenny Levy
Click to expand...

I can't go above 0 without seeing a horrible image. How do you do it?
 
Wow, what monitor are you looking on? As I recall Barry did tests a long time ago and concluded that the HVX could easily perhaps basically ought to be at 2 and even 3 was fine. With the Redrock I right away learned I had to be at 5 to 7 to get a good picture.

I'm judging on a 17" Panny. Sometimes I'll go lower like on a closeup or shooting a woman. I find "0" a little soft. I don't like overly enhanced pics at all. Usually I'm in HD Norm if that has any relevance. What gamma do you use?

I wonder if that affects it. I have rarely used Cine V like they did on the NY tests though, so that might be very relevant. I like to keep my grey scale.
 
Thanks for the info and frames, Tim. And thanks crew, Ted, Emron, Jamal and Izzy.

Looking forward to 1080p frames, and perhaps a few 1080p or 720p clips.

SGpro bokeh rendition, awesome.
 
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Lenilenapi said:
Wow, what monitor are you looking on? As I recall Barry did tests a long time ago and concluded that the HVX could easily perhaps basically ought to be at 2 and even 3 was fine. With the Redrock I right away learned I had to be at 5 to 7 to get a good picture.

I'm judging on a 17" Panny. Sometimes I'll go lower like on a closeup or shooting a woman. I find "0" a little soft. I don't like overly enhanced pics at all. Usually I'm in HD Norm if that has any relevance. What gamma do you use?

I wonder if that affects it. I have rarely used Cine V like they did on the NY tests though, so that might be very relevant. I like to keep my grey scale.
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I'm judging on everything I can see, and that goes for 17" Pana "safe cards" to HD Sony Studio Trinitrons. Anything above 0 to me makes the HVX looks even worse than it already does. But that might just be me.

I use B.Press all the time, and remove Chroma Level from my settings to avoid the already apparent noise in the image. Adding more to it just makes it worse IMO.

That might just be me.
 
Nice thread Tim, thanks for sharing.

Tim Naylor said:
Misgivings: There's dust inside my LE. Quite a bit of it on the inside of the glass on the lens mount side.
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Did you get this sorted? And to all Letus owners, how common is this problem? (I've seen a couple of other users with this issue)

Getting specs of dust off my Brevis' gg has caused me major headaches, and one particularly stubborn spec (and my fumbling hands) led to the loss of a gg. This was one reason for me switching to the SGpro.
 
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with the nikon 85mm set at F1.4 there appears to no difference in light loss. but at 2.8 there is a 1 stop difference - the letus being brighter.

LE
nikon at 1.4 HVX at 5.6
nikon at 2.8 HVX at 2.8 - nikon down 2 stops HVX up 2 stops

SGpro
nikon at 1.4 HVX at 5.6
nikon at 2.8 HVX at 2.0 - nikon down 2 stops HVX up 3 stops....
 
Naylor.... i just got this in the mail.....

3040702002404_1.jpg


I challenge your 85mm to a another SG/LEX shootout... Muahahah....
 
OMG, don t tell me this is the lens EVERY canon photographer wants to own!

Looking forward to seeing some footage with it... hope its worth the price :)
 
Kholi,
Are you talking about noise levels rather than enhancement artifacting that increase with the detail. If so you might be right that that increases with detail.
To be honest, I just made my peace with HVX noise levels and accept them. No one has ever complained and it only rarely has really bugged me. I don't do anything with black press or gamma to crush blacks or avoid chroma. I think I would just get another camera if it bothered me that much. Get an Ex-1 in that case. I'm going to look at one this afternoon.

jenningsp - I don't understand what you mean by those numbers.

Lenny
 
Kholi said:
I use B.Press all the time
Click to expand...
Lenilenapi said:
I don't do anything with black press
Click to expand...

And therein lies the difference. Remember guys, the edge enhancement is doubled if you're not using a cine gamma. So +2 looks great on Cine-V and Cine-D, but it'd look way edgy on black press. The equivalent on B.press would be -2! So you're both right, you're just not accounting for the way the detail enhancement changes based on whether you're in a cine gamma or not.
 
Barry_Green said:
And therein lies the difference. Remember guys, the edge enhancement is doubled if you're not using a cine gamma. So +2 looks great on Cine-V and Cine-D, but it'd look way edgy on black press. The equivalent on B.press would be -2! So you're both right, you're just not accounting for the way the detail enhancement changes based on whether you're in a cine gamma or not.
Click to expand...

does this effect the canon XH A1 as well? Never thought about it. i just keep my detail at -5 to get rid of any sharp edges.
 
Not sure, the XHA1 is a totally different thing. I'm just talking about the Panasonic's detail enhancement function, and how it's not absolutely constant -- when you put the cam in cine-D or cine-V gamma, the edge enhancement effect is cut in about half.
 
Barry_Green said:
And therein lies the difference. Remember guys, the edge enhancement is doubled if you're not using a cine gamma. So +2 looks great on Cine-V and Cine-D, but it'd look way edgy on black press. The equivalent on B.press would be -2! So you're both right, you're just not accounting for the way the detail enhancement changes based on whether you're in a cine gamma or not.
Click to expand...

Now THAT I never knew.

So being at about -2 all this time was the right choice for me. I'm probably going to drop it back to -1 at least.
 
Lenilenapi said:
Tim,

I shot a piece with the Brevis with a woman who was in her 80's and we shot entirely through a 1/4 promist. It looked gorgeous and we were able to shoot in a ramshackle apartment that had practically no power largely with 600 W fresnels with diffusion. I needed every bit of speed but it wasn't as soft as I would have liked without the diffusion.
I expect I'll eventually keep 2 of these - faster and crisp - and slower and gorgeous.

With the HVX at "0" detail though you are not being entirely fair to the SG's potential. I run my detail at 2 or 3 with any of those adapters and even with a Naked HVX. Got that idea froim Barry. With the Redrock I had to go up to "7". Even at 7 though I never felt it looked "enhanced".

Lenny Levy
Click to expand...

Thanks for the insights. Re: Brevis. I owned one. I had very bad experiences with the build quality, motor, dust, edge to edge sharpness, vignetting and customer service. Found it wasn't really for pro use. Sold it. I heard they've made some big changes since. Concerning detail, I just wanted to see the raw differences before enhancement. I usually bump up the detail but for the sake of a test, I wanted to keep the variables (aside from adaptor) as constant as possible in order to draw comparisons. Dropped the ball on the color temp variable.

Tim
 
Lenilenapi said:
Kholi,
Are you talking about noise levels rather than enhancement artifacting that increase with the detail. If so you might be right that that increases with detail.
To be honest, I just made my peace with HVX noise levels and accept them. No one has ever complained and it only rarely has really bugged me. I don't do anything with black press or gamma to crush blacks or avoid chroma. I think I would just get another camera if it bothered me that much. Get an Ex-1 in that case. I'm going to look at one this afternoon.

jenningsp - I don't understand what you mean by those numbers.

Lenny
Click to expand...

There's a certain tone (about a stop below grey) when the surface is flat and next to a brighter image that the HVX shows macro blocking that I've never come to peace with. In my last video (pulled the thread until client coughs up) it's so prevalent in a closeup that I have to garbage matte/blur it out. This is where the HVX blow. Any solutions?
 
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