SGBlade w/ XH-A1 Footage

mvansomeren

mvansomeren

Well-known member
First, let me say that the Blade performed flawlessly. Not sure I can say the same about the cameraman (me)

It has been raining in So. California since last Friday. Today was forecast as the first clear, but cold day this week. The forecast for the rest of the week and this weekend is for rain, rain, and more rain. Sooooooo.....

I rushed out to a local park during my lunch hour and shot some footage. Because I was so rushed, I only used one lens, Nikkor 50mm f1.4, and did not have an external monitor. Anyone ever trying to focus an adapter on the A1's LCD or viewfinder knows that it is a challenge to say the least.

Since I just built the SGBlade set up last night, there wasn't any real testing. I came to find out today that I need to collimate my lens. I would hit infinity before the lens did and then go back out of focus. So some of my infinity shots in this video is soft because I went past the mark. Actually, I missed a couple of marks during rack-focusing too. :embarasse

All of these wonderful things could have been avoided had I not been so rushed (and if that little girl in the park would have stopped asking me what movie I was shooting for. :))

One last thing, as I was playing the footage in my NLE, I noticed that my lens had some dirt on it, so you may notice that.

I edited this clip in about 20min so I could post it ASAP. these are just random shots, nothing special. I know there have been a few of you asking for Blade/A1 footage.

Specs:

Rotorazor 1

24f 1/48 No color correction - Preset Panlook2

Camera lens f4, Nikkor lens f4 and one scene at f5.6 just to see what would happen.

And here it is: www.exposureroom.com/bladetest1


I'll do a better test shoot when weather permits.
 
Thanks for posting the footage! Yep, it feels like New York here (being a California wuss about weather)...

The out of focus "bokeh" seems to have a lot of grain. I'm not sure it's grain though - is it noise from the compression you had to do to put it on-line? Or is it really grain from the gg?
 
compression and a little noise from this particular preset in the camera. There wasn't any visible grain.
 
It strangely appears to be some vignetting on the upper left corner, which with a 50mm lens I suppose that it's due to a "on edge" zooming on the GG, and since XH-A1 sensor is a bit left displaced it could be the main cause for it. right?
 
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Edge to edge sharpness is good! And there's no chromatic aberration which I was afraid of after seeing EX1 footage posted by Philip Bloom.
I hate the hazy/noisy bokeh, though. The palm trees at 1.45 clearly reveal that this is not just the compression. I'm gonna use Rotorazor 2 whenever I can, I guess - love its butter smooth out-of-focus rendition. I realize this is a matter of personal preferences and some people are not as sensitive to bokeh quality as I am...
 
naavt said:
It strangely appears to be some vignetting on the upper left corner, which with a 50mm lens I suppose that it's due to a "on edge" zooming on the GG, and since XH-A1 sensor is a bit left displaced it could be the main cause for it. right?
Click to expand...


Good eyes! Yes, in fact I noticed that I wasn't zoomed in quite enough either. I did do an X/Y adjustment the first night, but then I took the blade apart after that and then didn't re-check the alignment . Again, these are all just a result of trying to get some footage out there quickly. Very rushed and so I tend to make mistakes. This week, while it's raining, I'll take my time and make all of the adjustments X/Y and collimation. Then, when all of this bad weather moves on, take my time and shoot another example.
 
trez said:
Edge to edge sharpness is good! And there's no chromatic aberration which I was afraid of after seeing EX1 footage posted by Philip Bloom.
I hate the hazy/noisy bokeh, though. The palm trees at 1.45 clearly reveal that this is not just the compression. I'm gonna use Rotorazor 2 whenever I can, I guess - love its butter smooth out-of-focus rendition. I realize this is a matter of personal preferences and some people are not as sensitive to bokeh quality as I am...
Click to expand...


I actually prefer the look of the original SGPro as well. Like you, I will probably use Rotorazor 2 for most things unless light is critical. As you stated, it's all a matter of personal preference.
 
nice stuff,
looks to me like you have quite a bit of dust on your condensor, just before the GG, or maybe on the prism itself. Doesn't look like dust on the lens to me. It wouldn't be that apparent.
 
I think I found it. It was on the 4x4 glass/uv filter in the mattbox. Guess it was like shooting through a dirty window. However, when I go to redo my adjustments, etc., I will check for dust inside the blade as well.
 
You will be happy with the rotorazor2 :)
I haven't tested rotorazor1 myself, but it just doesn't look right to me, the in-focus parts seems kind of digitally edge-enhanced and seperated from the bokeh in an unnatural way.

It's again totally subjective, but in my opinion the rotorazor1's lesser lightloss just doesn't justify the loss of rotorazor2's aesthetics.
 
What zoom and focus numbers are on you on in the A1 to focus on the gg? What the widest open on the A1's lens you can be at those numbers? I'm hoping that with the blade you don't have to be zoomed too far in, because that would make low light situations easier.
 
I'll have to double-check when I get home, but with the flip module I think zoom was in the low to mid 70's. I didn't notice the focus distance at all. Again, I really didn't pay much attention to it so I could be off a bit but it seemed like I had a lot of room left to zoom in even more on the GG. I will check first chance I get and post the info if someone else doesn't beat me to it.
 
Okay, I checked the zoom and focus. On the A1 with the flipmodule, you get full GG at Z 73. The focus read 1.3m for proper back focus. The cool thing is that you can go all the way to Z 99 and still focus on the GG so you can simulate a zoom to a certain extent.

This test was after I had the X/Y adjusted correctly. I also fixed the collimation and dropped in ROTOrazor 2 for the next shoot.
 
That's awesome in the past I've dealt with being zoomed into 77 or greater which starts to kill your max aperture for low light.
 
Today I managed to get home just in time to adjust the collimation before the clouds and the rain returned. Tape was rolling as I adjusted. I got a couple of quick screen grabs. This is ROTOrazor 2 w/50mm nikkor @ f4. A1 was at f4 as well.

I can already tell that I like the look of RR2 better than RR1:
 

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