SGPro Blade Review

gadgets2sell said:
The flicker you mention maybe the difference of the motor directly driving the gg vs the ultimate's belt drive. If they are using a ball bearing I suspect there will be less of a wobble compared to the brass type of bearing used in small motors .

Chuck
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Wayne thinks I may have a dodge RR2, so getting a new one to see...
 
Lenilenapi said:
Phil ,

Thanks as usual for all your testing and cool footage.

The shot I saw CA on was the one on the beach where the woman in a black coat walks across the shot and the CA goes away as she comes more to the center of the shot. Curious what the settings and lens used on that shot.

Interestingly very similar to CA I got with a clean EX-1 shooting a surfer in black wet suit walking across the beach. That shot was at the very end of the EX-1 lens though.


Also the softness on edges of some of those beach shots was very noticeable. Again - do you remember the lens, and settings. That's not vignetting you created in post was it?

How do you like that Hartblei BTW.

Lenny Levy
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All vignette done in post. I graded this one. Some of those beach shots were using Harblei. I love that lens, used it a lot on South Bank short...Lens on beach was mostly the 80-200 f2.8 zoom, wide open. I had to have ex1 wide open, ideally i would have stopped it down to get better edge edge but because i had gunk inside Blade after switching RR i had to keep EX1 wide open to hide it...bit of an annoying trade off. Going to try again next Saturday with new RR and glean blade!
 
www.digitalvideo.lt/blade.mov (110 mb) 720p

TECH DEMO to show how Blade performs on HPX170, no good for any artistic stuff :)

Here are my thoughts on blade - great. No noticable problems with sharpness, didn't try
using ultra wide angle lens, but with 24m 2.0 nikon, all seems to be good.

Next week will shoot something normal.
 
Thanks for the HPX170 footage! Could you elaborate a little more on your thoughts?
 
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I can't talk much on image quality, as i didn't do any normal test and didn't shoot in the daylight, furthermore, video i posted, could be even sharper, because i just now noticed i shot that originally in 720p, not 1080p.

Build quality is great, though it's like a lego constructor. X/Y adjustment could be made somehow easier, than just having 4 bolts, but as you don't do that everytime you put adapter on the camera, it's ok.

Nikon mount is sturdy, operation is silent, no noticable vibrations, didn't have the change to test rotorazor 2, but will get to it sometime. Image in overal is pleasing, what else could i tell? :)
 
Anyone know if the 24 usually exhibits soft sides? It's soft on the right side of the frame.

Might be a factor of the camera's zoom, though.
 
nice short phil.

How did you achieve the shot at 2:30? Tilt shift lens? Lens baby?

I am slightly disappointed to see the level of CA in these images, it is very apparent on the sides of the frame. Also you have a speck of dust at the top left ;)
 
Phil,

Do I understand correctly that you added a softness vignette around the edges of some shots - like a gaussian blur - not simply a brightness vignette?

Lenny
 
Well, i'd say sharpness is good, though it's not perfect, but you don't expect to have the same sharpness as without any adapter, that's naturalu, speaking in the boarders of 35mm adapter sharpness, my vote is for good, though i used 24mm lens. Previously i had 18 mm 2.0 sigma with Lex and A1, edge2edge was disaster! The shot would pop out immediately out of other shots in the movie, but nothing similar with blade and 24mm lens.

Now shooting against sky, i can tell that it's hardly possible to go with shutter higher than 120. No matter what aperture you set, of course, you can shoot with 25, but 250 is reflected in the flickering waveform in bright areas, but nothing major, on the screen not too much noticable.

Tarkovsky, see my video link posted earlier, it does have a few shots with Nikon 24mm 2.0 lens.
 
strange that you say that Tom, i did the test with the beta models and i was able to achieve much higher shutter speeds without noticing any flickering.
 
I don't have any problems with the shutter, as i mostly use 50, and only if doing slo-mo
i set it higher to 250. If not waveform, i probably wouldn't have noticed it on my panny
monitor. Watching video on big screen didn't show any vivid flickering. So far i'm really
happy with blade, the only problem is weight of the whole system, i think it's around 7kg,
so proper zacuto shoulder mount would help... expenses, again... and never stops :(
 
Tomas Riuka said:
Well, i'd say sharpness is good, though it's not perfect, but you don't expect to have the same sharpness as without any adapter,
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Are you speaking of overall sharpness compared to no adapter or edge to edge sharpness not being perfect?

I am looking forward to Lenny's tests, because he will use a wedge chart and a few different taking lenses to we can know what's going on better.
 
Yeah, I think a Lenny run-through is in order!!! Can't wait for his review/charts to pop up. Gotta have some serious patience for that stuff.
 
I'm saying that only without any adapters you can have perfect sharpness, using any
adapter will only decrease the sharpness. I don't have any charts to shoot, but as i said,
edge to edge sharpness is good. I'm happy with it.
 
I just got my Blade. Beautifully packaged and it looks lovely. It will be a few days before I can get to testing but yes Kholi...charts will be forthcoming.
It does take patience though. Want to drive up to San Rafael and help out?

I'll try to get together with Jeff ( aka Dino ) soon also to compare units.

Lenny Levy
 
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