••Fujinon TV Lens on GH-1...Don't Drool••

Servo power Discussion

(12-Pin Hirose Connector Pin Outs)

http://zone.ni.com/devzone/cda/tut/p/id/3527


Scroll down a bit to see the table right column.

Not sure this is a match to any of the 12 pins used for the servo's with Canon's.
Someone can tell us if this is a good list to work from or not.

Thoughts and opinions on this $95.00 AC - 12v with 12 Pin female Hirose.
I can go 12 pin or 6 pin with one of my lens. From edmund optics

Link is - http://www.edmundoptics.com/onlinecatalog/displayproduct.cfm?productID=2740
 
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hello, i'm reviving this thread to ask a specific question regarding all those 3CCD TV lens
that you guys had enough time experimenting with.
i wanna try getting the Fujinon 7.5-105mm but i just wanna make sure if it's worth it,
concerning all kinds of chromatic aberrations i was reading about, when putting SD lens on HD.

can anyone give me some info on his experience and if it's worth it?

thanks :)
 
There is some CA but nothing that distracts on the Canon J17 I use. You can always stop down a notch and reduce CA further if you like. I have tried three different B4 lenses and newer optics is better than older. They don't have to be HD glass but stay away from older lenses from the betacam era.
 
There is some CA but nothing that distracts on the Canon J17 I use. You can always stop down a notch and reduce CA further if you like. I have tried three different B4 lenses and newer optics is better than older. They don't have to be HD glass but stay away from older lenses from the betacam era.

That's good to hear, thanks !
 
hello, i'm reviving this thread to ask a specific question regarding all those 3CCD TV lens
that you guys had enough time experimenting with.
i wanna try getting the Fujinon 7.5-105mm but i just wanna make sure if it's worth it,
concerning all kinds of chromatic aberrations i was reading about, when putting SD lens on HD.

can anyone give me some info on his experience and if it's worth it?

thanks :)

Well, the lens you mention is a 1/2" lens and will not cover the full m4/3 frame, and there will be a good bit of CA. Also, I don't believe that it was ever available with an extender, so the only use of the lens would be on a GH2 with the ETC mode, and even then it may not cover the ETC-sized frame area. What you want to look for is a 2/3" lens with an extender. Look through this thread and the other one about the Canon lens on GH1 for lots of info about which lenses are best.

As to whether or not it's worth it, of course it depends on your shooting style and what you expect from the lens. But to me, it's totally worth it. There are no lenses made for m4/3 cameras that have all the features of a broadcast video lens. Some have some features, but none have them all. You get a reasonably fast aperture, very large zoom range, and excellent ergonomics in a lens that is parfocal. You also get the option of using tripod-mounted focus controls, and zoom controls if you power the lens. You can't buy a lens intended for an m4/3 camera that gives you all these things in one package. The bonus is that your camera gains a beefy, intimidating, manly, frankencamera look :-)

Editman, I respectfully disagree - certain of the Betacam era lenses have been shown to be sharper and have less CA in some shooting conditions than current entry-level HD lenses even with CAC features. No, I'm not saying that "HD lenses are just ripoff marketing blah blah...", but that some of the high quality broadcast lenses from the Betacam era have no trouble resolving an HD image, and good samples are truly worth having and using, even for production work, on micro 4/3 cameras.
Some of the Fujinon 2/3" Pegasus lenses fall into this category. Sharpness is excellent, and CA is reasonable.
 
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thanks for the detailed reply, lvlinux.
but i presume those 2/3" lens are very pricey.
i'm looking at an ETC budget option at around 300$ tops :)
a decent enough poor man's run 'n gun zoom..
 
thanks for the detailed reply, lvlinux.
but i presume those 2/3" lens are very pricey.
i'm looking at an ETC budget option at around 300$ tops :)
a decent enough poor man's run 'n gun zoom..

Well, actually I have several for $300 and under. Sometimes you can even find good ones on eBay for even a little less than that.
 
Almost all 1/2 lenses cover on a GH1 too. But you have to set the 2x digital zoom mode - which is about the same quality as the GH2's ETC mode give or take.

In both cases however you end up losing the a wide advantage of the lens as well as the 12 or 16mpx resolution of the respective cameras. You do still get to keep the speed advantage tho - which is nice on a lens like my Fujinon 12.5 - 75mm f/1.2 :)

The worst part of these lenses is that there are just about none for a reasonable price which will fit properly in any of the available C -> µ4/3 adapters. Almost all C-Mount lenses have to be irreversibly modified by shaving down their mount surfaces and etc. All C adapters for the µ4/3 mount have a lip 36mm in diameter in order to inset the lens's mount surface INSIDE the µ4/3 mount throat - which is about 38mm in diameter when you account for the 3 bayonet keyways. This means that you have to find a lens which has a mount surface less than 36mm in diameter and that limits the selection to almost nothing! My fujinon for example is 53mm and that's about average. The only way to get around this without invasive surgery is to use a teleconverter and doing so loses the speed advantage making many other 135 options much better choices!

In all is it worth it? No! Absolutely not! Not with the GH2 and now the OMD which have great high ISO performance curves! C-Mount lenses WERE advantageous when such speeds as mentioned above were needed due to the fact that the GH1 and other 1st wave µ4/3 cameras sucked nuggets at ISO 800 and above. I suppose it could still be worth the trouble if you're getting the lenses for free or if you actually like engineering modifications. I'll also add that it's nonsense to recommend staying away from older lenses due to IQ inferiority - It's just not the case. Anything from the early 70's on is going to be on par with most modern(ish) lenses given a relatively similar price range.

Instead I would rather recommend finding a focal-linear [edit: parfocal] zoom with a constant aperture in 135 format. Or at least one where the aperture curve is a sharp falloff at the long end. Unfortunately there are no databases of such information so one is left to buying & trying along with the reading and hunting of hundreds of spec-sheets. I can attest to this personally with now well over 100 different 135 zoom lenses. :) (Wanna buy some off me? Anyone? :D) The best I found on a budget like you mention are the two MF Tamron SP lenses which sport very impressive MFT curves! The SP 28~80mmF/3.5-4.2 (27A) and the SP 35~80mmF/2.8-3.8 (01A). There are others as well; even some very nice AF lenses made for other mounts - which of course do not AF on a µ4/3 camera.

The use of one of those and the increase of your ISO setting when needed (along with a good NR plugin in AE or Fusion) will produce much better end results than you'll get with any C-mount lens much under $1k. Annnnnd, of course none of these options do anything for your shaking... err, anti-shaking. ;) MF lenses on OLY µ4/3 bodies can't use the IBIS during video and there is no IBIS at all on Panasonic bodies. So if you also need AS of some kind you're optioned out and limited to the kit-solutions! The 14-140 or the 14-150 would be my first choices!!! With the 14-150 selling for $400 used and the 14-140 selling for $500 used they're not too far out of your budget. Stop smoking for a month and you've got the difference already. :)
 
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Ah! parfocal... that's the term I was trying to remember... I ended up saying focal-linear in hopes it would be understood anyway... :p

And I dunno why they don't... But are parfocal designs really that much more expensive? I have a few which classify in the $50 -$150 MF zoom range. And I think didn't sell for much more than that new. <shrug> I think one reason they don't might be because they're all hung-up on AF tech. <shrug shrug>
 
parfocal are only intended for video and the mechanism is much more expensive to produce,
so any "SLR" new video lens are probably the next step, and would be expensive.
that's why the GH2 ETC mode is a decent option if you find a good retro tv lens or cctv, and also that you can modify it to be very precise on parfocal focus and hope to have no chromatic aberrations (cause the retro tv lens made for 3CCD) or distorted edges.
 
I guess...

For me I say why bother when there are already parfocal lenses and near parfocal lenses for 135 which do not need to be modified and which will produce full coverage thus giving you much higher resolution footage and which cost the same or less than the CCTV lens!

So I'm still convinced of my earlier conclusion; They might have been worth playing with when µ4/3 sucked at high ISO but not any more with cameras like the GH2 and the OM-D.

If all you want is the focus and zoom barrel knobs you can buy those separately in strap-on form from Hong Kong for peanuts. :)
 
In response to a PM:

135 is a film format. Many people also say FF or FullFrame in this digital age - tho they are referring to a full 135 frame.

I think there are a lot of parfocal manual focus lenses out there. Almost all of Tokina's AT-X series lenses are parfocal for example. There's just too many to create a list. And then there are yet a buttload more /nearly/ parfocal lenses. For example a 70-300mm lens which is parfocal all the way from 70 to about 280mm and then loses it in the last 20mm of zoom or the transverse thereof - quite common. And that's only speaking of MF lenses.

Here's a partial list of newer-ish AF lenses I nabbed from a quick search which are or are advertised as being parfocal:

Sony 16-50 f/2.8 SAL
Sony 28-75mm f/2.8 SAM
Sony 70-200mm 2.8G (and I think actually all Sony "G" lenses.)
Tamron AF 17-50mm F/2.8
Tamron AF 24-135mm f/3.5-5.6 SP AD IF
Tamron AF 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 SP Di VC USD
Sigma 70-200mm f/2.8 EX DG OSS
Sigma 24-70mm 2.8 EX DG HSM
Sigma 18-250mm HSM
Minolta 75-300mm f4.5-5.6 (And actually many Minolta zooms)
etc. etc.

A list of MF zooms would be truly huge indeed! It's one of the aspects magazines always mentioned in zoom reviews or new release announcements. Oh, "magazines"... you know... those things with "pages" that were popular pre-WorldWideWeb. :D
 
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Thanks.
But if they're fullframe lens they're probably expensive.
No?
All parfocal movie or film lens are highly expensive (1000$+),
especially if they're fast.
 
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Well, some of the MF ones are as low as $50 now so I dunno. Paste those strings into Amazon and find out I guess. ;)
 
Well, some of the MF ones are as low as $50 now so I dunno. Paste those strings into Amazon and find out I guess. ;)

Yeah maybe like a few years ago before DSLR cinema started.
I think the cheapest I've come across was a Vivitar Series 1 (either the 28mm or tele version) and that went for $300 on feeBay in fairly good condition. But they're push-pull so I didn't like that.
 
Yeah, I have a couple push/pull zooms, and their a bear to use, not to mention their almost impossible to duplicate a consistant zoom speed. just not an option for cinema use.
 
Besides being a 'push/pull' or 'one touch' zoom (which I agree is not suitable for video) the Vivitar Series 1 zooms Ed mentions above are not parfocal.

I agree with Tesselator that there are parfocal 2/3" TV zoom options available in the range of 11-70/1.4 or 12.5-75/1.2 for $50-100, and slightly wider options for 1/2" video (but they may
have soft corners or slight vignetting in GH2 ETC). I regularly watch decent candidates go for under $100. The usual online auction site sellers ask $300 or more for these zooms.
You just have to watch for your deal and bid responsibly (i.e.- do your research).

Any zoom you get will require parfocal adjustment after adaptation in order to hold sharp focus through the zoom.
This is the usual case whenever you adapt a parfocal zoom. This is a fine adjustment you'll want to have performed
properly by an experienced lens technician and should be considered in your cost calculations.
 
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