Blooming BMC Pocket Cam Review Part 1

Samuel H said:
You mean it's not just the camera creating the pretty pictures? Interesting... :)

It does look pretty good. As expected: just like a BMC with a smaller sensor.
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I think the real star of this footage is, A) Philip Bloom's amazing eye for cinema, 2) The SLR Magic 12mm 1.6 lens. That lens makes any m4/3 mount camera look amazing. 10/10 would encourage anyone with a GH2/3, AF100 or Blackmagic Cam with the 4/3 lens mount to get this lens! That lens flare... Totally real. And looks so good.

3) Can't discount the actress. She was a great face and personality for shooting!
 
I have one of the SLR Magic 12mm lenses that I use on my GH3. If anyone is considering that lens I would rent one first. Anything between say f4.2 and f11 that lens has a nasty soft center image. In the center of the frame it looks like someone has smeared grease on the lens. It is a know problem with the lens and it ruins the image in my opinion. You can read about it here, just scroll down to the middle of the page where it says "strange issue": http://www.photozone.de/olympus--four-thirds-lens-tests/685-slrmagic_12_16?start=1 I contacted SLR Magic about the issue and they basically blew me off. If you open the lens wide open and look through it looking at a light source you will probably see a lot of crap all over the inside elements, which I also pointed out in my not so nice e-mail to them. I rented another SLR Magic 12mm from a popular rental house just to see if I just happen to have bad example. You know...one built on a Friday or Monday. But, the one I rented was just as bad as the one I own. I also own the Voigtlander 17.5mm lens. Now that is very nice piece of glass with a beautiful image. I would pay double what I paid for the 17.5 if Voigtlander would make a 12mm for micro 4/3. Sorry for the rant. Wayne Mann
 
WayneMann said:
If you open the lens wide open and look through it looking at a light source you will probably see a lot of crap all over the inside elements, which I also pointed out in my not so nice e-mail to them. I rented another SLR Magic 12mm from a popular rental house just to see if I just happen to have bad example. You know...one built on a Friday or Monday. But, the one I rented was just as bad as the one I own. I also own the Voigtlander 17.5mm lens. Now that is very nice piece of glass with a beautiful image. I would pay double what I paid for the 17.5 if Voigtlander would make a 12mm for micro 4/3. Sorry for the rant. Wayne Mann
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Nah man, very good info.
 
WayneMann said:
I have one of the SLR Magic 12mm lenses that I use on my GH3. If anyone is considering that lens I would rent one first. Anything between say f4.2 and f11 that lens has a nasty soft center image. In the center of the frame it looks like someone has smeared grease on the lens. It is a know problem with the lens and it ruins the image in my opinion. You can read about it here, just scroll down to the middle of the page where it says "strange issue": http://www.photozone.de/olympus--four-thirds-lens-tests/685-slrmagic_12_16?start=1 I contacted SLR Magic about the issue and they basically blew me off. If you open the lens wide open and look through it looking at a light source you will probably see a lot of crap all over the inside elements, which I also pointed out in my not so nice e-mail to them. I rented another SLR Magic 12mm from a popular rental house just to see if I just happen to have bad example. You know...one built on a Friday or Monday. But, the one I rented was just as bad as the one I own. I also own the Voigtlander 17.5mm lens. Now that is very nice piece of glass with a beautiful image. I would pay double what I paid for the 17.5 if Voigtlander would make a 12mm for micro 4/3. Sorry for the rant. Wayne Mann
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Sorry to hear that. I've been beyond happy with mine. Ive used quite a few lens on our AF100s, and this lens Has been the best so far. Haven't really notice any of those issues. And I would say this video piece doesn't show any issues at all.

Unfortunately, i have not been lucky enough to try any Voigtlander lenses yet.
 
The Olympus 12mm f2.0 is very good, and includes a manual focus ring. It's not as good as the imagined Voigtlander 12mm f0.95, but at least you can buy one :)
 
Agreed, the Olympus 12mm is a top notch lens both optically and build.
It rivals the Canon 24mm L at a fraction of the size, weight and cost.
If you want great MFT glass, the Oly 12mm, 45mm and 75mm and the Panny 20mm are really ideal with the GH3.
They're what made me adopt the format.
 
First let me say that I love everything about the SLR Magic 12mm lens except for the dirty internal glass and the very soft hazy center image thing that it has when the aperture is not kept between f1.6 and f4. It is what a video lens should be "in my opinion", fully manual, fast and very little barrel distortion. I have rented the other 12mm micro 4/3 lenses mentioned and the Lumix 12-35 and Lumix 7-14mm but they all have way more barrel distortion than the SLR Magic. I shoot a lot with the SLR Magic 12 mm, but I keep it choked down with B + W ND filters so that I am always shooting between f2.5 and about f 3.8 or so. Not a very wide range to operate in. In that range in direct sunlight I have a 1.8 ND on, at 320 ISO with a shutter of 1/60 for 30p. One person mentioned that he did not see any issues in Philip Bloom's video of the go-cart racing shots. In his review he mentioned that he keeps the lens choked down with a variable ND for shallow depth of field reasons. In one of those go-cart shots he lets the sun hit the front glass on the lens and you immediately see a round ring sun flare with frizzy edges. That means that he was shooting between f1.6 and 1.8 as anything below f2 produces really nasty sun or light flare issues. The link I provided in my first post to the test on the SLR Magic lens has some samples of what the flares look like with different light sources when shot below f2. The other thing that I forgot to mention is my lens had what appeared to be a large piece of hair on one of the internal pieces of glass. That fortunately was not effecting video quality. After I got shot down by customer support at SLR Magic I figured I had nothing to loose so I took the lens apart to try to clean everything and see if that fixed the issues. I managed to get the specs out of my image, but I was unable to clean the hair off because it was actually a pretty nasty scratch on one piece of glass and actually all of the crap in the lens was on that piece of glass, BUT I don't believe that that piece of glass is actually glass. It is in the rear elements, near the camera body and it has a milky tan like color to it and I would almost bet that it is like Plexiglas or something AND I was unable to clean all of the specs of dirt or whatever off so it isn't glass. It is one of the largest and thickest elements and it doesn't look like glass nor is it heavy like glass. If you think you want to buy one I would definitely by if from Adorama or somewhere you can return it if you don't like it. I bought mine direct, like an idiot and wound up with virtually no choices. But again, I love the lens and I shoot with it a lot, but I would just like to be able to shoot around f8 with no issues. The flares coming off of the Voigtlander 17.5mm lens are much nicer than the SLR lens too by the way. Wayne Mann
 
jimagine said:
If you want great MFT glass, the Oly 12mm, 45mm and 75mm and the Panny 20mm are really ideal with the GH3.
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The only one I've used from that list is tha Panny 20mm pancake. Great lens, and it is just incredibly small. But I found it useless for video: the fly-by-wire focus system is slow and has a mind of its own. Hasn't that bothered you? How is the Oly 12mm in this respect?
(I'm asking because pBMC + oly12 + voig17 + voig25 would be a hell of a system that can go on a very small backpack... half of which would be just full of batteries)
 
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