Finally Bloom's review!

Bassman2003 said:
My main concern with this 2x crop if distortion on wider lenses. Is the smaller image window a help given a 24mm (35mm eq) would need an 11mm (35mm eq) which is in the fisheye territory?
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If it's a fisheye lens then it'll say it's a fisheye lens, right? I mean, when the Hollywood big wigs use an Arri Master Prime T1.3/12 mm, they're not having to deal with lens distortion, right? At least not like on a fisheye?

More in my price range - the Tokina 11-16mm wouldn't have much lens distortion, would it?
 
True, fisheyes are fisheyes. But you just don't see 50mm fisheyes.

Expensive wide lenses have less distortion. But as the millimeters get lower distortion is tougher and tougher to get away from. Finding the budget and not having rounded verticals is a fine balance in my experience. But as Barry points out, at least the 4/3rd's sensor is drawing the image more from the center which minimizes the effect.
 
VGurcu said:
I dont know whose brilliant idea was to compare cinema lens FOV to still lens FOV to judge a camera's abilities, but IMHO it is not a fair or rational comparison. When Canon makes a camera and call it FULL FRAME they are talking for the still photography community.

So as it is been told many times AF-100 has a crop ratio of appr. 1.2 COMPARING TO ACADEMY 35 MM standard, PERIOD..
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I guess people use photo full frame as a comparison because most of the lenses people will be using are designed for full frame DSLRs (and SLRs). It would definitely be an advantage if the crop was less than 2, as you would be able to get better use from these lenses. There are some wide angle lenses designed for crop sensor DSLRs that people might find useful though.

One last thing. The sigma 30mm is actually designed for crop sensors and is a standard lens, not a wide angle for full frame. That is why it is much cheaper than the canon 35mm 1.4 which is a full frame lens.
 
Expensive wide lenses have less distortion. But as the millimeters get lower distortion is tougher and tougher to get away from. Finding the budget and not having rounded verticals is a fine balance in my experience. But as Barry points out, at least the 4/3rd's sensor is drawing the image more from the center which minimizes the effect.
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I'd sell a kidney for either of these lenses, that are optimised for the 4/3 sensor:
http://www.cameralabs.com/reviews/OlympusE714mm/page6.shtml
http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/1137/cat/15
 
The 14-35 f2.0 looks like the lens to get for general purpose shooting. 28-70 is a really useful range and f2.0 will yield plenty of light and selective focus if needed.
 
http://www.slrgear.com/reviews/showproduct.php/product/1137/cat/15

(From Olympus lens literature) The ZUIKO DIGITAL ED 14-35mm ƒ/2.0 SWD, which covers a zoom range equivalent to 28mm to 70mm on a 35mm camera lens is the world's first standard zoom lens to feature a large ƒ/2.0 aperture.

Olympus 14-54mm ƒ/2.8-3.5 Zuiko Digital ~$450
Significantly less expensive, the 14-54mm offers a greater zoom range at the expense of the constant ƒ/2 aperture of the 14-35mm. Optically the lens isn't as sharp as the 14-35mm, getting its best results at ƒ/4; it also shows much more CA at 14mm. Corner shading is about the same, but the 14-54mm is better tuned to prevent distortion. Of course, the 14-54mm costs about a quarter the price of the 14-35mm.

Olympus 12-60mm ƒ/2.8-4 ED SWD Zuiko Digital ~$800
While we haven't yet tested this lens, the user reviews are very positive, and it's much less expensive than the 14-35mm. It doesn't match the 14-35mm for its constant ƒ/2, but does go both a little wider and longer.

Panasonic 14-50mm ƒ/2.8-3.5 ASPH Leica D VARIO-ELMARIT ~$900
Designed for the Panasonic Lumix dSLR, we haven't yet tested this offering from Leica and Panasonic, but it should work on Olympus bodies. Again, it's not as fast as the Olympus 14-35mm, but it does offer slightly more length in its focal range. This lens has optical image stabilization built-in to the lens, which has been shown to interfere negatively with Olympus' in-camera stabilization.

Olympus 25mm ƒ/2.8 Zuiko Digital ~$300
It's worth noting that the 14-35mm ƒ/2 is an all-around better lens than the 25mm ƒ/2.8 prime: whether it's for sharpness, chromatic aberration, corner shading or distortion, the 14-35mm does it all better. However the 14-35mm costs over seven times the price and weighs nine times more.
 
Panasonic did say that they have a fast zoom lens coming out.

It would be incredible if it ends up getting the specs of the rumoured lens that used to float around the net.

12-75mm, f/2.5-f/3.3. I'm not sure if such a lens is possible but for sure the price would definitely be in the 4 figures.
 
Thanks so much for the review.

Question, when you talk about the H,M,L gain settings, if I want to just control the camera by ISO setting alone, do I have fast access to ALL the ISO settings always? I was a little confused by how it was described. I don't want to work with H,M,L as I am coming from the DSLR mindframe.

Second question, you mention that you cannot mix footage type on a card. I will be shooting mostly 1080p24. If I want to overcrank, can I do that on the same card, say if I want to do some 1080p60?

And thanks for taking some time out of your busy schedule to do this. MUCH appreciated. I've already pre-ordered mine and cannot wait to use it.

As per the questions on the Sigma 30mm F1.4. We use this lens more than ANY other lens. We don't consider it wide, we consider it standard (on a 7D). We also have a Tokina 11mm-16mm and a Canon 10mm-22mm wide as well, both works great.

What I would REALLY like for the AF100 is a 7mm lens that was at least F2.8 if not faster. That would be my ideal. I love the Tokina and I use it at 2.8 indoors all the time. Requires very little lighting typically which is nice. Given the AF100 seems to be A LOT cleaner at ISO3200 than the 7D at the moment from the tests I've seen, I think it might open up a little more range.

The lack of moire and aliasing almost made me cry :) I CANNOT wait!!!
 
VGurcu said:
If you cant live with that fact never herd the term 'taking a few steps back to reframe', no worries there will always be FULl FRAME still cameras for your need.
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I think you'll have a bit of difficulty to "take a few steps back" while hanging on a rope or after being dropped off by a heli on a 55 degree snow slope. Also shooting tight interiors is the same ( a lot of indy films are done in less then ideal location), where the only way to frame the shot is to have a wide enough lens. And this is what I was saying all along- you'll have to spend a lot more then just 5K on body alone, count at least on doubling that for a decent glass.
 
Cudos to Phillip Bloom for shooting his test on lenses we might actually use, including an old push zoom, no budget breaking cine lenses in the mix.

No you can't put a push zoom in a matte box or rig follow focus, or even really zoom with it, but for long focal lengths for cheap, you can't beat them. Even crappy f4-5.6 units are fine for exteriors and can be found for almost nothing. I have a 70-210 that most would probably consider junk, but it took perfectly nice pictures and I'm sure would be fine for video.

My basically free lenses for the kit, (glass I already own) Nikon mount 24 2.8, 50 1.8, 70-210 f4-5.6; pentax mount 28-200, 400mm; all manual aperture. I would probably add the 14 and 20mm pancakes and would love the 7-14mm but may wait and see if something faster comes out starting around 10mm. I would love a fully functional video zoom, but need more speed and would take less range than the 14-140.

A set of fast variable primes (short zooms) would be the perfect set for this camera. You just can't get wide range and fast in the same package at the price we want to spend. Tamron, sigma and tokina all have reasonably priced 2.8 zooms, three of which would cover your full range from wide to telephoto, if they would develop versions that were native to this camera system, I think it would be an ideal solution.
 
First of all i would like to thank Philip Bloom for testing this camara, and Jan for giving all the information needed for the community.

But...

As i had viewed Mr. Bloom test videos, my first question was : where the sharpness were gone ? On the crews.tv test video, the sharpess was excellent. On Philip's videos the video sharpness and details looks like an APS-C VDSLR, like a kit lens with Canon 7d.

So what was the difference ? The crews.tv team used very expensive cinema lenses. These lenses costs like 5-10-15 thousands dollar.

If the quality of the video will be the same on the final one, I can see no difference between this new pana cam, and a 7d/5d mk2 vdslr. So why the big hype ?

But, of course if you add very expensive lenses, the video will be okay (also means a good cinema lens on 7d or 5d mk2 really give some boost for the sharpness and resolution).

As the video quality is not better than a dslr if you add 500-1000 usd lenses, and a regular dslr costs like 2000 usd, we are paying 3000 extra dollars for the form, codec, sdi output, microphone, etc. Generally this test showed my that af100 is a vdslr with some extra camera stuff in a camera body. Nothing usual, game changer, etc. And definitely can't beat the FF sensor in low light videos.

So if anyone buys it for 5000 usd, you should use some expensive cinema lens to get the best quality. 5000 + an 15000 cine lens is about 20.000 usd.

My questions then:

- if you have 20.000 usd, wouldn't you buy a red one mx instread of this
- or if you have 20.000 usd, usually these is more in the 'pocket', so why not buy arri or some expensive sony camera then ?

I think the whole communication went wrong. It suggested that for 5000 usd and a regular lens will be fine. But this is not the case. I think it is another 'cheap for a start, but you need very expensive accessories and lenses to get the best output' camera. But then, why panasonic positioning this camera as a cheap cine-like camera ?
 
fisherman1 said:
I think the whole communication went wrong. It suggested that for 5000 usd and a regular lens will be fine. But this is not the case. I think it is another 'cheap for a start, but you need very expensive accessories and lenses to get the best output' camera. But then, why panasonic positioning this camera as a cheap cine-like camera ?
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I think the reasoning behind that is that since the DSLR 'revolution' people have already invested in some pretty decent glass, so many of the AF's market may only need to buy the body and the 14-140mm Lumix lens (for general purpose shooting). But at the same time the camera is able to handle virtually any lens so for bigger budget projects you could hire some CP's or some Ultra Primes. In that respect it is a cheap cine-like camera.
 
robertrogoz said:
I think you'll have a bit of difficulty to "take a few steps back" while hanging on a rope or after being dropped off by a heli on a 55 degree snow slope. Also shooting tight interiors is the same ( a lot of indy films are done in less then ideal location), where the only way to frame the shot is to have a wide enough lens. And this is what I was saying all along- you'll have to spend a lot more then just 5K on body alone, count at least on doubling that for a decent glass.
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I think people should think that there is not one camera or system that can be good at shooting everything. Perhaps you should have included why it can' t do 200+ image per second for super slow motion explosion. I think that if we go to every extreme example as " hanging on a rope or after being dropped off by a heli on a 55 degree snow slope " or the example I just gave this camera is surely not meant for that, as 95% of the other camera on the market. For these extreme example there are super specialize camera or some more normal ones that are adapted/customized to do very specific job.

I will talk about your last example as it is not to much extreme. For the lack of space argument that crops out on this forum time and time again by certain poster you have the tokina 11-16 at 2.8. It is not enough... you have the 7-14 f4 Panasonic lens. Ha ha I hear you say it is not fast enough. If you have a camera that seems to be able to do good 1600 iso (3200 iso) and, and, and.... you can light. Ha, ha I hear you say I am not going to lurk some big light rig... You just need to replace the original light by screw in high cri electronic ballast fluorescent light bulb in the 55 watt to 110 watt (equivalent to 200 to 400 watt incandescent bulb) that you can find below $ 50 on ebay. You even have adapters for two to four bulbs and you can even put them in china bowl.

If someone here find it too cumbersome to apply the last advice and go to a place and just shoot. Hey the camera should be able to do everything for me, I don' t need to adapt myself, just press a button and everything should work. I don' t know what he or she does on this forum. Any people that have been working professional in the world of imaging know you have to make the things work. In the end it is your work, your skill and knowledge that make you what you are. If else, they could use your accountant to press a button on the camera for the job to be done. I think that anyone with certain experience will know that each tool has it use. The last thing I would tell you, is that if you think that you would not have to invest in glass from the start and many thousand dollar worth depending on the shooting you want to do... You are really mistaken on the af-100 and that it is really not meant for you. I am not saying that it is the be all and end all camera, by any mean, but it does fulfill at least on paper now the needs of many filmmakers or aspiring ones.
 
i also presume that the sharpness settings on both cameras were different. Hence why we see a little bit of aliasing in the full rez shots of the crews tv footage.
 
I will talk about your last example as it is not to much extreme. For the lack of space argument that crops out on this forum time and time again by certain poster you have the tokina 11-16 at 2.8. It is not enough... you have the 7-14 f4 Panasonic lens. Ha ha I hear you say it is not fast enough. If you have a camera that seems to be able to do good 1600 iso (3200 iso) and, and, and.... you can light. Ha, ha I hear you say I am not going to lurk some big light rig... You just need to replace the original light by screw in high cri electronic ballast fluorescent light bulb in the 55 watt to 110 watt (equivalent to 200 to 400 watt incandescent bulb) that you can find below $ 50 on ebay. You even have adapters for two to four bulbs and you can even put them in china bowl.

Excuse me, but it's not so simple. There are plenty of situations where a small production simply must have a camera that performs, and you cannot easily compensate with light etc. I'll give you a concrete example, because this is exactly what I'm facing next year on a production. It's a micro-zero-budget. I'll be shooting deep in a national forest - i.e. no access to ac power - and I'll be shooting the exterior and interior of a small tent at night. Small space - need a small camera form factor, need a wide lens and need a fast lens. I cannot compensate with light. What am I supposed to do? This is where I need the very best low-light performance I can possibly get, on a very wide lens, small camera form factor. To me this says I must consider the 5D seriously, because - pending tests - it may still work technically better - than the af-100.

So please don't underestimate the range of realistic conditions a small production may face where the af-100 is outright inferior.
 
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