FS700 + Speedbooster users, get in here!

A

anchoricex

Member
I am adding to my 5dmkiii and getting a FS700 in the next couple months. These are the focal lengths and lenses that I enjoyed shooting with

-Canon 16-35mm f2.8L II this was my wide lens mostly for glidecam use
-Sigma 50mm f1.4 used this for just about everything, lots of handheld stuff
-Canon 24-105mm f4L

Since I'm keeping the 5dmkiii as well would these lenses be fit to shoot with on the fs700 paired with the Metabones Speedbooster?

The alternative route I may take is to sell all of the Canon gear (lenses and camera) and get just a regular metabones EF adapter with these lenses

-Tokina 11-16mm for wide
-Rokinon 35mm to behave roughly like that 50mm focal
-A zoom ?

Trying to figure out what is more economical. I know the 16-35mm Canon lens + an adapter would be very long and heavy.
 
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I say keep the Canon lenses and get the speedbooster. If any lenses are long/heavy, throw a lens support (with rails) underneath and you'll be good.

I think you'll enjoy your setup more, since the speedbooster will mimic the 5D's field of view, with that setup. Plus, I think having a backup camera is good, and a 5DmkIII is a great backup to have.
 
I agree with jshbckr. The Mark III will work great as your B-Cam which is essential to have for interviews of any kind in my opinion....if you want to edit the interviews. Also you get the extra stop of light out of the Speedbooster in addition to the full frame look. I have the 24-105 myself and it works fantastic with the Speedbooster going all the way to a f/2.8! Great RunN'Gun solution. Haven't used my kit lens since I got it.

Ash von Chamier
Owner of www.RoughCutProductions.com
 
Appreciate the insight guys! Looks like that's the route that I'll stick with. Only concern is I have a Glidecam HD2000 which is rated for DSLR weighted cameras, but there's plenty of folks who say they've gotten the HD2000 to balance just fine with the FS700. Just not sure if it'll work well with the 16-35mm lens because it's pretty big, but that's a lesser worry and I'll have no problem selling it and getting the next size up.

Really appreciate it, happy filming!
 
I was in the same situation as you and agree with the guys here. The other benefit to the speed booster is a slight increase in sharpness with your lenses (in most cases.)
I am very happy to still be shooting with both a 5d mkIII (now with ML Raw!) and the fs700/speed booster combo. I also have the Metabones smart adapter for when I want to put on my aps-c lenses like the Tokina 11-16 and canon 17-55 IS. (Which is a good thing because my speed booster just failed and its currently on its way back to Hong Kong for replacement)

But the main reason I posted was a little advice with the fs700 and the HD2000. I have actually set this up and balanced it but with a very light lens and nothing else! The lens in this photo is the Rokinon 14mm which is a fairly light manual lens. I managed to get a 2.5 second drop time on the glidecam and pretty well balanced but this isn't the main problem with this setup. It's the weight! As you can see I had to up the bottom weights from 2 on each side for the 5d to 4 on each side for the fs700. The footage was smooth, but my wrist was shaking and breaking within seconds. I was only getting 10-15 second takes before the strain was too much!

Needless to say, this experiment stayed an experiment and the 5d went back to being the glidecam camera. I have since bought a full steadicam rig for the fs700 but that's another story :)

 
Kyron said:
(Which is a good thing because my speed booster just failed and its currently on its way back to Hong Kong for replacement)


Click to expand...


thanks for posting, i had a couple questions.
1st. what do you mean by "failed" when referring to the speedbooster? i had to send mine back and i'm wondering what problems you had.

2nd. what do you think about that rokinon lens vs the tokina? i've been researching both lenses but can't find anyone with experience with them mounted on the speedbooster. what kind of distortion are you seeing, what at what focal length does the tokina vig, ect.
 
Hi epsom Salt,


Well I had the speedbooster for approximately one week. It was awesome and I was loving the added versatility to the fs700 with all my L Glass.
Then one day last weekend I turned on the Fs700 to test before a shoot the following day and the camera took extra long to turn on.
I thought, this is weird, then the ND text flashed on the screen for about 15-20 seconds. At this point it was still a black screen and live view still hadn't turned on.
When live view finally enabled after about 25 seconds, their was no communication with the lens and the Fstop read "F--"
I went into the menu and couldn't even see the speed booster firmware version. It was also blank.


Heart sinking I went searching high and low on the internet and discovered this was fairly common. I tried all the tricks with green mode and advanced mode and setting advanced to default, but the adapter refused to even respond to the camera no matter what and never showed any indication that switching modes was doing anything at all.


Upon contacting Metabones via email, they replied quite speedily and wanted to get me to send it in for a firmware upgrade and wanted me to try the green/advanced mode method. I explained quite clearly I would accept nothing less than a brand new replacement as the firmware was working fine for a full week so the unit must obviously be defective. They wrote back and agreed quite happily to do that. So I'm pretty happy with their customer service, (as long as the return trip doesn't take too long and I don't get a "new" unit back with the same serial number - which I photographed) but I'm always going to be a little scared about its reliability from now on and will never leave home without both the metabones smart adapter and the 5d.


As for Rokinon vs Tokina, its a tough comparison with one being full frame and the other being aps-c.
I have mounted the tokina on the speedbooster and you must keep it at 16mm if used at all. Even at 16mm it has a slight vignette. At 11mm, it's a black edged circle and completely unusable.
On the Smart Adapter II it's perfectly fine at each end. I didn't get to try the Rokinon on the speedbooster, but I have used it on the 5d quite a lot and it's a pretty sweet and cheap wide angle lens. It suffers from some distortion at the edges and a slight moustache distortion through the lower third though. Never noticeable until you are filming a straight horizontal line and you can see how wavy it is.


So my current preference is to run the Tokina 11-16 with the Smart Adapter II and this is actually a great steadicam combo.


I'm happy to do a comparison between the two as soon as the speed booster and fs700 come back (The fs700 is off to the service centre at the moment for the 3.0 upgrade)
 
Kyron said:
Hi epsom Salt,


Well I had the speedbooster for approximately one week. It was awesome and I was loving the added versatility to the fs700 with all my L Glass.
Then one day last weekend I turned on the Fs700 to test before a shoot the following day and the camera took extra long to turn on.
I thought, this is weird, then the ND text flashed on the screen for about 15-20 seconds. At this point it was still a black screen and live view still hadn't turned on.
When live view finally enabled after about 25 seconds, their was no communication with the lens and the Fstop read "F--"
I went into the menu and couldn't even see the speed booster firmware version. It was also blank.


Heart sinking I went searching high and low on the internet and discovered this was fairly common. I tried all the tricks with green mode and advanced mode and setting advanced to default, but the adapter refused to even respond to the camera no matter what and never showed any indication that switching modes was doing anything at all.


Upon contacting Metabones via email, they replied quite speedily and wanted to get me to send it in for a firmware upgrade and wanted me to try the green/advanced mode method. I explained quite clearly I would accept nothing less than a brand new replacement as the firmware was working fine for a full week so the unit must obviously be defective. They wrote back and agreed quite happily to do that. So I'm pretty happy with their customer service, (as long as the return trip doesn't take too long and I don't get a "new" unit back with the same serial number - which I photographed) but I'm always going to be a little scared about its reliability from now on and will never leave home without both the metabones smart adapter and the 5d.


As for Rokinon vs Tokina, its a tough comparison with one being full frame and the other being aps-c.
I have mounted the tokina on the speedbooster and you must keep it at 16mm if used at all. Even at 16mm it has a slight vignette. At 11mm, it's a black edged circle and completely unusable.
On the Smart Adapter II it's perfectly fine at each end. I didn't get to try the Rokinon on the speedbooster, but I have used it on the 5d quite a lot and it's a pretty sweet and cheap wide angle lens. It suffers from some distortion at the edges and a slight moustache distortion through the lower third though. Never noticeable until you are filming a straight horizontal line and you can see how wavy it is.


So my current preference is to run the Tokina 11-16 with the Smart Adapter II and this is actually a great steadicam combo.


I'm happy to do a comparison between the two as soon as the speed booster and fs700 come back (The fs700 is off to the service centre at the moment for the 3.0 upgrade)
Click to expand...

You described pretty well why I made the jump to Nikon glass on my FS700. I have the Metabones EF II adapter (non-speed booster), and had similar "F--" issues, as well as my Sigma lens randomly closing to f/22 mid-shot. Couldn't depend on it. I still have it around, but all my lenses are Nikon now because they have a manual aperture pin on the back of the lens that is adjusted with the adapter. While this makes it harder to know exactly what f-stop you're at, it's worth it for the reliability. And aside from that, most of my lenses have manual rings on them, so I can still know f-stop for those (Rokinon, Zeiss ZF).
 
Thought I'd do a follow up here with what happened with Metabones.
They sent back the same adapter (same serial number) so I'm pretty pissed about that after they promised me in writing it would be a brand new replacement.
Having said that, it is working now. But I'm scared it will randomly fail again at any point in time, so I guess the Metabones motto is always have a backup plan.

The only detectable difference since the speed booster has come back is that its now sporting firmware 30 (was 28)
 
One thought. Keeping those canons and using a speed booster is the right thing after teething problems.

for using the camera on a stabiliser I would consider adding the Sony 16 mm af pancake lens - super cheap light and fun
 
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