Go35Pro Footage

I haven't looked at all of your samples, but the ones I have seen looked impressive, better than what I was expecting. The gypsy has a car indicator in the background that seems to confirm good diffusion, but it was with the lens stopped down. I'd need to see something with the lens open to be sure, from experience diffusers can do different things at different apertures, and something that looks ok stopped down turns very hazy with the lens open. But I'm only commenting...
 
OK. Here's a brief trip from Union Square to B&H in a cab, all done with the Nikon 50mm at f/2.8 for the most part. It's another big file -- about 65mb.

ASG -- all the original "outside" clips were shot wide open at f/1.4. I did the f/5.6 footage to satisfy the opposite of your request which was that many complained "It might look good wide open, but how good does it look stopped down?"

p.s. I just want to say I think Timur has good shooting instincts and I think it shows even in random clips like this... can't wait to see more work of his in the future.
 
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Well done Jim! It's looking really good. What mode on the DVX was this shot with? Was this 24P? Just curious. Like I said before, it's looking EXTREMELY good. Probably some of the most film like footage I've seen from any adapter. Well done.

Edit: on second viewing it's different than what I thought. Great job!
 
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Thanks for all the positive feedback.

To give you the full nitty-gritty, if you're seeing any chroma problems now it is from either the Nikon lens or the cam itself, not the adapter. I'm certain of this because the quality of the glass being used is absolutely the best out there -- a Century Optics achromatic diopter coupled with a single element lens from Edmund Optics. To be clear -- this is not the +10 macro in any way.

I will be offering upgrades to this level of optics on the SD for a reasonable charge -- it will be well below any chance of my turning a profit out of the optics upgrade, and in fact losing a little bit. I just want to give people the best options possible.

This is all DVX-100a, 24p.

A little business aside -- I got two shipments in today, as I'm approaching release date rapidly...

A massive bag (12 cubic feet) of biodegradable/water soluble corn starch peanuts (it's about 4 feet tall):

peanuts.JPG




And the final achromatic element:

achromat.JPG
 
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edge blur is my fault... my bad! i wasnt zoomed far enough.

thats why it shows in some shots and not others...

the beauty of the new design is that you can zoom in further and leave all that blurry edge crap behind. Not that htere is much, because, its only blurry at the VERY edge. i zoomed in ehough that the corners of the frame just cleared the edges of the GG mount.

but it was getting blurry, then i discovered the new design, lets you zoom in about 8 Z#'s more to about Z80. this means the DVX is only reading the super crisp center 90% of the image.
 
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bklyndv said:
I just want to say I think Timur has good shooting instincts and I think it shows even in random clips like this... can't wait to see more work of his in the future.

i just liek making things pretty....
 
TimurCivan said:
edge blur is my fault... my bad! i wasnt zoomed far enough.

Ok, so I'm not crazy on the edge blur. I was pretty sure there wasn't chroma aberration (which I only thought might have happened in one puppy shot) but now I know there wasn't any. I only saw the blurred edge a couple times but I'm glad to hear that it's not present in the final design. This is looking awesome guys. Can't wait to try it out.

EDIT: Now Jim, is the 12 cubic foot bag of packing peanuts for shipping these out, or are they somehow related to the excellent optical properties of your adapter? :D
 
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This footage looks great...but the beauty of it comes out when you drop it in to your NLE and start messing around with the contrast and the colors. It definitely takes to color grading better than normal DVX footage. Maybe I'll post a grab if that's ok.

I'm so excited, and I just can't hide it. I'm about to lose control and I think I like it.

-Kevin
 
I am SOOOOOO freakin anxious for this product you DONT even know!!!!!

I am about to get hired so I can have the money to pay for one these.
Jim, how much extra to the $209 Standard Go35 will you charge for some better optics... aka: GG?

And, I have a not so good video camera, and I'd love to be one of the beta testers to test on a not as good camera. ;) no, i'd be happy to!
 
ovjamaica said:
Now Jim, is the 12 cubic foot bag of packing peanuts for shipping these out, or are they somehow related to the excellent optical properties of your adapter? :D

That's hilarious. Truth be told, I experimented with just about everything but packing peanuts before figuring it out.

But on a slightly serious note, Go35 Imaging, LLC aims to be a very green company -- all the shipping boxes are made from 59% recycled cardboard, 44% of which is post-consumer. The packing peanuts are completely water soluble. The packing tape I'm using is made using recycled paper. I want(ed) to have the boxes printed with logos done in soy ink but I can't find a supplier. If you know anyone, or can offer a eco-friendly alternative to soy ink that can be sprayed over a stencil, please let me know!

Re: Edge blur. In the release model, this will only be an issue of you accidentally spin the focus wheel or rock the tele/wide accidentally. This mean you're going to need some gaf tape to "lock" them in place. Make sure it's the Pro grade :D

helloworld -- I'm sorry but you cannot "upgrade" to the Pro diffuser, and Pro grade optics otherwise for less than around $600 (the asking price of the Pro). Sorry, man :)

I will get those logos posted this week -- I'm really burning the midnight oil trying to get the new website together (though, not as much as the web designer/coder). I hope to have the new site go live by Monday next week. Otherwise, it's researching vendors, ordering things, getting funding together, etc.

Sacksnack/Kevin -- I want to see some CC!

Hmm, that gives me an idea... more on that later.

Glad this seems to be catching on -- I can't wait to make some people very happy with their footage.
 
"Near Grainless"

Just in case anyone is confused by what the phrase "near grainless" means, it means that under certain shooting conditions the grain becomes more apparent than it otherwise would, when it's nearly invisible. I've made a pretty good effort to show you exactly what the adapter puts out with these HUGE demo clips.

The biggest problem I've had shooting with the adapter is a combination of three things: flat, non-directional light (like we had shooting in Union Square -- the sky was entirely overcast); underexposure from the manual lens to the cam; large blocks of uniformly flat texture in the frame.

What this means from a production standpoint is that you will need to shoot with the mindset of shooting film -- if shooting exteriors, you're going to need to look at what kind of day it is outside, always what kind of lens you're shooting with (the 50 1:1.4 renders light differently than the 80-200 1:2.8), and possibly, depending on other things, bring a bounce board or some powered lights to get things "ideal". You're going to need to consider what kind of DOF you want, what kind of FOV you want, and if you have the available light to get you there. That's the downside.

The upside is that, provided you're mindful of these things, you're going to turn out something that looks like it was shot on 16mm film (but cleaner) and virtually indistinguishable from it to the average eye. You're going to pick up a heap of knowledge from working with manual lenses that the video world keeps you away from otherwise... and all of this means that you will have a greater sense of control over the nuances of your production. You can decide if you want a project to be more Kubrickian (a lot of wide-angle shots using a 24mm), more Hitchcockian (almost all 50mm with the occasional tele), or go for Welles ala Citizen Kane (throw a TON of light at your subject and stop your irii down to f/11 and f/16 for the majority of your shoot).

Someday, if you should happen to be one of the lucky ones to work your way "up" to film, or over to a true HD workflow with something like RED, you will be pretty practiced at designing a shot in your head and calling the lens you want on the spot. Congrats if you already have this knowledge, but I can tell you I'm pretty excited to now have an intuitive understanding of the differences a 24mm, 50mm, 80-200 zoom lens will give my framing just by thinking about it.
 
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There did appear to be some issues with that last test. The scenes in the park showed some chromatic abberations. Since it was run and gun, I'm going to assume the lack of edge to edge focus was a user issue and not a mechanical one.

That being said, I think you've put together a great adapter here, Jim. It might not be 'as good' as what we've seen from the cinemek (so far), but I hope you continue to develope the go-35 to get it to that 'legendary status'. Personally, I think you're really close.

As far as I'm concerned, the cinemek doesn't exist. It's a fairytale that seems to just not be coming true. I heard they didn't even show up at their NAB booth so whatever their issues are, until I hear otherwise, I'd say the cinemek is over.

I would purchase a Go-35 pro over an M2 any day of the week. All the footage i've seen from the M2 looks soft to me. Go-35 is the closest I've seen to the cinemek in terms of quality.

Any word on the status of the Go-35 HD?
 
I think any lack of edge-to-edge focus in the park footage is laregly a result of the 50mm lens being used, and the fact that a deeper DOF lens (1:2.8) would simply not have worked under those light conditions.

In the CAT test, for example, it was a sunny day and we shot for the most part at f/5.6 and up to f/11 and even f/16, and the grain isn't there. Shooting on a day like that with an f/1:2.8 80-200 zoom is not only possible, but you can stop that lens down two or three stops and again, no grain, but a lot of depth.

On the other hand, in the park with the overcast sky, we were barely getting enough light to make f/2.8 workable. As you open the iris like that, your DOF drops dramatically, so that things in the frame that are literally inches apart have wildly different focal positions.

If you look through the clip, you will see that when we got into the cab, some light began to peek through the clouds and the grain disappears again. The close-up shot of my face with the blown-out background does a good job of demonstrating how little grain there was once the light began to come back. And of course, inside B&H, I don't see any.

I really wish Jonathan and his crew no ill-will, but I hope you understand that it's frustrating from where I sit to think that most people comparing my adapter to the G35 have two things in mind: full frame, high res footage from my GL1 with no CC, a prototype adapter, and basically handheld work in a park; against five or six highly compressed clips, shot with the DVX, under controlled conditions, and SIMILO (again, controlled conditions, the DVX, a LOT of light, CC, etc.)
 
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slap me if this is a dumbo question. timur mentioned that you can zoom to z80. i was with this guy at the apple store who brought a letus and he showed us how it was used. when zoomed out completely, there was the recatangle of black in the image which was apparently the inside of the adapter. he had to zoom in, in order to get out of the bars. what i want to know is what is the MINIMUM zoom number to get a whole image? if it's z20 or 30, isn't it an immediate handicap as it makes it a bit shaky if you are doing handheld?
again, probably retarded, but would like this clarified:dankk2:
 
I don't think anyone is putting into consideration that this
isn't even CC...

Every G35 footage there was, even from beta testers,
was CC. Even crap DVX footage can look amazing with a little
bit of CC.

Too many freakin G35 fan boys out there.

When I say crap DVX, I mean no adapter..
no pun on the DVX there...

For all the DVX fan boys...
 
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