M2 Footage looks awful

[Lenilenapi]

Anybody have any thoughts about the f1.4 lenses - or experience to the contrary?

 

[Matt Sconce]

I had a 50mm f/1.4. It rocks with the M2. Check out my movie I made with it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aap-11vrYaM

 

[DavidChia]

For the people who doesn't belive that the f stops of a lens makes a difference in the bokeh when put in front of a 35mm adapter. F1.4 vs F1.8 go here: http://photo.net/equipment/canon/ef50/

 

[siniarch]

David,
I'm not sure if its necessarily the F-Stops, but rather the blades inside the lens. apparently the Canon F1.4 has more blades than the F1.8. I'm not sure if that's the case with other manufacturers.
Although there are exceptions to this rule (caused by mnf. discrepancies between factories and years), I've heard that Nikon AI have 5 blades and AIS have 9 blades. regardless of their f-stop.

 

[bvalente]

HVX200
Nikon 35-70mm 3.3
720p24pn

I know I had it too dark for one. It looked good on the LCD (and still does) but clearly, I had it too dark (either 1/8 or 1/64 ND). I had no filters in front of the lens.

I checked the focus (or at least I thought I did). But there is so much to potentially go wrong here, it's hard to keep up with it.

1. I set the angle on the camera lens to be wide enough to not see the M2 motor and hopefully (but not successfully) eliminate the vignette-ing effect.
2. I pointed at a bright part of the sky to set the camera focus on the ground glass...using "Focus Assist"... until it was a sharp grain.
3. turned on the M2
4. focused on the background (infinity)

Any ideas?

As far as the codec...I just exported it out of FCP set at HDV 720p24.

For the HVX/M2, the hard mount is the way to go. You'll find settings of zoom 72 and focus 17 to be where you need to be (focus has a few clicks to it, so you'll want to hunt a little bit).

The lens will also make a big difference as well - great place to start with the 50mm f1.4.

Also, did you watch the setup tutorials on the redrock site? Sounds like you may have not had a chance to view them, or the support forums as well. www.redrockmicro.com/forum. Feel free to drop me a line directly if you need more details.

Cheers

Brian

 

[phally]

to chime in:
barry is right and here is why.

ND is neutral and its purpose is to cut out light without affect the quality of the image. Ground Glass is transparent - meaning it it will take light - over and under - as it sees it. you can check this out by takeing a lens and pointing, focusing it in front of the ground glass. there are no overexsposure or underexposure, only what the len create. Only the ccd is capturing the image. using in-camera ND shouldn't change or affect it at all.

as long as the glass is really glass

Phally