The official "I got my AF100" thread

Just got mine yesterday. Very lucky indeed. I didn´t even intend to buy one the day before. I´m starting a documentary series for TV in February and I was hired with my EX-3. Then the producer started to talk about using the "new 5D like Panasonic video camera" for the interviews and stock shots. I thought it would be a shame that they would rent it, but not from me ;-)
So I called a friend of mine that works for a photo video shop here in Norway to see if he could come up with one as their website saud "ready for pre-order) He said "Your lucky day, 3 days from now I´ll quit this job, we have the last one in Norway on display in one of our shops, and I´ll give you a very good price"
He also gave me a very good price on the Zuiko 14-35 f2 (I´m still waiting for the adaptor though).
I haven´t had the time to shoot much, but I´ve tried it out with a Panasonic 20mm f1,7 Pancake and I´m amazed at the image form my dark living room at 1000ASA. It´s like daytime in here.
I never was a fan of the physical layouts of the HVX cameras, so I´m not to happy with this one either. That whole menu part with the joystick is a pain IMHO.
But it´s the image that counts and I will use it a lot over the next few months.
 
any news from abel's new camera shipments? now the bulk of the storm is over, how much of a delay should we expect?
 
Checked with B&H order check page today.
Camera went from backorder to processing order today.

But the Novoflex NIKON LENS to MICRO FOURTHIRDS ADPTER went from processing order waiting for stock to "backorder"!
Sooooo it looks like I will be getting a camera soon but with no way to mount my Nikon glass to the box. GEEER!
I ordered and paid for the camera Dec 30........
Frustrating very frustrating camera with no way to test without the lens.......... )o:
 
Hotwood said:
Checked with B&H order check page today.
Camera went from backorder to processing order today.

But the Novoflex NIKON LENS to MICRO FOURTHIRDS ADPTER went from processing order waiting for stock to "backorder"!
Sooooo it looks like I will be getting a camera soon but with no way to mount my Nikon glass to the box. GEEER!
I ordered and paid for the camera Dec 30........
Frustrating very frustrating camera with no way to test without the lens.......... )o:
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NICE.. but not nice as well, I already have all of my extras.. just waiting on the camera body now.. Maybe I didnt make this shipment!... I wonder if I have to wait another whole month...
 
When I was looking for the Novoflex back in early Dec. in preparation for the camera's arrival, B&H had none in stock. I went elsewhere and got it from Amazon.

Might be premature but be thankful that your camera is coming. Some of us have been waiting an additional 2 months...mine's still not here yet!
 
Ordered from B&H Dec 30, got shipping confirmation today (Jan 27).

It's gonna be a loooooong weekend of waiting, but glad B&H came through like this!
 
I ordered Dec 31. B&H reports "in-stock, order sent to warehouse." The timing turned out well -- ordered a 14-140 on ebay that'll be here tomorrow.
 
dpc said:
I ordered Dec 31. B&H reports "in-stock, order sent to warehouse." The timing turned out well -- ordered a 14-140 on ebay that'll be here tomorrow.
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Sounds like the Late decembers are all getting theirs. I was hoping to be a part of this second wave. But I guess patience is a virtue and absence makes the heart go fonder.. and all those other wonderful cliches...... sighhh. my zeiss glass is waiting for a new body..
 
woobiee said:
any news from abel's new camera shipments? now the bulk of the storm is over, how much of a delay should we expect?
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We didn't receive any UPS or Fedex Express shipments today only a few Fedex Ground. We are across the street from Fedex so you know things are seriously screwed up if we don't see an Express package; its the first time in 5 years that its happened.

We should be picking up a small shipment of AF100s tomorrow at a distributor if they arrive early enough but the other larger shipment which your camera is in may not be available to us until Monday or Tuesday. There is a very slight possibility we could pickup that shipment tomorrow but it would depend on UPS delivering to the distributor first thing in the morning, the distributor processing the shipment quickly and if our van is not stuck in a snowbank. If all that happens then we can ship out on Saturday via Fedex Express options. I will know by 1PM EST if that is happening. Unfortunately I think Monday will be the day we see that shipment.
 
Picked up my AF102EN today. Should be excited to use this new machine, but I can't use any of my lenses until the adapter comes... the wait begins.
 
I am very new to this scene and really excited. I had always wanted to get into this and was close to getting an HVX200 and M2 Encore last summer but I am so glad I procrastinated because I have been reading about this camera for months now. Samy's in LA had a seminar which I attended the other day. They had a special price of $4,499 for the body so I jumped on it and got mine.

Because I am totally new to this (I have been lurking and reading for a whole year) I don't own any lenses - I know, crazy right? I have been looking into the best option to invest in. Right now I'm looking at getting the Zeiss Distagon 2/35 ZF and Planar 1.4/50 ZF with the Novoflex Nikon mount. Really excited to get some lenses and shoot!
 
I managed to pick up the last Novoflex Canon FD adaptor in stock here in Norway today. I´ve been very lucky with this camera purchase every step of the way.
My 50mm f1.4 looks great from what little ve tested it around the house today
 
infinet said:
.... Samy's in LA had a seminar which I attended the other day. They had a special price of $4,499 for the body so I jumped on it and got mine.
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Wow! Nicely done. It's surprising to hear of such a discount when there is so much demand.
 
Yippee! My AF101 turned up this evening, thanks to a kindly TNT delivery driver who popped around to try delivering it at the end of his run, because unusually I had been out when he tried to deliver it... hooray, a whole weekend of playing with the camera instead of waiting until Monday ;-)

Very glad to have been watching threads here because I immediately fell over a whole bunch of gotchas...

1) LCD is green tinged, especially on the pure yellow bar which looks an unearthly greyish snot green. Good to know they more or less all do that. Actually looks more reasonable on real scenes than on the bars.

2) Plugged HDMI in to a very very cheap TV. Calibrated monitors are expensive, field monitors are extortionate, and at £100 for a 22 inch TV which runs from 12 V DC and can therefore be battery powered in due course it is hard to go wrong! Building a spigot for it so it can just sit on a light stand, and director or focus puller can look at it while cameraman looks at built in LCD. And... HORRIBLE noise. Turned TV off its standard settings to its "mild" ones, much better match for on screen LCD by eye and noise evaporates.

3) Switched VFR on by mistake, only found out because one of my autofocus lenses wouldn't. The audio bars were merrily chugging away. That one is at least two gotchas in one. The audio bars should just be fixed in firmware ASAP, that one is positively shoot-wrecking.

4) Imported footage to my Mac, log and transfer to FCP. Everything looks really, really dark. Hello, Quicktime Gamma bug. The blacks are totally crushed and then crushed some more. Encoded to MP4 and WMV with Compressor and Flip4Mac, looked at footage with FCP, Quicktime Player 7 (for original footage), Quicktime Player X (for WMV), and Quicktime 7 (for MP4). All of them look different, in some cases VERY different. Effect is NOT subtle- in FCP the blacks are so crushed the footage is unrecognisable. Bloody hell, must get around to upgrading and platform changing Premiere Pro- to work with this I'll have to apply a black-lift colour correction just to see anything at all in the shadows, then remember to turn it off before exporting.
Horrid. Turning AF101 monitor brightness down to -2 helped (the black bar did look grey out of the box) - better match for the way the final exported footage looked after Compressor to MP4. Heaven only knows what it'll look like on a PC. Must try tomorrow.

5) Turned detail down. Bingo, instant posterisation on white wall. I can see I'm going to have to spend the weekend finding some settings I like which balance some of these factors off to get me started. A lot to learn, hooray for Barry's book.

(Which reminds me, Barry, could you spell out for me what the settings for your "filmic" look are in the scene files? I don't know that I can load them direct to my camera and that's the one I want to base my settings on. I can't quite figure out from the text file what the manually-entered equivalents on the menu for things like gamma=5 would be.)

6) Shot a silly test shot with AF101, 7D and HVX200. I like the AF101 footage best, which is good since I've just spent £4000 on the camera! The real surprise is how well the HVX200 footage stands up to the comparison, despite being only 960 x 720 pixels compared with 1920 x 1080. The HVX is a hell of a camera, I think I'll be keeping my two HVX's for the moment (eg for deep focus shot live stuff).

7) Damn. My Frankenrig idea for mounting AF101 on top of "standard" libec tripod plate, on Redrock shoulder mount bars is defeated. Follow focus gear doesn't reach high enough. Plan B clearly needed.

8) Wowzer, loving the Voigtlander f/0.95 25mm. Sweeeeeeeet. Not so much loving the Lumix MFT 14 mm f/2.5, but liking the Leica branded 45mm f/2.8 Macro quite a lot too. But the Voigtlander is GREAT.

9) However, the lack of 1:1 pixel mode on the viewfinder for focussing sucks big-time. I don't really know what the technical reason was for not implementing this, but it was a mistake. I can see I'll be using the cheap TV as a focussing monitor a lot. Focus in red helps a bit but not necessarily so much on people. Monochrome EVF + EVL DTL ON + Focus in Red is helpful, but still not a patch on zooming in and seeing actual pixels.


Lots of fun playing over the next few days in store, and my cuddly toy collection are looking forward to starring in the traditional "Hywel has a new camera" movie. (They are more patient than my girlfriend, whose saint-like endurance is nonetheless wildly exceeded by testing out camera settings!)

Thanks to everyone for posting your experiences- makes me feel much more confident in getting to grips with the camera and knowing I'm not doing something crazy wrong! Will post when I have settings I like.

Cheers, Hywel

P.S. Panasonic.... we REALLY REALLY REALLY mean it about killing the audio bars in VFR mode.
 
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Eagle has landed! Abel Cine 137. She (camera) is pretty. 20mm 1.7 pancake is very nice. Back in the movie camera business. It has been long time since I have been able to operate in true cinema mode, DOF, lens choices. Fun
 
Christmas came early but Im still learning! AF102 NZ based

Christmas came early but Im still learning! AF102 NZ based

Hello all Panny AF user / fans !
I hope 2011 is treating everybody well
:cheesy:

Ive been lucky enough to have had mine since 20th Dec 2010.. No 8 off the production line according to the Serial no.!! Christmas came early!
Being an avis Sony user its taken me until now to really become fluid with the menu. I still have plenty of questions yet to be answered by the instruction manual…. Hopefully Barry Green's new AF102 book can help with that situation! Im awaiting delivery as we speak! … checking the mail box every hour ha
:Drogar-Happy(DBG):

All in all straight out of the box and shooting without tweaking the settings, Im really very happy with the results! Im yet to invest in some nice prime glass so Im just dealing with what I have for now.
I bough the 100-300 Lumix to shoot sports with which is good as long as you dont plan to change focal length mid shot and use the result.. For some reason the image becomes soft and then sharp when the move is finished. I just operate it at the end of the lens 99% of the time so I can deal with it.
:undecided
When Birger come out with the EOS lens attachment it will be all on! My L Series glass is defiantly going to become my biggest asset. + a lot my close photo Journalist friends have L series coming out of their ears.. The plan is to get a long lenses like the 600mm F4 strapped to the front and attempt to shoot some sports action! Ive managed to get some fantastic results using a DSLR last winter but without EVL and red peaking it was near impossible to get focus on point 100% of the time. AF 102 is my game changer for a point of difference in my line of work "Action sports"

I went and splashed out and invested in some fast SD card stock to kick start my AVCHD productions…. 2 x 32GB SANDISK SDHC Class 10 - 30mb up and download speed!
I was rocking along shooting happy as can be and decided to get all artsy and flick it into 50p…. To my disbelief!! The camera flashed an ERROR warning!! "CANNOT SHOOT VFR TO THIS CARD STOCK"
Panicking I quickly switched to an old Transcend 16GB SDHC Class 6… and boom I was away!
Im yet to figure out why the most expensive and fastest SD card stock wont shoot over crank? Anybody else experience this issue on any other card stock.. Im very interested in hearing about it.
:Drogar-Angry(DBG)::furious3::kali::nads:

I know that there is so much more to learn about the Scene files… If someone could point me in the right direction where to learn about them Id be most appreciative

Also what about the Meta Data on the AF 102…. Where do you amend the info… Is there a program you run on your computer? Id imagine you save a file to the SD card and then load that onto the camera.. I know I sound like a fool but I just cant figure out where to begin.

Being a sports fanatic Im all about the 1080 50p ! Wait till I get into some waist deep powder in the Souther Alps! Or looking straight into the tube of Teahupoo in Tahiti ! Its going to be all time.

I look forward to posting some results and staying in touch with the DVX USER crew.

Thanks
Chris
:dankk2:
 
Just got the AF-100 today! Having a blast ignoring our REAL work while we play with the new camera. We pre-ordered from Abel Cine in NYC on October 13th!! Hopefully, we won't have to wait THAT long for our Voigtlander 25mm f0.95. That sucker is hard to find! I put down a deposit last night at Camera Quest and I'm sure I'll be waiting for a few months. Any suggestions for other places to look?

I've been stalking this board for a long time. Thank you all for the advice you post!
 
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