why dont they make digital video cameras with 35mm mounts?

Because that would pretty much be worthless. You need a 35mm sensor to get shallow DOF. Simply putting 35mm lens on a 1/3'' chip camera body would result in a crop factor on the lens, and you end up with just really telephoto lenses with little practical application.
 
im confused. does the af100 have a 35mm lens mount or does it have its own size mount? do any dv cameras exist that take 35mm lenses or fo you have to get an adaptor?
 
Most DV cameras are 3-chip cameras with lenses designed to focus through a prism. An optical adapter of some kind is necessary for film style focal plane lenses.
They do make relay lens mounts for 2/3" format cameras to accept 35mm lenses. For small chip cameras most 35mm lenses would not be sharp enough. The smaller the sensor and the higher the resolution, the more critical lens quality becomes. It is generally best to stick with lenses that are designed for a specific format.
 
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tedstriker said:
im confused. does the af100 have a 35mm lens mount or does it have its own size mount?
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It uses a m4/3 mount, which is a new standard for still cameras and is almost the exact same size as 35mm cinema film. Inexpensive adapters exist to allow you to use your Nikon, Canon, Leica, Olympus, Pentax, or pretty much any other kind of lenses, including cinema PL lenses.

It's the real deal.
 
The "Why" is a very good question. I think that the adaptation of Digital Video for fictional narrative cinema story telling, from the camera design stand point, is an interesting study in the persistence of pre-conceived design mind-sets, in the face of changing technology. Digital Video development has been handled by designers and manufactures that have a long history of making cameras for television production, and have been introducing products based on their notions of end user needs for content delivered as a video product. When filmmakers began to embrace Digital Video for fictional narrative cinema story telling the camera manufactures began to adapt their products to those needs by, actually, very small modifications to their existing designs, and instead, worked on Digital Video format changes. Up until recently, the big advances, for fictional narrative cinema story telling with Digital Video, has been the introduction of 24P video and advances in image processing (Cine Gamma, ect). The most successful Digital Video cameras for fictional narrative cinema story telling, up until now, the Sony CineAlta series cameras, the Panasonic Varicam, and it's successors, the Thompson-Grass Valley Viper FilmStream Camera, and the Panasonic DVX-100 and its successors, have used modifications, albeit extensive modifications, of existing Digital Video technology to make their more cinema friendly cameras. All of these cameras have standard Digital Video chip sizes, 2/3"or 1/3" (DVX) or 1/2" (Sony EX-1/3) and lenses optimized for these chips. Now, I am sure that the technology to produce larger, 35mm sized chips that could be used to produce high quality Digital Video, at an acceptable price, is a relatively new advancement, and that has played a big part in the design and development of Digital Cinema cameras. However, I really believe that the major camera developers just did not get the need for it, based on their video orientation.

If you look at where the current demand for larger chips, and the associated aesthetic (i.e., decreased DOF), really came from, you may notice that it was not championed by the big video camera manufactures, and their designers, but by outside, independent sources. The first big response to the need for the larger chip aesthetic was the embracing of DOF adaptors by cinema oriented filmmakers using Digital Video. This developed a whole cottage industry, and was championed by independent entrepreneurs and enterprising, energetic filmmakers. The next big development, it seems to me, is the introduction and success of the Red One camera. The Red One was again developed outside of the influence of the existing camera manufacturing "Club", and has really shaken things up. While there is almost an infinite amount of internet debate about Red, and the development of future products, there really can not be any debate on the importance, and impact that the success of the Red One has had. Then there is the video DSLRs! While the current crop of video DSLRs that have been embraced for filmmaking are products of large companies; Canon, Panasonic and Nikon, I really believe that their success, as filmmaking products, is a big surprise to those companies and their designers. The video capabilities of these cameras was a second thought, or more of an add on feature, then the design focus for their development. It is well reported that the video capabilities of the Canon 5D MkII was the result of a request from the Reuters news organization that wanted to add web video capabilities for their photo-journalists. That was two years ago, and the rest, as they say is history.

So, in this long winded answer, the reason you can't just put a 35mm lens on a video camera is that the folks that make video cameras didn't think that is was needed, until those pesky, energetic independent digital filmmakers started taking their existing products and pushing them to their limits, and beyond, and by smart entrepreneurs who started meeting filmmakers needs, sometimes, better than the big companies could.

The Panasonic AF-100 is a horse of another color! Like Barry says, this camera looks like it is going to be the, "Real Deal" and is one of most exciting cameras to come down the pike in a long time. I hate to really take a stance behind a large multi-national corporation, but I have to say that as far as Digital Video cameras for fictional narrative cinema story telling go, Panasonic has hit the ball out of the park more times then their competition, IMHO. I have very high hopes for the AF-100. It is very exciting times for Digital Video.


EDIT: Barry, pedantic corrections welcome.
 
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They are coming. The Sony NEX VG10 will be the first consumer model with an aps-c in a camcorder style body. Sony propriety mount, but ebay has adapters for just about any lens with a manual aperture. Alas no 24p on this one but the early footage looks good. Within a year there should be some interesting competition as the big three and possibly others optimise their slr sensors for video and put them in ergonomically correct cases. Rumor has it that the NEX 7 will bring 24 and 60p to the mirrorless dslr platform, so I'd expect these specs in a camcorder body soon enough. Surely Canon will capitalize on their popularity and bring out a proper video style camera as well, if not in their obscenely slow pro line, maybe consumer product. It only makes sense to maximize sensor manufacturing efficiency by putting the same sensor in multiple products.


Sony finally releasing video capable products bodes well for improvements from Nikon and Pentax currently using sony sensors. Once the sensors are out, sony can't very well hold back key features.

I'm hoping for a pentax k-x update with 1080p and full manual controls, for no other reason than it will be cheaper than nikon and I have lenses.

Sorry for blabbing on but whatever happened to the Samsung mirrorless system. Haven't heard much about it since the pentax split. It wasn't of that much interest without 24p, but maybe they would adapt to the market as well, you know there is a chance of at least a consumer camcorder body from them.
 
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