Jump to content

John Carl

Basic Member
  • Posts

    3
  • Joined

  • Last visited

Everything posted by John Carl

  1. I appreciate the input regarding the Blackmagic 12k sensor. Very interesting. That is not what I had read. Here is a link to an article about the 12k sensor, its 6×6 +luminance CFA pattern, aliasing, moire, required lens resolution, etc. I'd be curious to hear your thoughts. One seemingly relevant clip from the article: "To actually resolve 12K, you need a lens that resolves 227 lines per millimeter (L/pm). Most lenses that are considered “sharp”, are around 200 L/pm, but the analog nature of optics doesn’t really have a fixed breaking point, that would render any other lens useless." - - - - The conversation seems to be splitting into two conversation, which is fine, but knowing that I think I should have formulated my questions more succinctly like this: Assuming the perfect sensor (whatever that is), what lenses have the highest resolving power? Assuming the perfect lenses (whatever they would be), what sensor resolves the highest level of detail? - - - - Also I just want to add the disclaimer preemptively that obviously sharpness and resolution aren't the highest priority in all or even most cases. In fact, the only expensive set of cinema lenses that I've purchased to own myself are LOMO Square Front Anamorphic lenses, which are technically just about the least perfect lenses in the history of cinema but aesthetically are just so romantic and dreamy and perfect. I feel all sorts of emotional ways about them. My absolute favorite for narrative, emotional storytelling. But anyway, on the flip side, there are times where clinical sharpness and resolution do matter, like shooting Apple TV screensavers or, in my case, doing detail-oriented product work. So I hope that's enough of a justification to still have this nerdy conversation and to prevent people from rightly pointing out that I probably seem like I'm focusing on the wrong thing. Thanks again so much for all the input. I am getting all sorts of ideas for future camera and lens tests! If anyone has further lens and/or sensor recommendations for best-of-the-best resolving power, I'm all ears.
  2. Hi Mark, Great call-out. Thank you. In our case, that isn't what we're running into. Usually our clients want to pull a still from the so-called "hero moment" after the camera and product have landed in their final, ideal locations and all movement has ceased. In the rare case they want to pull stills during movement then I do alternate takes with quicker shutter speeds or higher frame rates to address motion blur concerns. Our camera and/or products are often on motion control arms so we have the ability to slow things way down. It sort of becomes slow motion in real life rather than slow motion in the camera. What I'm noticing -- I believe -- is optical in nature. Our first tests were with static objects to compare the 79.6 megapixel Blackmagic 12k and the 151 megapixel Phase One stills camera. For these initial tests, I was just using my personal set of Sigma Cine Zooms and I was surprised and disappointed by how soft they were when we would punch into the image even just to set focus much less pull stills. On the 12k you can punch between 4x-8x times on the sensor for focusing. On the Phase One you can do a similar thing but on the Phase One, the punched-in image looks absolutely tack sharp. Tiny text is perfectly legible. To my eye there is no chromatic aberration or fringing. Often times during shoots the digital tech (photo version of a DIT) will have a pretty severe permanent crop setup so that what they are delivering to the client is less than half or a third of the full frame image the camera is capturing and the client still has plenty of resolution left. Once directors hear that my camera is, in theory, an 80 megapixel camera, they start wanting to treat it the same way but I find that the image doesn't hold up. I'm not sure if this is due to in-camera sharpening processing or the larger/better sensor/glass or the difference in resolution between 80 and 151 or the glass or an improperly shimmed mount or some sort of magic happening in the Capture One software or what. But in any case, even if the discussion is purely academic, I still think it would be useful and constructive to hear from other cinematographers what they find to be the highest resolving lenses. It's one more variable we can eliminate in hunting down the best possible final image for our clients. Thank you so kindly all for the help so far. I will absolutely check out the Signature Primes on my next job. Perhaps the client will give me permission to share screen grabs here for the group to pixel-peep. If anyone else has further suggestions for lenses that can best resolve very fine detail, I am all ears. Thanks again.
  3. Greetings. This is my first post here but have been an avid reader here for years and years. - My main question is this: What lenses have the highest resolving power and/or are the sharpest of all lenses? (Ideally for a s35 sensor.) Background: I am a NYC commercial cinematographer specializing in product/tabletop cinematography. I primarily shoot Red/ARRI/Phantom for all the usual reasons but lately have been experimenting with using the Blackmagic Design 12k camera as a potential solution for some clients of mine that, for time and budget reasons, prefer to pull stills from our video footage rather than taking the time to swap in our Phase One camera and strobes. The larger resolution of the Blackmagic 12k camera seems like it could help them. The Blackmagic 12k camera also allows for shooting 240fps at 4k, which is useful for when the creative calls for 4k slow motion but the budget does not allow for a Phantom. (I realize that the 12k is not the same caliber as Arri/Phantom/Red.) The problem with a 12k sensor though is that the resolving power of the sensor is now higher than the resolving power of some lenses. So the hunt is on to find the best possible lens or lenses to pair with the 12k to have - in theory - the highest resolution sensor paired with the highest resolving power lens. I've experimented with the Arri Master Macro 100mm, which was certainly better than my personal Sigma Cine Zooms (used only for projects that have no budget for lens rentals), but I'm curious if there are even better options out there. - Has anyone ever compiled a list of lenses organized by resolving power? If so, what lens beats the rest? - Lastly, am I making a mistake experimenting with the Blackmagic Design 12k camera? Should I just stick with an 8k RED or Venice 2? (I've been avoiding full frame because my directors always want deep focus so I actually prefer s35 as it gets me more focus depth with the same FOV but would I get greater sharpness from a larger sensor and full frame glass?) Is there a better camera/lens combo for sharpness? I'm basically curious to hear any and all knowledge from you all related to how I can deliver the most pristine, sharp footage to my commercial clients. To anyone that kindly shares their time answering this: thank you so much! I super appreciate it. ?
×
×
  • Create New...