Sony F900 Vs Canon7D

[Stuart Brereton]

Out of interest, at what focal length does your old zoom start to cover the MFT sensor?

[Adrian Sierkowski]

It doesn't cover the MFT; I use it on a pocket. It's a 9~117 lens with a doubler built in. With the doubler on it covered the GH2 (if memory serves) through the range. On the S16mm pocket sensor it starts covering around 16mm give or take; but I haven't hardly used it on that camera unless I want the long end of it.

[Phil Rhodes]

Yes, you can get B4 lenses that will fit an F900 and project an image on to all of the sensor for $500 if you particularly want to. Whether they're likely to produce pictures that anyone would consider HD is another matter...

 

In all seriousness, it's now possible to buy what would have been considered a rather good standard-def B4 lens for not much money and apparently some of them are pretty reasonable, especially stopped down a bit. But then if you're shooting a small format, as we've heard, you really don't want that limitation. I've seen 14x7-ish lenses with "HD" branding going for under $10k used, but I've no idea how much better they are than good, older SD lenses.

 

This concern is the main reason I don't own camera gear anymore. Cameras are cheap. Lenses that aren't ergonomically revolting remain stubbornly high-priced.

[Stuart Brereton]

I would think that even an old SD lens could comfortably out-resolve a 2/3" HD sensor. Maybe I'm wrong.

 

Surely old glass is all the rage these days?

 

:)

[Phil Rhodes]

Bear in mind that we're talking about enormous 14:1 or 20:1 zooms, with massively wide short ends down to 4mm or so with the complex retrofocal design required to land that on a 3-chip block, plus extenders and relay groups to add optical junk to proceedings, which have to be small and light and often open up to a 1.3 all the way down.

 

No, they're often not that great and sometimes they're absolutely terrible. Many of them have horrifying amounts of flare and diffusion and horrible contrast, especially at the long end, and especially wide open. Think about news work, where the priorities are a very wide wide end, a very long long end, and the ability to form some sort of image when you can more or less count the photons going past using an abacus. "Good" is of course relative but it's not an interesting old-lens sort of artifact, it's just milkiness and glow.

 

This has some comparative shots of a Fuji 17x7.6 HD lens and a 20x8 SD lens on a Blackmagic cinema camera. The performance is probably compromised by the 3-chip versus single-chip issues, but the comparative improvement with the HD lens is enormous. Both, sadly, are blown away by a much cheaper Canon 100-400 stills lens, but those are the breaks if you want a real zoom.

 

Were all this not the case I'd probably own something like a Blackmagic pocket camera right now, rigged up like that.

 

Oh, and, edit: this also has relevance to stuff like Amira. They're talking about B4 lens adaptors for it (or something like the HDx35), which are probably a good idea as the Fuji Cabrios really make it far too front heavy. One wonders what B4 lens could do an Amira justice.

 

P

[Stuart Brereton]

Interesting article, although the SD lens was tested with the doubler in, which is something I used to avoid even when shooting Betacam.

[Phil Rhodes]

To cover the BMCC, it'd have to be.

[Stuart Brereton]

Not a good solution, unfortunately. It's a shame, as a fast ENG style zoom and a MFT Camera would be a useful combo for ultra low budget and personal projects.

[Phil Rhodes]

Quite. I keep waiting for someone to put one out. I was all excited about the Canon CN series, but then I realised it was priced to compete with Cabrios, and... no.

 

A GH4 is coverable without the extender, in ETC mode...