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Whither P2?
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[Graeme Nattress] “This is just one way Panasonic is keeping quality up and price down.”
This was already discussed months ago and I didn’t get any real and logical answers to why non-changeable would be so much cheaper. It’s the glass that covers the most of expenses.
How jvc can offer fujinon so cheaply with its 100 model?Last time the only reason that came up was, that with non-changeable Panny can control the PQ better.
And that’s very scary reason. If panny is so scared about their fame and that goes beyond what customers really want, there’s not too much future here…But I don’t understand why panny would not offer next model (hvx-300?) with changeable lens, if that’s what the customers want. There’s lot of cameramen discussing here that wants changeable lens. Why deny what they want? Why act like sony (“we know better what you need and you need interlaced…”)?
If Panny has made a market survey that tells that there’s no market for a camera that is a little bit more expensive than hvx-200 and has changeable lens, Jan, why don’t you just tell us that?
And if that survey is still undone, why don’t you go and make it.If working kit with hvx-200 would be around $10k and with hvx-300 $11-12k and with varicam $100k, the last one really does not compete with the first one. But the second one would be very attractive compared to the first one.
And btw, it’s really no use to compare still camera lens with ones designed for moving pictures.
Use is so different. You never use focus puller with still camera. You don’t have to get pans and track shots stay focus all the time with moving objects with still camera. -
“And btw, it’s really no use to compare still camera lens with ones designed for moving pictures.
Use is so different. You never use focus puller with still camera. You don’t have to get pans and track shots stay focus all the time with moving objects with still camera.”What I was getting at is that a “real” lens doesn’t have to have end stops, it just has to have a 1:1 relationship between the lens ring and the focus and be repeatable. Stills photographers don’t seem to think these lenses are any less real than the old way of doing thing, and stills photographers seem to be twice as picky as any video person.
Where I see the difference between a fixed to the camera lens and a removable “broadcast” stlye lens is in “feel”. Now, if you take a Sony camcorder, the feel is diabolical, the wet cabbge feel is what I call it. You turn the focus dial a little and nothing happens. You turn it a lot and the focus moves past the point you wanted in focus. You can never pull focus on these things reliably. But I’m told Panasonic doesn’t make their lenses like that. They make them and they feel like the lens I have on my stills camera in that the focus ring is not mechanically linked to the focus, but it “feels” like it is mechanically linked. Turn the focus dial a little and the focus moves a little. Move it fast and the focus moves fast and stops where you tell it – just as it would with a removable broadcast lens. The only difference is that the mechanical linkage has end stops and the electronic linkage does not. Just as you could have a poorly made sloppy mechanical linkage where focus is hard due to the slop, you can have wet cabbage style Sony electronic linkage focus. Panasonic make non-sloppy, repeatable, can work with a follow focus electronic linkage on their focus, or so Panasonic and people who’ve used a DVX100 reliably inform me…..
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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When you talk about the QUALITY of the optics and the final quality of the image, glass and overall design is where its at. still lenses can be put on film and video cameras for the best quality. Comparing so called still lenses to video and film lenses is indeed relevant. With enough money you can adapt a good matte box system to these lenses.
My taste is for superior quality, perhaps you don
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In fact, in the original Star Wars film the effects shots were shot with a motion control camera that moved over a real three dimentional model. The lens used for this effects footage was a 55mm Nikon still lens.
What a lens!
Chris
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Still lenses for 35mm cameras don’t need to be as sharp as lenses for 1/3″ CCD HD cameras though. The lens requirements for the very small pixels in a 1/3″ HD camera are quite tough.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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[Graeme Nattress] “Where I see the difference between a fixed to the camera lens and a removable “broadcast” stlye lens is in “feel”.”
Eng-lenses are also not so much highly rated in movie making. That’s why there’s so many “cine versions” of these lenses. Most of eng-lenses have focus from 5 meters to infinity within one centimeter in barrel, which makes them quite impossible to focus sharply by the focus puller.
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You write such crazy stuff, I don
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Sony HDCAM pixels are about 5 microns square, the ones in 1/3″ 720p HD about 3.7 microns, 1/3″ 1080 about 2.5 microns. The pixels in my 8.3megapixel Canon 20D are 6.4 microns. A lens that is sharp enough for the canon, is not sharp enough for an HD camera.
Graeme
– http://www.nattress.com – Film Effects and Standards Conversion for FCP
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Blub, I don’t follow your argument at all. Nobody’s talking about focal planes here. We’re talking about the ability of a lens to resolve an image sharply enough that it delivers adequate resolution to the chip.
Standard-def video lenses are typically engineered to provide 30 to 40 line-pairs per millimeter. That’s more than enough to resolve a standard-def image on a 2/3″ chip.
High-def video lenses are typically engineered to resolve much more detail (which is why they cost 10x to 50x more!) High-def lenses typically can resolve around 85 line-pairs per millimeter, which is enough for a 2/3″ high-def chipset such as the CineAlta or Varicam.
These new 1/3″ cameras have the same # of pixels on them, but in 1/6 the physical space! Meaning, they need a lens sharp enough to resolve between 133 line-pairs per millimeter (for 720p) and 200 (yes, 200!) line-pairs per millimeter, to adequately resolve a 1080-line image on a 1/3″ chip.
Think about it — a 1/3″ chip is about 2.95mm in height. 1080 lines in 2.95mm = 366 lines per millimeter, or about 183 line-pairs per millimeter. That means that, to resolve a comparable level of sharpness, you need a lens that can resolve twice as much resolution per millimeter as a typical high-def lens, such as would be used on a VariCam or CineAlta.
That is no small feat.
And that’s why Graeme and I tend to believe that these little chips are pushing the limits of what we can expect in the way of high-def, and that their ultimate resolution will probably be more limited by the lens than by the chips themselves.
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Get the most from your DVX camera. The DVX Book and DVX DVD are now available at https://www.dvxuser.com/articles/dvxbook/ and at Amazon (https://tinyurl.com/54u4a) -
Chris,
maybe you could try to learn what Circle of Confusion (CoC) means.
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