In the end I chose a 150×150 frame, cropped these in Graphic Converter into high quality jpegs (@90%). Then I sorted all crops according to their f-stop. During the next days I’ll post the results.

Today I start with 5.6, which is the stop that should be the sweet stop for most lenses (i.e. 2 stops down from wide open). This should give a good indication of how the lenses perform optically. I opened up all cropped jpegs, without knowing which one belonged to which lens. Then I ordered them as to how good they resolved the text – this step is of course up for discussion, but gives a general idea.

The results

1. 85/1.4 – not surprisingly this lens is called the Hollywood lens.
   
2. 35/2.8
   
3. 135/2.8
   
4. 135/2.8 2x ext – quite surprising that the 135 with the extender (making it a 270mm lens) came up that high
   
5. 40-80/3.5 @55 – This Zeiss zoom resolves also quite well, compared to some of its prime-lens brothers and sisters
   
6. 50/1.4
   
7. 28/2.8
   
8. 25/2.8
   
9. 45/2.8 – this is a tiny lens, and the only Zeiss that feels plastic.
   
10. 40-80/3.5 @40
    
11. 40-80/3.5 @80
    

    From here onwards the results become unsatisfactory.

12. 200/3.5 2x ext – this is curious, that it gets a slightly higher ranking than the same lens without the extender. This comes down to individual judgement, and the result being rather bad on either one.
    
13. 200/3.5
    
14. 80-200/4 @ 200 – there is really not much point in lugging this lens around.
    
15. 80-200/4 @ 120
    
16. 80-200/4 @ 80
    

I love the macro lens – it lets you get very close to your subjects. But you have to be very careful, as the depth of field is very, very shallow. Here is a little experiment I shot with the Lensbaby:

Click here to view the embedded video.

If there is one thing I would like to see improved on this nifty little lens, it would be the ability to set the f-stop. Right now you have to slide in pre-cut masks to set your aperture.

All tests were done on the Zeiss 50/1.4 lens, with the aperture set to 4 and 16. No filters were used, instead faster shutter speeds were employed.

Here is the frame I took in 4k, scaled down to 25% (Click on picture for full size), further down the test you will see 100% cropped images of just the chimney (compressed to jpg in Photoshop with high quality setting) .

El Cheapo

First in line is the £5 adapter off eBay from seller big_is. Very quick and efficient delivery from Hong Kong. Fits nicely. Fairly soft on infinity.

Holds fairly well at f16.

Bad at 4.

Conclusion: if you are on a budget, and either only shoot closer subjects or have plenty of light, this is an acceptable adapter.

DVD Technik

Next in line is the adapter from DVD Technik in the Ukraine at about $35. Has a very nice quality feel to it, and sist very tight on the lens. Best to be fitted once onto the lens, and left in place. Also quite tight once connected to the camera; downside is that it takes a bit longer to change lenses, but they do sit more tightly.

Disappointing at f16.

Appaling at f4.

Conclusion: Not really an option.

Confirm Adapter

Fianally the most expensive option at $85 from Happypage in Hongkong, an adapter with built-in autofocus confirm chip. Happypage offers the option of getting that chip programmed to your specific lens, which is a nice option when you want to use your lenses on a Canon EOS stills camera. Since the RED is thankfully a fully manual camera, I could not test this extra functionality.

At first the adapter would not fit. After an e-mail to happypage they immedeatly sent off a second adapter without any cost to me. The adapter arrived, but would not fit either. This suggests that the Wicked Circuit adapter might be slightly off, since happypage has only happy curstomers. Anyway, using my Dremel drill, I managed to get the adapter to fit into the RED – again, very tight, but not as tight as the DVD Technik one, and run the tests.

Happypage advertizes the fact that their adapters are a fraction of a millimitre thinner than their competitors, and claims that this helps with the focus on infinity. Let’s see how this holds up to reality.

Me likes at f16.

A Bit disappointing at f4.

Conclusion: Clearly the winner.

Conclusion

As so often, if you want quality, you have to pay for it. Interesting though that the by far cheapest option was not the by far worst one.

Also it seems that I still have problems with the back-focus on the Wicked Circuit adapter. My guess is that if that should ever get sorted out (or I might – gasp – order again a Birger Canon mount) the results will improve.

A friend told me I could save buckets by getting a so-called CISS system, continuous ink supply system.

Looking on eBay, there are many different offerings, all from cheap Asian to custom-built solutions for each printer. I chose an offering from down-under rihac. Installation is just a bit complicated, but if you manage to install memory in your computer, you´ll be fine. Rihac provides an extensive installation manual, which is adapted to your specific printer model.

The result: cheap printing (did you know that drugs – the illegal type – are cheaper than printer ink?), never having to worry about which colour might run out just as an important printing job is up, and saving the environment.

Rihac uses very good ink, and I did some printouts just before installation, and afterwards, and could not see a difference. Some reviewers wrote that the Rihac ink is more light resistant than the original one.

Bottom line

If you rather spend money on film gear than ink, get yourself a quality CISS system. Search on eBay, there are many different providers. I for one can recommend the one I chose, but find out for yourself.

Happy printing.

He also had some custom made handle bar system, that does not need any rods – thus shedding off a pound or two, and saving further space (sorry, no link).

The whole set fits into one smart looking bag (the Think Tank Airport Acceleration, about 200$) that can be taken onboard a plane.

The whole interview can be found on the excellent Reel Show.

Imagine the richness this will give in editing. Rather than having to do with pre-recorded sound, or the one-channel camera mike, having 5.1 will surely add production value to those 1-man crew shoots.

The magic of the SuperMINI is that it uses Dolby Pro Logic II encoding to create two stereo tracks from six discrete audio channels. These can output to cameras and stereo recorders with XLR, RCA or miniplug inputs via separate adapter cables. The twin tracks can then be connected to the stereo audio inputs on any professional video camera, audio recorder, mixer, or other gear.

Read the full review (4.5 out of 5) over at DV.com — free registration required, and very much worth it.

Wishes

What I would love are the following future features:

• De-interlacing
• Automatic naming and numbering of exported frames.
• Option to export in native QT size (with option of having 16:9). Option of having 25%, 50%, 200%, 400% sizes. Throw in some advanced resizing calculations, and this could become a powerful tool that people would spend money on. This reviewer included.
• Display of current window size.
• A Text saying “Drop QT file here” instead of the blue screen — this threw me off at first; blue screen to me suggested that I would have to plug in a DV source.
• Support for keyboard control. Space = start/stop. Arrow left/right = one frame advance/back.

That said, great little – and free – program.(Review at Macupdate.)

Final Cut Pro

Has the same good look. Now with a smooth cam filter, that allows de-shaking of footage. This could be done earlier, but now you can do it from within FCP. Nice touch.

Color

This was the main reason I was excited about the update. A powerful (and previously prohibitively expensive) tool for colour correction, and selective colour correction.When you first open Color you understand that it has been only a short half year since Apple bought the company behind Color. The interface feels very un-Apple. Most values cannot be changed by mouse, but have to be entered. When you want to try out a couple of different values, you have to re-type them each and every time. (You can connect third-party dedicated colour correction hardware to your mac; and I am looking forward to the hardware producers coming up with more affordable designs.)Another downer was finding out that Color does not support viewing your material on an external monitor in DV. This makes Color as it is useless for a big part of the FCP user base, as you cannot use a tool for colour correction that disallows the proper display of colours in the first place.When roundtripping from FCP, you will also get annoyed by Colors inability to take layers into account. If you do multi-layered video, Color will only display the highest one.I haven’t used Color a lot, but it already crashed on me three times.Obviously, still some work to be done. But Final Cut 1.0 was also unrefined, and look what it has become. And thanks, Apple, for including this powerful tool without an extra price-tag!

DVD Studio Pro

In none of the presentations I’ve seen, has anyone mentioned DVD Studio Pro with more than a side-sentence. Well, I haven’t noticed any changes from the previous version.

Compressor

This lovely compression tool has received a great overhaul of its UI. Very smooth now. Easier to do repetitive tasks. Presets are arranged in a more logical, easier to find order. Clusters are easier to set up. When you shell out an extra 179 bucks, you can buy Flip4mac and transcode to wma and flash (or you might need Episode for $495; neither Apple nor Telestream are very clear about this).One, for me very annoying, bug I’ve noticed is that Compressor no longer supports all of QuickTime’s flags. In my case I use a lot of telecined 8mm films that need to be turned into the right direction. In Quicktime you can change the properties of a movie, without having to re-render. Which worked fine in the previous version of Compressor, but now the output will be upside down again.Am looking forward to Apple fixing this one soon. Please!

Soundtrack

As a cameraman, I have so far concentrated on the visual sides of FCS. But in the presentation I saw I was blown by the simplicity of adding surround sound. You can create space feeling in real-time, just by moving the mouse. Also, Soundtrack comes with tons of sound effects, which alone would cost a small fortune.Soundtrack is now more integrated into FCP. Before, you couldn’t change a cut after you had committed a project to Soundtrack, but now the smart people from Apple have come up with a Conform tool, that will save many hours, and make sound editors much more friendly to picture editors coming in with that one last change.

Motion

Before I start that new version of Motion, I have to be sure to have a couple of uninterrupted hours. This has not happened in the past two weeks, so there will be a while before I can give it a try. But from the demo I learned that Motion is now 3D, and once you’ve mastered the steep learning curve around this, it looks like a powerful, yet easy to use tool for advanced animation. I am looking forward to animating stills in 3D space.

GPS

Anyway, I have no problems confessing that I am a gadget freak. That is gadgets that promise to make life easier. I also have no problems admitting that I am excellent at losing my way, when driving to the unknown (hey, I even managed to get lost inside a lighthouse). Combine these two with my seeing an offer for a GPS wayfinder, an you won’t be too surpized to hear that I am now a happy owner of a Garmin c550.

I bought it one morning on my way to a location I had no clue where it was. Also, I did not have time to read any manuals or spend time on installing the GPS. Here I was delighted. I just took out the handy machine, pluged it into the 12V connection and within a minute it was running. It is extremely easy and intuitive to use, with a thought-out menu system that lets you make quick choices. No reading of the manual necessary.

I had to drive for about 90 minutes, and the c550 predicted the arrival time within exact to the minute.

Excellent out-of-the-box experience

It takes out the stress from driving to unknown places. Having used it for a while now, I also realize that it makes driving safer when you are a bit tired. Plus, it is great fun for my 4 1/2 year old daughter, as she loves to chose the language that is spoken. On a sidenote, it is fun to hear the Norwegian voice, as Garmin has chosen not to use a standard Oslo accent, but a more soulful one from the west-coast. The German voices are unfortunately very standarized, as are the American ones. My brother has a GPS with a bavarian accent, and it is just such a pleasure listening to it.

After some use you will necessarily find some faults in every machine. The c550 is no exception to this. When the car is parked in a garage over night, the c550 often needs a reboot in the morning, otherwise it will not connect to the GPS satellite system. Another quirk is that once you are used to the smart menu of an iPod, the mp3 playing capabilities of the GPS are a bit clumsy. Also, controlling the music takes a bit too many clicks. Once you have chosen your music, the player does not automatically return to the map view. The music stops whenever an anouncement is made. It would be much better if the music were just muted down a bit.

Some of the road data is inaccurate. Ocasionally the GPS recommends a gravel way over a proper road. Some data is outdated; one-way roads show up as, well, two-way roads.

It reacts fast to changes, such as ( – especially in the beginning – wilfullly) taking wrong turns. After a short break an alternate route is suggested.

Carbonized? Not yet.

Apple user have to wait a while before Garmin offers support for the world’s best OS. They have a OSX version in the pipeline, but that has been postponed almost as often as the new Windows OS.

So, in order to update the firmware and upload some photobox data, I fired up my Windows machine (which had been gathering dust for the last year or so). After installing the necessary software from Garmin, nothing happened. That was a quick reminder of why I had completely stopped using Windows. It just sucks. Facing the option of re-installing Windows in the vain hope that I could then update my phone, I chose to wait til January, when the new deadline for Garmin’s OSX version passes.

The c550 has bluetooth capabilities, which means that you can use it as a hands-free for your mobile. Having had some trouble with my Sony Ericsson p990, it was a relief to see how easy it was to hook up. Makes driving safer, and saves you brain some radiation.
Recommended.

The phone has a whole lot of switches and buttons, some of them are a bit too easy to push accidentally. With the flip closed, you get of course the normal 12 number keys, plus 5 cursor keys, 4 option keys, and 6 keys spread around the edges of the phone. This is not a simple just-use-it phone.

Switching on the p910i, the first downturn comes. It feels like it takes a full minute for the phone to boot. The menu has been re-designed, and at first I did not understand the logic behind the structure. Why, for example is the calendar on the main menu, but for the to-do-list I first have to go to the Office folder?

The phone crashes frequently, especially when using slightly more demanding applications, such as taking photos, or playing back video. In normal use (like making some calls, and checking e-mail once per day), I need to do a sorft re-boot at least once a day. Last week the phone was used on a film, where it was supposed to play back a small video file. On about every second take we had to wait an extra two minutes for the crashed phone to re-boot. I find this unacceptable.

Ringing SonyEricson, I get the tip that I should update the phone’s hardware…

Why, oh why do I need to update a phone that I received only days ago?

Why, oh why does SonyEricson think that every p910i user has a PC?

That’s right, you cannot update your phone on a Mac. Actually, you cant do anything on a Mac, they jsut do not talk together (except for simple Bluetooth file transfer that sort-of works, ocasionally and slow).

Sometimes I cannot make outgoing calls. First after a re-boot does the phone work as a phone again.

For a phone that has been delayed for many months, I find it amazing how unstable it is. Considering the price-tag I think that SonyEricsson should feel ashamed. Not recommended.