Fujinon 18 x 4.2mm HD lens rental
 

Just finished shooting a BBC feature documentary out in the Ukraine with 2 x HD251s and the Fujinon 18 x 4.2mm HD lens. Superb results despite the woeful viewfinder.
If ayone is interested in renting the 18 x 4.2mm just email me as there are none in any rental houses in the UK that I could find.

Geoffrey Smith

Was this for SD delivery?

The 18 x 4.2mm sounds like the lens to go for if you want a good all rounder.

Geoffrey,

How much would your rental rate be? I may well be interested if the right job comes up.

Were you shooting 720p50 to ProHD or SDI out? How did the codec stand up? I'm thinking about getting a HD201 next week.

Brian, this was SD delivery for the BBC but we are hoping for a cinema version as well.

Mike, the rate question is a good one as there is no reference from a Rental house to go by. I can only say that as a HD251 will cost £150 per day for a 4 day week, the lens would be at least this figure as it actually costs more than the camera. We were shooting 720p at 25fps to ProHD. What do you mean by the codec standing up?

Thanks Geoffrey,

I was wondering how the 720p50 codec looked. It is obviously pretty high compression and I was wondering how well it performed in the field. Have you used the 720p50 at all?

For one, I'm quite interested in testing it/renting it. Do you perhaps consider selling it? And what about shipping costs to Belgium? I can't get my hands on it here to see what I would be buying... but it sounds the way to go indeed...

I recently tested the 720p50 codec - I was especially interested in undersampling 720p50 to 720p25 (without resampling) and comparing it to original shot 720p25. (shutter at 120/s, obviously, because I wanted to shoot 50p, so I could downsample everything to 25p, but I could also created slow motion with true temporal resolution).

There's no short answer to this, but as you might suppose - original 720p25 is a bit more stable then 720p50 undersampled to 720p25. Probably due to use of shorter GOP structure, the need to shoot with a 120/s shutter, and the more stress that puts on a codec (sharper edges in frames with serious movement) and some related issues. It defenately looks fine, it's not like it's a disaster, I'm merely talking about a subtle preference for the encoding performance frame-by-frame of 25p then of 50p - and that was only important because of my specific need to undersample the footage (temporally). If you intend to produce 50p, it looks very similar. I could put up some comparisons on my website, but I doubt anyone is interested in a demand this specific...

Geoff can we see some footage
 

with the new 18x4.2 lens. This seems to be 'The' lens to get for this camera, even if it does cost as much as it does, $16500 in Australia. Understandably it wouldn't be footage from your doco for all the obvious reasons. But would love to see what it can do.

cheers

Adam

Am flat out digitizing at the moment, and would need someone technical to help me post the footage. If I can get a step by step process of what to do then I will try next week

Best,

Geoffrey

can someone help Geoff
 

thanks Geoff, I'm know someone will help, the people on this forum are a great community.

cheers

Adam