Hi Jeremy,

I don't have any panning or tilting shots, but I'll try and get some full res grabs up tonight.

The SGpro has been £399 for some time (£299 without rods support).

Thanks for sharing this, it's a setup I might end up with very soon! In my opinion it looks slightly better than the redrock flip+HVX 200 tests I've seen. It seems to have have slightly less chromatic abberation seen in edges on the frame.

It's really a close race between the Redrock and the Sgpro. I saw on the Redrock page their flip module is currently not recommended for Sony Z1 and EX...

BTW, is it possible to have the flip module upside down, so that the Sony EX is below the adapter level, not over it?

Hi,

Yes it is, however you would need to purchase a z raiser of some sort, maybe from zacuto or geardear. Here is a photo of it setup like this on the new z7:

http://www.peter-hoare.co.uk/Z71.jpg

Wow !!

Ordered my SGPro late Sunday night (I am talking around 11pm at night) - it turned up on Tuesday early afternoon !!! :)

What were you people doing on Monday, sitting on your hands ? ;P

Seriously, great service, I have never bought anything online that had such a pain free and rapid turnaround.

Now to set it up . . . . .

Hi Lee,

Glad to hear the unit arrived safe and sound. Yes, we have really work to reduce our lead time but I think it has paid off :)

Did a mod achieve all the SGpro threads into this one thread?

One quick question, I am plugging a Canon HV30 into the SGPro, the Canon has 43mm threads - so I need to step up from 43mm to 72mm to interface the SGPro.

I couldn't find a simple 43mm to 72mm step up ring but I managed to get what I needed by using 4 step up rings (!!)

43 - 46
46 - 52
52 - 62
62 - 72

Do you think this ok, or is it better to use a single (and slimmer) ring ?

Lee,

It will be fine, the extra distance actually helps with vignetting for a small cam like the HV30.

Lee,

It will be fine, the extra distance actually helps with vignetting for a small cam like the HV30.

Cheers! Good to know that about vignetting. I also have a method to remove any vignetting I might pick up.

Once the camera / adaptor and everything is set up, shoot a few seconds of a flat white card. When you capture your footage, don't forget to capture this flat white card footage also.

The footage of the flat white card will have the very same vignetting the rest of footage has.

In your editing program inverse the flat white card footage (black to white / white to black) and use this as a mask to slightly adjust the vignetted areas of the proper footage.

I usually use either 'levels' or 'curves' in After Effects, works very well and is fast and easy.


Hope that all makes sense !

An affective method, yes. Remember that you will need one mask for each of your lenses.

An affective method, yes. Remember that you will need one mask for each of your lenses.

Yep! I just shoot a bit of white once everything is set up.

If you want to use the SGPro with a Canon HV20 / HV30 you will need an additional 3mm of shim, in addition to all the supplied ones, to get the Camera to the correct height.

Made my own, works great.

Just got a sgpro kit, looks really nice so far.
hooked it up to my jvc hd111, looks crazy but does the trick, bout to do a shoot shall put up info / pics once got some footage done

Ryan

I'd rather not deal with vignetting at all, but thanks for the white card method - sounds like a good idea.

Lenny Levy

I'd rather not deal with vignetting at all, but thanks for the white card method - sounds like a good idea.

Lenny Levy


Yeah, works really well, I am sure someone could write a script to automatically reduce or remove vignetting based on this method.

I spent years, prior to using a 35mm lens adaptor, trying put in subtle but convincing grain and vignetting into my CG work (mainly for TV advertising) to make it more like film ! :)

Anyhow, shot my first bit of test footage today, looks very nice to me, sharpness is great, I will upload it to Vimeo tonight . . .

Unfortunately, that's not something I think most of my clients would want to get into. If its your own footage its OK , but to tell people - Here let me shoot an extra white card which you need to keep track of to correct every shot - wow that would not go over too big.

Lenny levy

Lenny, don't use the white card method. :)

Lee,

Why are you saying don't use it now - because of my considerations?

Lee,

Why are you saying don't use it now - because of my considerations?

Do you use a SGPro ?

My personal preference is to set up an adaptor to a camera so that the image is as clean as possible and also to choose the limited range of lenses which enable this.

To go to the time and trouble of purchasing any 35mm adaptor known to be good, then not go the extra mile to set it up properly or hamstring it with troubled lenses, seems to me to be rather pointless.

...........

Lee - Yes I own an SGPro rev 2 and now a flip adapter with it and the EX-1 achromat, as well as a Letus Extreme and a Brevis.

Is there a frame rate limit to these units ... what I mean is at what speeds do they spin and what's the difference to the upcoming SGBlade? Are the units silent? Is there shake?

Hi Guys,

As some of you know, last weekend we hired an EX1 to test out the prototype 'GG1' glass disk element that will be an option in the upcoming SGblade. GG1 offers low lightloss with the ability to stop down the 35mm lens and use high shutter speeds without seeing grain.

We filmed a lot of landscape shots, panning and tilting across skies and using wide lenses - all things adapters hate :) The lenses aperture is mostly between F4 - F8.

We also used this as an opportunity to showcase our new non flipped achomat that works great with the EX1 (currently EX1 users can not use non flipped). We hope to bring out this upgrade very soon.

Anyhow, enough talk, here is the link to the footage - please don't use VLC player, it seems to soften the footage badly:


164MB:
http://www.sgpro.co.uk/SGbladeGG1_EX1_nonflipped.wmv please right click and 'save as'.

Below are some grabs from the footage:

http://www.sgpro.co.uk/frame01.jpg
http://www.sgpro.co.uk/frame02.jpg
http://www.sgpro.co.uk/frame03.jpg
http://www.sgpro.co.uk/frame04.jpg
http://www.sgpro.co.uk/frame05.jpg

Wayne.


Assuming there has been no post-shoot adjustments, am I imagining things or have you shot over by about half to a stop. By this I speculate that the light transmission of your new groundglass must be pretty good given that the texture does not seem to be passing aerial image.

The footage looks pretty clean and crisp. I would like to see more! When will the SGBlade be ready for delivery?

Hi Bob,

Yes, shooting is certainly not my thing, but I try :) You have a good eye, I have selected the GG finish to be right at the point before any aerial image pass through. There are also coatings applied to increase light transmission.

Dean,

We shoudl be sending out 5 beta units to 5 testers this month. Once we are happy with feedback, we will go into production.

Hi Wayne,
Looks good but is it possible to upload a full res version to Vimeo....1920 X 1080?
Best wishes
H

Hi Henry,

I am attempting this now, working on the best settings from Premiere.

Lee - Yes I own an SGPro rev 2 and now a flip adapter with it and the EX-1 achromat, as well as a Letus Extreme and a Brevis.Leonard, care to comment on the differences? I've looked at footage from all three, and keep on coming back to the SGPro as having the nicest image and most natural looking bluring to out of focus.

Hi Wayne,

What experiences have you from customers using the SGPro with JVC hd cameras? We have a Letus with our JVC and just can't get sharp images out of it as the point of focus is so minute on the macro scale.

We are looking to replace it and it'll probably stay with the JVC kit as a package here.

Also, do you have any plans to produce a relay for direct fitting to cameras with detachable lenses?

regards
Stuart Campbell

What's the progress on the SG Blade Wayne?

Hi Guys,

Please keep you eye on this thread if you are interested in the SGblade progress:

shoot35 :: View topic - SGblade project progress (http://waynekinney.iforumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=792&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0&mforum=waynekinney)

gotta say I just recently bought the sgpro after much research and i am very pleased with it! Still getting the hang of everything but it is incredible. I've also used the letus, and I must say I prefer the image of the sg. Also the price for the unit alone was much more cost effective, even after shipping to the states!

I'll be keeping my eye on that blade though.

Have you seen the blade footage...it sure does rock.

Have you seen the blade footage...it sure does rock.

Agreed. makes me kind of wish i had held out for the blade, instead of buying the pro. oh well, I'm still happy with mine.

Question for wayne though,
Are the lens mounts for the sgblade compatible with the sgpro? I've the sudden urge to start using canon lenses, but i currently have a nikon mount.

Hi Justin,

The new mounts for the SGblade are backwards compatible with the SGpro, however the older mounts without a collimation ring are not compatible with the SGblade.

Hi Guys,

Our new PL mounts for the SGblade & SGpro are now in stock. Price is £139 or £99 when purchased with an SGblade. This makes it the most competitively price PL mount & adapter combo out there!

The red ring is the collimation ring.

http://www.sgpro.co.uk/PL01_big.jpg

http://www.sgpro.co.uk/PL02_big.jpg


We are finalizing the packaging/printed over wraps and will be adding them to the website in about 2 weeks.

No replies?

Now when the Canon 500D is almost out you could offer this in PL mount adapter configuration for EOS as it has 1.6x crop suitable for PL lenses - unfortunately in 720P but with almost the same temporal resolution as you can get with an 35mm adapter anyhow, not to mention that low light perfomance.

Wayne, I'm sorry, I've made an hybrid optical viewfinder out of the SG achromat I brought from you two years ago - it's the greatest 2" clear aperture viefinder on earth with about million pixels and your distortion free achromatic closeup lens - for 5D MKII. I wish I could use PL lenses on it.

Cheers,
T