Surprising Lens Options!!
 

Though most of us felt that existing 1/2" SD lenses were not an option to use with the HD100, and wondered why there was a 1/2" to 1/3" step down converter the official HD100 equipment diagram just released by JVC contains some surprises!

The diagram (link below), shows that the ACM-12 step down converter is intended to allow use of the following 1/2" SD on the HD-100: Fujinon S14x7.3, Fujinon S17x6.6, Fujinon S20x6.4, Canon YH16x7, Canon YH19x6.7.

Most of us felt that 1/2" SD lenses would not provide the necessary resolution for HD, and that there would be aliasing problems in using them. Tomorrow at NAB I will ask the JVC reps and reps at the Fujinon booth for a clarification on if these lenses will work adequately on the HD100. I own the Fujinon S20x6.4 and the Fujinon S14x7.3, so I am naturally very curious about this! I'll report my finding here tomorrow.

Link to JVC HD100 equipment diagram: http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/...hd100/sys.html

Our video organization recieved this information a few months ago.

JVC knew nothing about it................WELL.............looks like it is a great reality after all. Guess the rumour was right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

LOU BRUNO

Excellent chart in that link... thanks for sharing this, Steve!

Any word on 1/3" HD prime lenses? I can't even find 1/2" primes for that nifty adapter for HD100 (I think the lens multiplication factor ends up being 1.3x when using 1/2" lens on 1/3" chips). Maybe JVC should have made (or still can make) a 2/3" lens adapter (2x multiplication factor).

Did this page for the GYHD100 System Configuration always have hotspots? Duh, if I missed it before.

http://www.jvc-victor.co.jp/english/...hd100/sys.html

I went back to it yesterday and you can get close ups by clicking on the following:

16x stock lens
13x wide angle
1/2" zoom (not sure which lens this is)
wide converter
1/2" Mount Converter ACM-12
zoom servo control
focus manual control HZ-FM13u (not the one for the 16x)
upper microhphone
battery bn-v4 28u

Don

That page lists several 1/2-inch lens options:

Fuji S14x7.3B12
Fuji S17x6.6BRM
Fuji S20x6.4B12

Canon YH16x7K12
Canon YH19x6.7K12

For the life of me, I can't seem find the stock 1/3-inch Fuji 16x or the wide 13x anywhere on the Fujinon Broadcast site at http://www.fujinonbroadcast.com/

"Did this page ... always have hotspots?"
 

I dunno, but now I feel like a complete idiot. Thanks for spotting that, Don.

Sorry Don! I should have mentioned the hotspot links in my original post. Kinda like an Easter Egg hunt eh...

I have been calling and e-mailing Canon and Fujinon for the past week attempting to get MTF charts for those five 1/2" SD lenses. No luck. The lens makers routinely publish MTF charts for their still photography lenses but refuse to for their broadcast lenses. If we had MTF charts for those lenses we could analyze how well they could resolve images on the HD100. I don't think the Fujinon 14x would resolve high def images, but the Fujinon 20x and Canon 19x may resolve some pretty decent images. If only we could get MTF charts!! I own the Fujinon 20x and it was recently serviced in L.A. by Focus Optics. I have a call in to Focus to see if they did an MTF chart on the lens when it was serviced. If so, I'll post the results. You're right, there is absolutely nothing on the Fujinon web site about the 16x and 13x 1/3" lenses. I've searched the entire Internet, and can't find any info beyond the common info released so far...

Doing some calculations with Graeme, it looks like the lens will need to resolve at least 133 line pairs per millimeter in order to deliver the full resolution possible from the JVC's 1280x720 chip.

The big expensive high-def glass usually only resolves somewhere around 80 to 100 line pairs per millimeter (which is okay, because the 2/3" CCD chip is twice as big/twice as wide, so the lens doesn't need to be so ultra-sharp in order to deliver the full resolution the 2/3" chip is capable of). With the smaller 1/3" chip, and its concordant tinier pixels, the lens has to be substantially sharper in order to deliver adequate resolution. If the lens can only resolve 80 line pairs per millimeter, it won't matter how many pixels you have on your CCD, you'll have soft blurry low-res footage. 80 lp/mm on a 1/3" chip would give you about standard-def resolution, regardless of the CCD pixel count.

So the goal is to find a lens capable of around 133 lp/mm, or 266 lines per millimeter.

Good points! If we had the exact CCD size of the HD100, and MTF charts for the 1/3" 16x, 13x, and MTF charts for the five listed 1/2" SD lenses, we'd be able to make some definitive, but theoretical calculations. Unfortunately, nobody has come up with that data yet. I'm trying every possible way to get those figures. If everyone else trys, someone will come up with the data. The lp/mm of the Fujinon 20x and Canon 19x may be above 80 lp/mm. Getting an MTF chart on them would help answer that. MTF curves are extremely helpful in defining the quality of a lens, but there are other factors:

Schneider White Paper - "The quality of a lens cannot be expressed with a single number or a simple statement. A number of factors must be evaluated in calculating the quality of a lens. Some of these factors include sharpness, contrast, color correction, relative illumination, spectral transmission, and distortion."

To seriously analyze a lens some experts do multiple MTF charts for various points in the lens range. Is there variance among what several experts analyzing a lens see as the lp/mm? Yes, and it can be as much as 30%.

I like theoretical conjecture as much as anyone - but I'm also a big fan of practical field application to prove or disprove the theories. It will be great to get the CCD size measurements of the HD100, and the MTF charts for the 1/3" and 1/2" lenses in question. After that, the proof will be in the testing - in the field putting the camera and lenses through hands on testing in every possible shooting scenario. Then it will be possible to draw some definitive conclusions on the quality of images produced.

Did y'all pick up your hard copy of "HDTV Lens Design: The Canon White Papers" at NAB?

If not, the downloadable PDF versions of the various chapters are available online at www.canonbroadcast.com.

Be sure to check out White Paper #3: HDTV Lens Design: Management of MTF.

The main link is: http://www.usa.canon.com/html/indust...tepapers.shtml

Most of these papers were presented by the esteemed Mr. Larry Thorpe at various SMPTE events... there's some good reading to be done here.

Cine primes are available from Zeiss, Fuji, Canon... but only in the 2/3rd-inch size. Sadly, I really doubt this is going to change. There are only one or two 1/3rd-inch cams that could benefit from these lenses, and they are the HD100 and the Canon XL. Just not enough of a market to justify 1/3rd-inch prime lens design and production, unfortunately.

Thanks Chris! I did get the hard copy of the HDTV Lens Design booklet at the Canon NAB booth - but I haven't read it yet. I will. I'll also check out the info on those other links.

I didn't get the hard copy, but I had read them online, and that's where I got the 80-to-100 lp/mm figures for regular (2/3") lenses...

And we should all keep in mind -- this gives us something to do until the camera comes out, but it's all theoretical. The proof will be when we actually test the darn thing. If it looks great, I won't care whether the MTF or lp/mm hold up! ;)

Anyway to attach an XL2 stock 20x lens to the JVC cam? with adaptors of some sort?

No such thing exists. I seriously doubt if it ever will.

B4 Adapter?
 

Sorry if I missed this bit of information somewhere, but will there be an option to use lens designed for a 2/3" B4 mount?

Hmm, for a 2/3rd-inch lens? Haven't heard of one but there is a 1/2" adapter.

Well, I was just thinking of all the XL1 series and XL2 owners out there who own a fortune of investments in lens for there cameras... Seems they would be the target audence for this new camera- I mean, it pretty much might as well be the XL3 if you painted part of it red.

JVC is the first prosumer other than Canon to come out with an interchangable lens cam... (that I know of)

Unless, - Are Canon XL1/2 lenses only made to work with the XL series cams?

Yes, I think they are, unfortunately.

Well, I'm sure you'd lose any camera control of the lens, but I'm pretty sure someone could machine an adapter of some sort so that you could actually mount the lenses on the JVC cam... it's just a matter or whether or not that's worth it since you lose all your focus, zoom, and iris control (not that the JVC cam would control those anyway from the looks of the current lens offerings...)

Unusual lens
 

What I am hoping is to be able to use a number of unusual lens that I bought for a Sony DSR500. These include an Innovision HD probe lens. I would likely also want to use a telephoto or macro lens with a Nikon mount. Sounds like that will be available from people like Optex in the UK

Unfortunately, the flange focal distance on the XL lens is a couple mm shorter than the 1/3" bayonet lenses. This means that even if you could place the lens flange against the camera flange (which is dimensionally incompatible), the XL lens is still too far away from the camera. So to adapt the XL to the bayonet, you would have to completely remove or modify the actual mount on the XL lens, which means disassembling the lens, which is kind of scary. And such a mod would mean it would no longer fit XL cameras.

Thanks for the clear explanation there, Dan. For anyone who is already heavily invested in Canon XL lenses and wants to move to the JVC HD100, the best available option is to simply sell off those lenses and use that money to buy the proper 1/3" or 1/2" lenses and 1/2" adapter for the HD100.

OK, reverse the combination of camera to lens:

Would adapting the new 1/3 JVC HD 13X lens to a XL2 have any benefit? Then you've got 2 cameras it would work on.............Hypotheticaly of course!
Would this be better than a Mini 35 setup or cheaper?

It would be nothing like a mini35 -- the JVC HD lens would exhibit identical depth of field as the existing Canon lenses do (millimeter for millimeter). And the JVC lens is more expensive than an entire mini35 setup.

As to whether there'd be any benefit to adapting the $12,000 JVC lens to work on the Canon -- perhaps; if the lens is a properly-engineered high-def lens it should be capable of resolving significantly more detail than any of the SD lenses the Canon uses. That may or may not show in the final picture, depending on how sharp the existing Canon lenses are.

I must have had a "senior moment" when asking about the Mini 35! I guess putting a 1/3 camera to a 1/3 lens (with adaptor) should have been obvious when considering DOF. Just my newbie mistake.

As in the past thanks for the great input!

One would hope that at 10X the price of a Canon 3X wide lens that this would give a better image, if it was feasable to mount of course.

Keeping with Steve's memo title of "surprising lens options", here's another one. According to the Australian version of the HD100 brochure, they'll be introducing a c-mount lens adapter too.

C-mount lenses were a fairly universal screwmount standard in the earlier days of 16mm cameras. There are also a number of c-mount video lenses available, as some security cameras etc. use c-mount.

I doubt many (if any) c-mount lenses will be up to the task of delivering quality high-def video, but the prospect of using a tiny Switar 10mm on the HD100 is, for some reason, oddly intriguing...

Also, and this is the cool part, c-mount adapters exist for just about every type of still camera lens. You can get Nikon, Canon, Pentax Screwmount, basically any kind of lens can be adapted to c-mount, so with the c-mount adapter you'll be able to use many still-camera lenses too. I've got a 500mm Zeiss Fernobjektiv that might make for some seriously telephoto shots (that'd be the equivalent of about a 3,600 mm still-camera lens!)

Just out of curiousity (and my own ignorance I suppose), why wouldn't a 16mm film lens be able to resolve enough detail for an HD camera, specifically this HDV cam?

Like you Barry, the thought of using other lenses is quite intriguing... especially if a set of C-Mount 16mm primes could be found at a reasonable price...

For instance, here's a super wide angle lens on eBay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...gory=4691&rd=1
Of course the benefits of that particular wide angle are probably lost since the CCD's are about half the size of the original intended imaging surface...

There is a significant problem with using C-mount 16mm and 35mm lenses on 3-CCD cameras. Lenses for 3-CCD cameras are designed with long exit pupil distances. If the exit pupil distance of the lens is too short, it will result in chromatic aberration because of the camera's prism block. This shows up as loss of color registration toward the edges of the frame.
Since the exit pupil distance is not such an issue with film cameras (or single-CCD cameras), it can be hard to find the spec for the exit pupil distance for a particular lens. A good minimum value for the exit pupil distance is 40mm (for use on 1/3" cameras). (Note that the exit pupil distance is a totally different specification than the back focus distance.)
Depending on the particular lens, the chromatic aberration may not be that noticable in SD, but would probably be an issue in an HD image.

That 5.9mm lens you linked to would actually be a bit more telephoto than the JVC's stock lens (which starts at 5.5mm).

If it was half, that'd be almost okay. But a 1/3" 16x9 chip is about 1/6 the size of a frame of Super16 film. S16 is about 12.4 x 7.5mm, whereas the 1/3" CCD is more like 5.25 x 2.95. S16 has about 93 square millimeters of surface area; the 1/3" CCD has more like 15.5 square millimeters.

So to deliver a certain standard of resolution to such a smaller frame size, the lens would need to be dramatically sharper than it would need to be to deliver that same standard of resolution to the S16 frame.

Additionally, most c-mount lenses weren't nearly of the same optical quality as modern PL-mount motion picture lenses. Many c-mount lenses were more along the lines of "coke bottle" lenses. The Switars are renowned for their sharpness; I'd like to see how one performs on the HD100. For SD it might be fine; I just don't know how it'd hold up to HD standards.

Well that explains it. I figured that since 2/3" is roughly equal to 16mm that 1/3" is therefore half... shows what I know...

A Shock for all, Mount Nikon lenses to JVC100
 

We got our lens adapter nikon to JVC 100 1/3 bayonet mount a week back, after extensive test I can confirm that its works
fine with Long Lenses, I have mounted a 200-400 Tamron nikon mount lens and shot footage, and its very good. The reason to order this was to film Wildlife. We will try other lenses but the reason to order was for long reach. The adapter was made by Zoerk in Germany. Do a google and you will find the site. A similar adapter is also to be made by Optex they have a website and Photos. When I called them I was told that it will take two three months before its is available, though they announced it at IBC.

Here's the link to Zoerk, although I could not find this adapter:

http://www.zoerk.com/

Here is the Optex page Yusuf refers to:

http://www.prohd.co.uk/page8/page8.html

whats the crop factor? I worked it out to be about 7x, or is it more?

Just over 7x if you are comparing 1/3" FOV over focal length to 35mm SLR photography. It is around 4.4X if you are comparing FOV of 35mm motion picture photography.

Nikon Lens Mount
 

Zoerk does not advertise this lens adapter, this was the very first one he made for us, Advise if you need one call Zoerk on the phone, he rarely answers to emails. I spoke to him the day I got my camera, and he agreed to make one, but only to mount nikon lenses which was fine. I can post some pictures but you can check link above which is what my camera looks like. The image is not exactly as 35mm, we mounted
are 17mm nikon lens and I would say it the image from the camera was about 30-32mm. The adapter is just a mechanical one, no optics or glass between the nikon lens and the ccd.

how much did he charge for it?

Euro 280/- plus shipping
 

Euro 280/- plus shipping