I'll be reviewing some more lenses shortly. But for now, a quick preview. One of my new favorites
for 'all around' work is a 28-105 F2.8 Tamron that I picked up off eBay. For now, here is some stuff
I shot with it just messing around at my daughter's soccer practice, not a proper test by any means
but I wanted to try it out.
Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
Digital Cinema | Websites | Consulting | Multimedia
The FS100 is a great camera. Very nice image. Great price (especially nowdays). You can
use just about any lens out there on it. The biggest issue for me, is the missing ND filters!
I am not a narrative shooter and I have to do fast paced work quite often. But I wanted
the 'cinematic look'. I ended up buying the FS100, then of course Sony introduced the FS700,
which would have probably suited me better, as it has built in ND's. I don't use a mattebox,
and use zooms probably 75% of the time. For people who shoot this way, the Xume filter
solution is ideal. It will work with DSLR's, the FS100, or any camera really. It would
even benefit FS700 and AF100 shooters. Those cameras have built in ND filters, but
they are in 2 stop increments. 0 stops of ND, 2 stops of ND, 4 stops of ND, or 6 stops
of ND. Buy a 1 stop ND screw in filter (0.3) and now you can have the odd stops
as well (1 stop, 3 stops, 5 stops and 7 stops) just by slapping the 1 stop ND filter on
the front of your lens and using the built in NDs as needed. The biggest drawback, is that
you need to buy a lens adapter for each lens, and a filter holder for each filter. But it's worth
it in my eyes to have such an easy solution to slap ND on and off lenses so easily!
One more thing to be aware of, is that although the rings are thin, you ARE putting the
ND filters out further in front of the lens by adding the rings (one on the lens and one
on the filter). This can cause vignetting on wider angle lenses (say 18mm and wider
on the Super 35mm chip.) There is a way around this however. I just bought the
largest size ND filters I could find (82mm) and then bought step up rings from whatever
size each my individual lenses was, to 82mm. The step rings only cost about $2 for each lens.
And now I get NO vignetting, even on my 10-20mm Sigma. Here's a quick demo video I
threw together in about 3 minutes. Sorry, it's a little out of focus in places, but I think
you will get the idea anyways!
Gabe Strong
G-Force Productions
Digital Cinema | Websites | Consulting | Multimedia
