I´ll try to find the proper topic.. upload a few samples.

Check here: http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/2207/17.5mm-f0.95-voigtlander-topic#Item_158

Thanks for the offer, I've had time with the 17.5mm, just speaking from my experience.

That´s exactly why I´d like you to take a look. I know there is quite a bit of fluctuation in the quality of the 12mm slr magic, especially early on but it would be interesting to see if there is a similar kind of fluctuation with the 17.5.

I´m sure you could say off the cuff if my results are similar to your experiences. If not, then that might warrant a thorough test; but that´s a whole different kettle of fish of course!

@kholi, I´ve had both the 12 and 17.5mm and seen plenty of footage from the 25 wide open. The 25mm IMO is unusable wide open because of its fringing.. it´s also softer than the 17.5 hands down. Soft is not always bad, though. A 25mm voigt shot at f0.95 really shines through in an edit, in a bad way due to it´s purple fringing. The 12mm IMO is unusable (on a gh2) below f2.8 unless it´s for details or a facial shot f.i. where you only make use of the center sharpness. Don´t get me wrong - some lighting can induce fringing on the 17.5mm as well, and fringing can be mitigated by how you set the focus.

The voigt´s focal field is REALLY narrow, which makes it very difficult to use wide open. For night shots (low budget) I would not think twice about it, however. For day shots I would not use a wide open aperture in general.

If you send me a pm I can mail some quick samples, for comparison.

Still waiting for the bmd cam to arrive, so I can´t do any comparisons between cameras..

@johnbrawley Sounds like you got a bad copy, because the one I´ve got can be used wide open at infinity without hesitation. In some conditions it can be pushed towards displaying some abberrations and flaring is obviously not the best wide open.. But my copy feels sharp enough wide open already. So if most of your shots where directly into the sun I might understand your results but it really does sound like you didn´t get the best copy...

In my experience the 12mm looks good at 2.8 and above.. (definately useful for closeups at larger apertures). But it´s also considerably softer in the corners on the gh2 (which I used it on) relative to a smaller sensor, so it definately favors the BMD cam and the gh3 f.i.

Edit: Pm me if you want some stills samples wide open, for comparison.

Slightly off topic: I wonder if John Brawley and some others have bad copies of the voigt 17.5 judging from the comments on vimeo.. In my experience it´s sharper and more well controlled wide open than the 12mm slr magic (wide open) and much better than the voigt 25mm wide open.. The 12mm does look very good on the BMD cam though, it has to be said.

There doesn´t seem to be too much jello either, handheld.. (at a glance)

it was the x-mas lights, we couldn't find a 144 degree shutter angle to combat the flicker

@shian

Thanks for doing these videos. Just got done with part 3 and there's a lot of nice info in there that you can't find in other reviews.

I'm sure you figured this out or already knew this, but if you're spitting material out of Davinci you can switch from 24 to 23.976. There's a very obvious difference in Cadence between the two.

Not sure what software you were using though, so. I noticed the same thing when I first started working with footage, the switch cleared it up but I often forget to do it during delivery.

part 2 is live now -

Details are on the vimeo page.Let the vitriol begin. And definitely download the file. Vimeo really skews the results.

Not the most polished, professional test ever, but we had 1/1000th the budget of Zacuto, and very little time. We do our best to stress the BMCC, 5DMKIII, GH3, and Hacked GH2 in a High Dynamic Range shootout.

We went to some lengths to mess with the framing so as not to have the sensor crop give away which cam is which; primarily so that you'll focus more on which one(s) you like instead of trying to identify each cam. These comparisons have been graded down to the lowest common denominator to be as "equal" as possible. But in Part 2 we'll show you the raw footage.

A teaser for the shootout between BMCC, GH3, GH2-I, and 5DMKIII - Results Show coming soon.

I'm loving the RAW quality of the BMD cam. Don't love shooting with it...at all. It's a horrible pain in the ass. Video coming later this week of the shootout with colleague @CollierLandry where we set the BMCC, 5DMKIII, GH3 and GH2 Intravenus against one another in a narrative hi-contrast, hi-DR challenge - 16:1 to 64:1 contrast ratios being tested.

This is a still from the BMCC RAW 64:1 test series - only thing that's been done to it, is a curves adjustment to bring the blacks down. No conscious fill light was used. The fill you see is from lights that were set behind me that happened to be creating a very soft fill, and were reading around 3-4 EV versus the hair light which was at 11EV.

@robmneislon I think they can (BMD) but the sensor company can't. The big issue is the vacation coming along, so the production will be down. (Christmas / New Years) The strange note is that if the problem is fixed, why are they not in full production.. this confuses me.