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SLR Magic HyperPrime 12mm F1.6 for mFT – 2011 diary

gadgets, Hong Kong, Lens, Photography, Review No Responses »

Dec 312011

this post was supposed to be called “first week with “SLR Magic HyperPrime 12mm F1.6 for mFT”" and finished weeks ago – ideally a day after my first week with the lens, i.e. 19th december. but here i am, on the last day of 2011, sitting in front of the computer, figuring how to wrap it up. actually, my procrastination wasn’t too bad. i am less than 2 weeks late. but i just think i will feel really bad if i wait another day to finish it. because in less than an hour, tomorrow will be next year. so i just decided to make publishing this post my final resolution for the year 2011. when i read this post tomorrow, i will know i have at least achieved one last minute resolution for 2011.

introduction

since i have been using SLR Magic‘s HyperPrime 12mm F1.6 for Micro Four Thirds (from now on, i will refer to the lens as just the 12mm) almost daily in the last couple of weeks, this post will be in a format of a daily photo/video journal sharing my personal usage of the 12mm. so in a way, this post is not completed until i have populated it with all the photos/videos i have taken with the 12mm up to today.

for a proper product review of the 12mm, i recommend the following excellent reviews:

i basically have made my decision to purchase the 12mm based on the above reviews. so, there is really no point for me to repeat what have been said. even if i did try, i wouldn’t have come up with a review as good as they have done. but you should know that my lens is different from theirs because mine is an actual production unit. i was told issues identified by the above reviewers have been addressed in the final production units. whether those issues have been completely addressed, i can’t tell because i personally do no have one of those lenses to compare to. besides internal tweaking, you’ll also find my lens has a makeover in branding and an all-black finish. the Noktor branding was used in the above reviewing units while SLR Magic is used in mine and all units that will go on for sale soon.

i am writing about the 12mm because in return of having the privilege to buy the lens in advance of it hitting retail, i have agreed to share video and photo footage i create using it. all photos and videos published here were shot using Panasonic’s GH2 with firmware 1.1.

quick specs on the 12mm:

- it is made for the micro four thirds system

- it is a full manual lens, i.e. it doesn’t autofocus and the aperture has to be manually set on the lens itself

- it has a 35-mm equivalent focal length of 24mm

- aperture values are not recorded by the camera

- it has an all-metal construction

unboxing

i ordered the lens in november after learning about SLR Magic’s testers volunteering program from 43rumors. the lens was supposed to be available end of november. unfortunately, their factory in china had experienced power supply problems resulting in delay of shipment. so i was very excited after getting an unexpected call from SLR Magic on 12th december notifying me my lens was ready to be delivered to me. since i live in hong kong, i suggested going to pickup from their office instead – SLR Magic is a hong kong company, so that i could get hold of it asap. i didn’t get to visit their office. instead, Andrew Chan, product manager of SLR Magic, met me at a mall near their office to deliver the lens to me in person. while we chatted about the lens, he suddenly pulled a nex-5 from his pocket with the just announced HyperPrime 23mm F1.7 for E-mount mounted on it! i was pretty mad at myself for not brining my nex-5n with me. i had the a77 and gh2 with me but not the nex-5n!

getting back to the 12mm. i unboxed the lens at a restaurant nearby immediately after i got it from andrew. below are the unboxing photos:

first night with PANASONIC LUMIX G X VARIO PZ 45-175mm

DSLR, gadgets, Lens, Photography, Review No Responses »

Oct 012011

finally the 45-175mm lumix g x vario pz had arrived hong kong this week. i picked up one from panasonic’s showroom in sogo last night. i was so anxious to try out the lens, i had brought my two gh2 bodies with me to the shop so that i could do some quick comparisons on the spot.

despite having owned two gh2 bodies for a while, i have had only one mft lens until last night – the 14-140mm hd kit lens. for previous works that had required two cameras, i mounted one of my sony alpha lenses on either one of them (usually the carl zeiss 24-70mm) with the other using the 14-140mm. i had been reluctant to invest in mft lenses because i use the gh2 almost exclusively for video works. until panasonic’s recent release of new firmware for 7 of its existing lenses to make them more video friendly (they might be quieter now but i doubt they are any more faster than they had been shipped out of factory), the 14-140mm was the only auto-focus lens optimized for video (by panasonic). but still, none of them has powered zoom (something nice to have especially when shooting handheld).

below is the test video i took with the 45-175mm mounted on my gh2 with official firmware and the 14-140mm mounted on my other gh2 with hacked firmware:

while shooting video the first time with the 45-175mm, i thought i could probably make use of a faster zoom. the zoom felt really slow. when viewing the footage on the computer afterwards, the zooming looked much “faster” and “natural” than i had felt at the time of shooting.

to test the effectiveness of the new power o.i.s. for photos, i took the following two photos using the widest end of the zoom (i.e. 90mm 35mm-equivalent) and the longest end (i.e. 350mm) respectively from the same spot without any support:

shutter speed used for the zoomed photo was 1/13s – that’s like 4 stops below the safe shutter speed of 1/320s. not bad for indoor available light condition.

from what i’ve tried out last night, the new power o.i.s. is much more effective than the “old” mega o.i.s. in stabilizing both stills and videos. i think panny is going to update the 14-140mm very soon with at least power o.i.s.

besides the improved performance, i really like the size of the new lens. it’s overall length doesn’t change during the whole zoom range (like the canon 100-400L i used to have). i know 3.8 times is not a lot in zoom range. but still it got a 35mm equivalent of 90mm to 350mm. when attached to the gh2, the overall length of the body plus the lens is about the height of my sony alpha 70-300mm lens when it is at its shortest.

all in all, the 45-175mm lumix g x is not just tiny but delivers improved performance over the 14-140mm lens. it makes a very discrete long-reaching lens – perfect for street photography. i think i will be using it a lot more for photos than i used to with the 14-140mm. for photos that doesn’t need long reach, i will continue to use my sony nex-5n and the 18-55mm kit lens. meantime, i am waiting for the arrival of the 14-42mm lumix g x lens.

NEX-5N vs GH2 vs HX9V: part i

Review, Video 1 Response »

Sep 172011

i’ve been wanting to compare the video quality of my newly acquired Sony NEX-5N against my hacked Panasonic GH2 and Sony DSC-HX9V since i took delivery of the NEX-5N more than a week ago. i finally got the chance yesterday to spend an afternoon at disneyland hong kong to do that. i shot plenty of footage with the three cameras. my first attempt to shot a scene using the three cameras in turn was the parade. i tried to shoot with my left hand holding the GH2 on a monopod set taller than myself while my right hand was holding the NEX-5N. it wasn’t very successful because i simply couldn’t keep the monopod still while trying to frame the NEX-5N through the EVF (the sun was too bright for the LCD Liveview). i therefore ended up with most of the parade shot using just the GH2.

on a side note, i noticed at one point in the parade (when i had lowered the monopod to checkout the GH2 – lucky i did) that the GH2 had stopped recording. i tried to review the last recorded video but it said it’s an invalid format. i turned off the camera and turned it on again to resume recording. i was pretty sure i had lost the footage. when i returned home i gladly found out that not only the file had not gone missing, it was playable. file size of the video is over 4gb though. so i suspect the camera stopped recording because it had hit the 4gb limit. but this doesn’t make sense because AVCHD is supposed to be not subject to the 4gb limit. in the past, before i had the firmware hacked, i’ve had many recordings over 4gb. anyway, i will explore on this later.

i managed to record a few other outdoor scenes using the three cameras. i will be posting them in the coming days.

meantime, i have put together two clips i shot during the musical show “The Golden Mickeys”.

“The Golden Mickeys Song” shot with NEX-5N and GH2:

footage straight out of the camera were used to make these clips. i didn’t bother to record the sound separately but i did use an external microphone on the GH2 (just because it was already there and i didn’t bother to remove it). the microphone used is Sony’s ECM-ALST1 (which i had bought for A55V).

normally i would try to remove all too obvious hand shaking footage like zooming. but i have kept them in these clips because i wanna demonstrate what a difference the powered zoom of HX9V makes and the auto focusing capability of the video optimized kit lenses. the 18-55mm and 14-140mm kit lenses were used on the NEX-5N and GH2 respectively. while i was pulling out the monopod out of my backpack, a staff came up and told me politely that tripods are not allowed (although strictly speaking mine wasn’t a tripod). so i guess these clips really put the image stabilizer into test.

“You’ve Got a Friend in Me” shot with NEX-5N, GH2 and HX9V:

shutter priority mode (with shutter set at 1/50th) and auto ISO were used for both the NEX-5N and GH2.

Nano Knockoffs

Apple, Digital Music, iPod Nano, Mac, Music, Review No Responses »

Oct 012007

While shopping for accessories for my new Nano last Saturday night, I stumbled on a knockoff on the new Nano. The look of it is almost identical to the real one and it even got a pink one which looks almost identical to my red one. And it even comes with more choices of memory configurations than Apple offers. It has sizes of 1GB, 2GB, 4GB and 8GB.

Apple 3rd Gen iPod Nano in Action and Review

Digital Music, iPod Nano, Mac, Music, Review No Responses »

Oct 012007

I think you will agree with me after watching my “in Action” videos below that the 3rd Gen Nano is the best ultra-portable entertainment device on the market now. It gives you hours of entertainment in the form of music, videos, photos and games in an unbelievably small package. Not only do the functions perform smoothly and flawlessly, their implementations are elegant and intuitive. But before getting on with the “in Action” videos, let’s see how the music video of Feist’s 1234 looks on my Nano: