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The Gini’s iFocus has now been out for quite a few months.  When it first came out I saw a review on another website and I bought it 10 minutes later, the review has totally sold it to me. Now, 2 months or so later I managed to get around to my own review of this unit. If watched the video above, you’ll know my initial thoughts. I filmed that video about a month ago and by now I’ve used the iFocus quite a few times. So let me go through all the point in the video with my updated view on them.

First of all, the unit is so nicely built. It’s very solid, quite heavy and feels really nice. This is my 4th FF by now and it is certainly the most professional, high-end looking out of 4, although Trusmt FF also looks and feels really cool.

Looks and feel are important, but to me and probably most of you the performance is the most important thing in a Follow Focus. Considering the price of this FF is certainly doesn’t disappoint. It is slightly cheaper (only slightly due to Gini’s high postage costs) than my Trusmt and Camtree, but the performance- wise is it the same if not better than the other 2. The focusing knob is large and feels very good in the hand. The gearbox is one of the best at this price range, but it still has some play, which is a shame. The other reviewer claimed his didn’t have any play at all and this is the reason why I got mine. I wonder if it just my copy that has play or is it just how this gearbox performs.

One of very unusually things about this follow focus is that it is mounted to just one rod.  Initially I was concerned that due to its weight the unit would move out of position, but after using it for a few times I didn’t experience any problems at all, so no problems there; this cool design actually works.

As mentioned in the video, the gear box can be reversed and I did have to reverse it for my needs. It took a few minutes and was not very difficult, so this is a very nice feature on this unit.  Again great design that makes sense and works.

It is a shame though that the actual gear can’t be swapped from one side of the gearbox to another as I was unable to use the ifocus on the left side of the rig with smaller lenses like 28mm/50mm.  The unit digs into the camera while the focus gear is stays to far away. The only thing to do is to fit the FF to the right side of the rig, which some of you probably do anyway, but I usually have mine on the left and for me it is a bit of a problem.

Few other points: The pointer is not movable, but for me it is not a big deal. I couldn’t take off the marking disc, which is again is not a big deal. The marking disc itself is very large; great for setting a lot of precise marks.

Overall the unit is great, definitely worth the money.  If you are about to buy your first FF, you should take a very good look at this unit. However, if you already have one of the decent budget FFs it might not be worth the upgrade.  

Nevertheless,  apart for a few slight downsides it is still one of the best budget FFs and one of my favorite too. 

_ I don’t usually use Nikon lenses, because I prefer to keep my setup clear, especially when using a follow focus, which I use a lot. Nikon and Canon lenses focus in different direction and to me it is confusing when trying to focus quickly and precisely , so I usually use lenses that focus anticlockwise from foreground to infinity, unlike Nikon which focus clockwise.

Saying that, I still decided to get hold of a decent Nikon lens to see what the whole fuss is about.

Well, to start with, the lens is really nicely built.  Weird thing is that my lens doesn’t look the same as all the other Nikon 50mm f/1.4s I found on internet. My one has 3 lines on the focus ring, just like Nikon 50mm 1.2 and unlike all the other 50mm f/1.4s I’ve seen, which have 2 (see the pictures below). Very weird, if someone could demystify this, that would be great.  My 50mm actually looks nicer than the other Nikon 50mm f/1.4s I found (not in my picture though, so I’m not 100% the build quality and the optics are exactly the same. If I had too much money I would buy another 50mm and compare them, but I’ll just go with the copy I have. The focus ring on this lens feels really nice, it is smooth and easy to turn, but not loose.

_Optically this lens is really nice, at least from my first little test I’ve done. Images are sharp, great contrast and colors. Bokeh is also one as would be expected from a f/1.4 lens.  I decided to use it in a low light situation, with a combination of a small LED light on top of the camera. By no means this was a scientific test, just sort of real like user experience and I did enjoy filming with this lens a lot. I might do another a bit calmer test video for this lens with a bit more emphases on resolution and it’s performance in natural lighting or external evening street lighting.

If you are already a Nikon lens user and you don’t have a 50mm yet, this lens is definitely worth looking at.  It is nowhere as cheap as some other lenses I already tested, but it is f/1.4 and it’s Nikon which pushes the price even higher.

At this point I would give it 4.5 out of 5, just because of it’s price, which is not incredible value for money.  Otherwise it would be a 5, especially if you are a Nikon lens user.

If you are going to use it on a Canon DSLR, make sure to buy a decent adapter, because the cheap one I bought on Ebay has play and ruins the good feel of this lens.

We all know DSLRs are incredible Filmmaking tools. But lets not forget, it’s a stills camera, that has the video function, not other way round. To get the best out of it people like myself rig it up with different accessories like a shoulder rig to improve the ergonomics, follow focus to help achieve best focus and this clip on viewfinders to help with shooting in bright daylight, since there is no real EVFs on such cameras. 

Relatively recently third party EVFs started appearing on the marked and a lot of well known filmmakers started caling that these are essential tools for DSLRs and Large Chip Camcorders, so I decided to invest into one. I bought my one second hand on eBay. It was sent to me from US, so with customs charges I ended up paying about £450 which is no exactly a bargain, not really the cheapest monitoring option for a budget filmmaker, but on the paper it sounded so good that I couldn’t resist it.  This review is based on Cineroid performance with Canon 5D mark II, so some points will not apply to other cameras due to 5Ds poor HDMI output.

Let me start with the good points, the reason I bought it.

I really hate how most of the budget monitors show the image out of the 5D ones you press record button. The resolution drops and images stretches out, creating an ugly image. This is the main reason why I never invested in a liliput monitor. I’ve worked with one though and I didn’t enjoy the experience.  Cineroid on other hand handles these problems much better. While resolution still drops, cineroid rescales the image back in to proper ration. And while I only get 480p resolution during recoding, the magnifying loupe helps to get the focusing right.

Another nice feature is the HDMI loopthrough. After being forced to use the liliput monitor on one of the shoots because director needed to see the picture clearly I decided that I need something like Cineroid which will give me a proper image while director can view the image looping through it into something like liliput. I’ve used this feature couple of times and it is one of my favorite things in this Cineroid.

Third reason for buying this evf is ability to put it anywhere, in particular on the side of the camera making the whole setup more ergonomic, just like boadcast camera.  It is great way to use the camera on your shoulder. With an EVF I can have the camera virtually on my shoulder because I don’t have to look at the back of its screen making it much less front heavy than the usually DLSR setup where you offset the camera to the side allowing you to view the screen properly.

I like the flip up feature this evf has.  It is really useful when I want to show the image to the director. The magnets hold the loop well in place, so no problems there.

One of the things I really miss in 5D is the peeking function. Due to it’s large sensor and lenses that create really shallow dept of field focusing can be very difficult especially when focusing on a moving subject.  The peeking function seems to be got sent, but this is actually what brings me to the bad points of this evf. While peeking works fine in 5ds preview mode, once I press record and resolution drops to 480p the evf really struggles to deliver any proper peeking, which is obviously caused by low resolution coming from the camera, This is obviously camera specific, but I didn’t know that before I bought it.  The peeking will probably work just fine on other cameras including Canon’s 7D and bigger cameras like Sony F3, FS100 and Panasonics AF101, but if have a 5D like myself or one of the other Canon DSLRs with a poor HDMI out, then don’t expect to get much out of the peeking function.

One of the other problems I get with my 5D is the unstable performance. Almost 50% of time, when I press record screen goes to black and just stays black. I must then stop the recording and start it again. For some reason when I press it quickly second time always seems to work. This inconsistency is very annoying and now I expect the monitor to freeze every time I press record, not good at all.

Before I bought Cineroid, I would read about how it is essential for DSLRS and large chip cameras because their monitors and evfs are really bad quality. Well let me tell you something, Cineroid display is actually very poor quality comparing to my 5D display. It’s not just about the resolution, more importantly, the color reproduction is very poor and judging the exposure accurately from Cineroid's image alone is virtually impossible. When I switch it off and look at the 5D display,  The picture looks very different and the picture out of 5D is so much more accurate. Such quality would be an acceptable for cheap Liliput, but not for a £560 (new) evf. I've tested my Cineroid against a Zacuto EVF on one of the shoots a few months ago and Zacuto has much better screen quality, both color and exposure wise.

Few more bad point I found, are: The display image sort of refreshes when there is a lot of movement in the frame making this weird wave running across the screen.  The menus are quite fiddly and if you try to customize the evf for you particular needs you get  the glitches with software all the time.  It is a shame that there seems to be no way all to upgrade the firmware, so whatever problems are there, they can’t be fixed.

My conclusion to this review is that this evf is really not worth the money you have to pay for it.  If it was half the price, I would give it 4 stars, but at this price it going to be 2 out of 5 and I would not recommend this accessory to a budget filmmaker.
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_ It is time for my second test so far. This I quickly tested 4 very cheap 200mm primes, all 4 in very easily adaptable M42 mount.  200mm is a nice long focal length for video, anything longer and camera starts go become very shaky, so for the long shots 200mm is one of the best choices. Back in a day, 200mm along was found any every big camera manufacturer’s range.  There are so many 200s out there. I have bought about 10 myself for my research. They are very easy to get hold of and most are very cheap. Like I mentioned in my previous post, old photo lenses have some great advantages over the modern EF lenses, but at the end of the day the optical quality matters the most.

Well, I tested the first 4 and I’m not crazy about the results. I shot everything on a very dull, humid, hazy day, which didn’t help the contrast and colours. Everything was shot with a neutral profile and all footage is ungraded.

Let’s look at the results of each lens.:

Hanimar 200mm f/3.5.  This a well built lens, with a nice focusing ring, but optically it is very poor, not only the contrast and colours are not impressive, but the sharpens is also very poor with loads of CA. I bought it for only £10, so if you only have £10 to spend and you don’t have anything in this range, it might be better than nothing at all, but there are better lenses out there that can be bought for around £10, so for me this lens scores 2 out of 5.

Chinon 200mm f/3.5. Quite a decent lens, well build, has inbuilt adjustable hood. Nicest looking lens out of 4.  Optically for me it is also the best. Best clarity, contrast and colours, sharpness is decent too. Still looks quite washed out, but I believe that is due to the weather conditions.  This lens assembled in the same was as Nikon lenses. It focuses in the same direction and aperture is adjusted in opposite direction from another 3 lenses. This could be great if you are a Nikon lens user, but for me,  this sort of construction doesn’t really work, especially when using follow focus. I paid less than £10 for my one, but average price on eBay is slightly higher, still well worth the money though. I would give this lens 4 out of 5

Optimax 200mm f/3.5. Very similar to the Chinon above. Similar build quality, also with the lens hood, but it’s quite loose and the aperture blades are stuck and only close a little, which is a problem with my particular copy, should not apply to every Optimax 200mm out there. Optically it is also very similar to Chinon, just a touch darker.  Overall good alternative to Chinon, but due to the problems with my particular copy I would only score it 3 out of 5.

Prinzgalaxy 200mm f/4.5.  This lens is very deferent from the other 3. First of all it is much slower at f/4.5. The lens also looks deferent and has deferent construction. The good points of this lens are: the fluid aperture adjustment, great fox fine-tuning exposure during the recording (just like on Cine-lenses) and 16 blade aperture. Unfortunately all of that makes little sense with this lens, firstly because this is very, very stiff; both focusing and aperture adjustment requires a lot of effort, which means you can’t really easily fine-tune anything. The 16 blade aperture also makes little sense since this lens is so slow that you probably wouldn’t close the aperture too often to take advantage of all these blades.  The problems don’t end the, optically it is also quite poor, very low contrast, in result washed out colours too. Sharpness is ok, but overall, this lens is not really worth looking at, considering that it costs about the same as the other 3. I give it 1 out 5. Unless you can pick one up for no more than £5, I wouldn’t recommend buying it.

My conclusion: The 2 lenses that stand out  are Chinon and Optimax, but even they are not brilliant, at least no in this test. I used Chinon on one corporate shoot and it actually performed very well along side Helios 135mm, which in my previous test looked much punchier, so I think the colours and contrast would have been much better in better lighting conditions. 

I think both Chinon and Optimax are worth the money you would pay for them. They are 10 times cheaper than any modern equivalent, but certainly not 10 times worse. I still have at least another 4-5 200mm lenses to test and review including a very exciting Pentax 200mm f/2.5, which is one of the most expensive vintage lenses I bought, but still very cheap comparing to any modern equivalent, so expect another 2-3 videos on 200mm lenses.  Next up though, I will do a quite test of Nikon 50mm f/1.4 and more group test of 28mm and 50mm lenses. If you guys want see any other specific tests, let me know.

I don't need so many 200mm lenses, so I decided that I will give away one of these lenses. I don't want to give away some total rubbish, so I'll give away the Chinon 200mm f/3.5, probably the best lens out of 4. I will soon announce how to win this lens, it is going to be something very simple, so make sure that you follow me either on YouTube or Tweeter to make sure you don't miss the announcement and rules.
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