__ It has been a long time since my last post on the website. In the background though I’ve been doing a lot of research and buying quite a lot of vintage lenses for my own use and for my vintage lens guide.

So I finally got around to doing the first quick test of the few lenses I recently acquired. This is a test of 4 135mm lenses, all in m42 mount, very easily adaptable to any modern DSLR. 135mm lenses are virtually non existent in modern lens world, but back in a day, they used to be popular, so there are many of them out there, over 30 that I know of. I now have around 10 myself, so this is something that I would like to call part 1 as there will be at least one more or quite possibly a few more 135mm lens orientated tests.

I really like 135mm. The first I bought was Helios 135mm f/2.8, which I really like (more about it below). 135mm f/2.8 makes a nice, quite fast 200mm on a 1.5x crop camera like the lovely Sony Nex 5N and on 4/3 camera this becomes a 270mm 2.8, pretty incredible for the price you will pay for such lens. I’m more than happy using such lens as a 135mm on my 5D too, still pulls in the subject quite a lot.

All 4 of the lenses in this test can be picked up on eBay for around £5-£30 depending on your luck, sellers description, type of listing and condition. Some are sold in larger quantities than others, not to say that the rarer ones are the better ones.

I’ll go through every lens separately and talk about pros, cons and my opinion on each of them. I’ve made the video above to go with the write-up, so you guys can take a look at the images these lenses produce and make up your own mind them.

The closest lens that I could compare these to is my Canon 100mm f/2.8 Micro, which is a very nice, very sharp lens, but not great for video for one reason, the focusing ring has such a short through it’s virtually impossible to keep the moving subject constantly in focus. Every little adjustment on the lens shifts the focus significantly. The other problem that Canon EF lenses have, or something that they don’t have, are the hard stops, The lenses spin past the end focusing range and this can mess up the focus marks on a follow focus, if you use one.

So lets start:

HELIOS 135mm f/2.8. Like as said above, this was one of the first vintage lenses I bought and actually the one that I ended up using the most along side my Canon EF. Unlike the 100mm, this old Russian lens has very nice, long through focusing ring that really allows me to fine-tune the focusing very precisely. As I said in one of my previous posts these lenses remind me of Cine lenses. Well build, long through focus, aperture adjustment on the lens, on some lenses it is even fluid like on Cine lenses, so to me these are little budget cine-lenses, so much more suitable for video work and manual focusing than modern EF lenses. This applies to most vintage photo lenses, not just this Helios. These were made for manual focusing, so that is what they do best.
The build quality of Helios 135mm is lovely, but what about the optical quality. Well, for the amount of money I’ve paid for it ( about £15), the image quality is pretty amassing. I felt confident enough to use this lens on a few corporate jobs and even on a greens screen music video. Let me tell you, the images it produced were very crisp, with lovely colours and contrast.  You can see in the video, how it performs comparing to the others. One of the best out of 4 for sure.
One of the downside I’ve noticed in these vintage lenses, including this Helios, is a visible amount of CA (chromatic aberration), which is especially evident on silver wind chimes on the left of the frame. CA is not evident in every situation, but should be noted as a downside, although it is not uncommon in modern day lenses and can also be found in cheaper modern lenses too, so don’t let this put you of and look at more expensive, low-end modern alternatives in hope of better image quality; it is not always the case and paying more doesn't always mean better quality, which is what these test the my lens guide will be all about.
Another little downside of Helios 135mm for some might be a 6 blade aperture which produces polygonal bokeh when the lens is stepped down, the bokeh is also much fussier than on some other lenses, which is not necessary a bad thing. Smooth like butter Bokeh might not always be the best thing, depending on what you are trying to capture and the feel you are going for. I personally didn’t have any problems with the lens. The overall look of the images matches the my other, modern lenses really well.  Will definitely be taking a closer look at this lens and will do more test videos with it.
At the moment I would give this lens overall score of 4 out of 5.

PROMURA 135mm f/2.8. Not so impressed with this lens. While colours and contras are similar to Helios, the sharpness is nowhere as soon.  Another downside is that the lens only focuses to 2.5m, which in not really acceptable considering that 3 others focused to my foreground object without any problems.  Promura has a 6 blade aperture same as Helios and CA is similar to Helios too.
The lens is made in Japan, but you wouldn’t say that by it’s optical quality. It is nicely build, no plastic parts that are usually found in modern lenses, but the focus ring is little stiff and the focusing through is very short comparing to the other 3. 
I’ve paid £10 for mine and even at this price I would only give this lens 2 out 5, there are just to many other 135s that are much better.  Time to stick it back on eBay. :) The only weird thing, all the other Promura 135s I found on eBay at the time of writing a completely different, so please note, that my conclusion only applies to this particular design.

CHINON 135mm f/2.8. This lens has very obvious low contrast and washed out colours. Sharpness is quite good, but CA is really evident even though the lens is Multi Coated which is suppose to cut down the CA.  The images captured through this lens looked like something shot on flat picture profile.  Contrast can obliviously be added in post production (I tried and it looks fine), but I think it should really look as good as possible straight out of the camera. Since the lens is not really cheaper than the others (I paid £10 for mine), I see no excuse for such low contrast.
The build quality is good. The focus ring is actually the nicest one of 4, very smooth and focuses easily. There is also an inbuilt, adjustable lens hood. The lens is made in Japan.
This is not the only Chinon 135mm available. Most of Chinon 135s I found on eBay at the time of writing are actually different from this one. I’ll try to buy one of them cheap and see what the image quality is like.  I suspect it might be different, so I wouldn’t judge  of all Chinon 135s by this copy, but this particular copy only scores 3 out of 5 in this test.

Dollonds 135mm f/3.5.  At f/3.5 this is the slowest lens out of the lot, but in some ways the nicest. It is the smallest, lightest lens, which straight away makes it very suitable for smaller cameras like Mirrorless 4/3 cameras and Sony’s NEX range. I recently bought the NEX 5N and this lens will probably look the most organic out of 4 on such camera. There are a few more advantages this lens over other 3 lenses, which are:
The fluid aperture adjustment (no clicks), which is great for fine-tuning the exposure just like on Cine lenses. A lot of people de-click  they photo lenses to archive such adjustment ability .  There is a second ring, that lets you adjust the aperture in stops/clicks.
The other nice advantage over the 3 other lenses is the 15 blade aperture. That is really nice and creates round, soft bokeh. There is some CA in this lens, but actually much more pleasant and unnotisable reddish colour rather than slightly annoying blue ghosting found on other 3.
So while the lens is slowest, in some ways it is the best. The lens is made in Japan, nicely build like the other 3. I paid £14 for mine which is still very cheap, the lens is well worth the money I paid.  I give it a strong 4 out of 5. If it was f/2.8 it would be 5/5.  The only bad thing, this lens is quite rare and at the time of writing there are none found on eBay.

My Conclusion: The 2 that stood out to me are Helios and Dollonds, very different but both nice in their own way. The Helios is always available is a good investment, no matter what camera you have. If you can find Dollonds and you are using something like 5N which has excellent low light performance, then this a great choice, even though it is f/3.5.
This is just the first test video. There will be more 135mm test and possibly dedicated longer test videos of Helios and Dollonds. Other than that I will be doing many more tests and my aim is to test around 100 manual lenses, so check back soon for more test. Next one will be: 4x cheap 200mm going head to head, so see you in the next post.

I’ve been doing my usual research, seeing what my favourite sellers have available and came across the new Trusmt DSLR Kit.
Trusmt is one of my favorite budget brands. They produce some great value for money film-making equipment, a lot of really innovative stuff, including their own newly released EVF, so the company is really worth watching, especially that prices seem to be coming down even further.

So back to the DSLR kit, the word “luxury” used in eBay listing name sums the kit pretty well. This is a really high-end looking kit comprised of all the best individual Trusmt filmmaking equipment with some additional stuff that connects it all together.
What really caught my eye is how well this thing is designed/put together. I like how the shoulder pad can be moved back and forth without affecting any other rods and that it can be tucked in just above the lovely, large quick release plate, allowing it to stay on while camera is on tripod. With my current setup, I always have to take the shoulder pad of to be able to use the camera on tripod, it just sticks out too much at the back. Trusmt setup potentially eliminates the need to take off handles and shoulder pad every time you move between hand-held and tripod. Great time-saver and time is money.

The large V3 plate (usually used on larger/broadcast cameras) is a great way to spread out the weight and balance the camera against the weight at the back of the setup, so if the camera is too front heavy, the whole base plate can be moved back on the tripod to bring the weight back to the centre of tripod. A DSLR itself is a light camera, but when you rig it up with rods, follow focus, matte box, it can get really front heavy, which is very annoying to use on tripod, unless I hold the tripod handle or lock it down. I really like the potential the V3 can give. It is probably the nicest quick release plate currently available on eBay and while the price seem to be a bit steep, but as mentioned above, these base plate are primarily designed for high-end professional cameras and have more complicated/advanced design., so it can be expected to be quite a bit more expensive than the basic, DSLR base plates.

You you’re a DSLR user, like myself, I would recommend V3 Base Plate & Shoulder Pad with Extra Rods, with 5D/DSLR mount on the top. Virtually the same price, much more stuff for the money. Want to get want of them myself, so might review it soon.

Saying that, if you just started with your DSLR filmmaking and haven’t bought anything fro it yet,  buying the whole DSLR kit might actually work out quite a bit cheaper, considering that you get everything mentioned above, plus, Trusmt Follow Focus, Swing-away Matte Box, Cool Handles, Power Supply and loads of other bits which individually would cost a fortune to buy even from Trusmt, I’m not even gonna go into how much would such setup cost from likes of Zacuto or Redrock, way out of budget filmmaking bracket.

Back in a day when I used to do photography only, I wouldn’t touch anything other than Canon EF lenses, L series whenever possible. The only non-Canon lens I had and still have is my lovely Sigma 15mm fisheye.  When I first started using DSLRs for video, the only additional lens I bought was Canon 24-105mm L, great lens, but quite expensive.  Only recently I started looking into other lenses for video. Canon EF lenses, while really sharp, are not the best lenses for video. They are made for fast auto focusing, so manual focusing is difficult on these lenses, some like my 100mm f/2.8 has such a short focus throw, it is almost impossible to focus on a moving subject without constantly loosing focus.  EF lenses also have no hard stops, which can be a problem when using a follow focus with focusing marks. Lens will keep turning even once to reach the focusing limit, which will result in all focusing marks shifting out of place. 

This are the problems that will not be found in high-end cine lenses. However I don’t have money for cine lenses, so I started to look into what is available beyond Canon EF.

 The first lens I bought specially for video work was a Samyang 35mm f/1.4. Amassing lens, sharp, fast, well built, longer focusing throw and hard stops. Since I only focus manually in video work, absence of autofocus doesn’t bother me.  Since I bought Samyang, I started to thinking about the possibility of using vintage, manual focus lenses, which in theory would have same lovely features that Samyang has, but at even a lower price. I have to say I was skeptical about buying a proper vintage lens. I knew a lot of people were using vintage Nikon primes, so I figured they must be good enough. However I decided not to invest into old Nikon primes, because Nikon lenses focus in different direction (can be very confusing when focusing, especially with a follow focus). Also the prices for Nikon primes  gone up due to their popularity.

Canon FDs can’t be used on Canon DSLRs, so they were out for time being too.  I decided to just buy something cheap to try it out on my 5D and see if I want to invest any more money into such lenses. I went to a carboot sale and picked up 2 cheap lenses: Pentacon 29mm f/2.8 and Helios 58mm f/2. Each cost me around £3-£5, which is absolutely amassing price for any lens really. Even on eBay these 2 can be bough/won for around £10-£30, still quite amazing comparing to Canon L and even the Samyang. These lenses are quite fast (quite a bit faster than my much loved £700 Canon 24-105 f/4) and are really compact, which in most cases a good thing. The built quality is all metal,  so much better than quite a lot of plasticky Canon lenses. Same as Samyang they have longer, smoother focusing through, hard stops and aperture adjustment on the lens, just like proper cine lenses.

To me they are in fact like very low budget cine lenses. Very Low Budget doesn’t mean they are bad though. I picked up a cheap M42 to EF adapter on eBay stuck these lenses on my 5D. To my amassment they actually worked beautifully, no vignetting, focusing issues even though the full frame 5D MKII is the most incompatible DSLR camera for vintage lenses. Here is the useful 5D compatibility list for M42 mount lenses. Before anyone starts to question the optical quality of these lenses, I want to say that I haven’t used them 2 on any proper shoots yet, but I will start filming some test footage with every lens I buy (at such price, I will buy a lot of them) so you guys will be able to see the result and judge the optical quality yourself. 

Even though I haven’t tested these lenses properly in real life shoot, even from looking through the camera, I can safely say that for £5 that I paid for them, the quality is amazing, both built and optical. I used to have old Manual Praktica camera with a set of Pentacon primes including the 28mm and I remember how much a loved the pictures shot on the camera with this lenses.

From my very little research I found out that  my Helios 44M 58mm is actually a Zeiss Biotar 58mm f/2 Copy. The lens optics were based on Zeiss formulas, so these lenses are apparently very sharp, considering you get a good copy. Read a full article on this lens here. After reading it myself, I feel like I got the biggest lens bargain ever. Carl Zeiss quality for £3? That is the best kept secret in budget filmmaking world, or was I just living on a different “Canon-Only” planet? Anyway, if you didn’t know about this lens, now you know, so don’t hesitate even for a second to get one, at £10-£20 what have you got to loose? In worst case scenario you can sell it back on eBay.

I’ve very excited about all the incredibly cheap vintage lenses out there and my journey of discovery starts with this post. As mentioned above, I will test, review, shoot test footage with as many cheap lenses as I can afford to buy. I guess if I sell one Canon L, I could but around 50-100 Lenses :D

All of my research will hopefully end up as a very comprehensive  vintage lens guile for DSLR video. I already bought/won quite a few lenses on eBay (more about them in one of my next posts), so expect a lot of new vintage-lens-based content appearing on the website soon.

I know a lot of people are still very skeptical about vintage lenses unless they are Zeiss or Nikon.
What do you think about them? Would be great to know your thoughts and experience with vintage lenses if any.

This is one really cool matte box. I really don't think there is anything better value for money out there for under £300/$500. It's still not the same as high end MBs costing £1000 and more, but for the money you do get plenty of features, including a swing-away arm, 2 rotating 4x4 filter holders, carbon fiber flags, so really nice MB. Will soon do a round up of all best MBs availible on eBay, so will be able to tell how the price will fair up against the competitors.For now, I Highly Recommend it to anyone currently looking to buy a matte box.

Maybe not is my answer to the question above.

Covering new releases is not my thing, there are tons of other blogs for that, so I’m not going to discuss the specs that you probably already know. I was really looking forward to see what Canon will bring out on 03.11.11, because like a lot of indie filmmakers currently using Canon DSLRs, I was really hoping to see Canon’s answer to Sony FS100 and Panasonic AF101. I have to say, to my great disappointment Canon released a camcorder, that is totally out my price range and for that matter of majority of indie/ low budget filmmakers.  Many tweets and comments on different blogs mirror my opinion. People knew it won’t be 5D MKIII, but many were hoping for a reasonably priced camcorder that would work with Canon EF lenses currently used by many of us. C300 does come with EF mount but at $20k price tag definitely not something I could afford or would even like to spend on my next camera. More than that, C300 doesn’t even look like such a revolutionary camera at this price tag. Canon were promising to make a Historic Global Announcement. I have to say the new C300 is certainly not a Historic camera. It rivals the Sony F3, but nothing more really. Like cheaper F3, C300 will not really be budget filmmakers camera of choice. Majority of people looking to upgrade from a DSLR were looking at either FS100 or AF101. For now I can safely, but sadly say, these are still the only 2 proper camcorders around $5k price tag, the only 2 that can be considered as a reasonable step up from a DSLR. 

But as you may know the camera releases didn’t stop there. RED has finally released their long awaited Scarlet on the same day as Canon. On paper it looks like a really nice camera and actually looks much more like a Historic Camera, than C300. For a camera that shoots 4K and has a lot of features found in $58k EPIC, $10k body only price is seems to be really attractive, in fact almost within reach on indie filmmakers, but add all the essential accessories and will cost more like $20k, still much cheaper than EPIC, but again out of reach for most of us. I’ve never been a massive fan of RED. RED ONE is very expensive, can be slow in operation and not very reliable. Even more expensive EPIC has massive reliability issues too. Philip Bloom owns one and has had problems with it on 2 out of 2 shoots he used it for, not something that is really acceptable from a $58k camera. So at the moment I’m a bit skeptical of what Scarlet will turn out to be. Everyone agrees that C300 will probably be reliable camera straight out of the box, where Scarlet users will probably have to wait for multiple firmware updates to get the best performance out of it.  Saying that, people are very, very exited about the new Scarlet, I’ve seen many very positive & exciting comments/tweets regarding the new Scarlet. A lot of people express their wish to buy it, but I haven’t seen even one comment expressing a wish to buy the C300; like one Tweeter member said, the only person who seems to be excited about the new C300 is Vincent Laforet, understandably so.  The Scarlet will do well for sure, even at $20k this will be the cheapest camera with such features. I really don’t know where C300 will fit in, probably like PB said best place for it is broadcast work along side F3. Unfortunately it won’t be changing the game for anyone.

The only mildly exciting announcement on 3th of November was the development of new Canon DSLR capable of shooting 4K footage. This camera looks very much like 1D X,  which is also one of new cameras, but for me the improvements in 1D X don’t justify the price tag of around $7000. This top of the line Canon camera is primarily designed for professional photographers, so by no means I would say it’s not worth its money, just not for budget videographer. I thing both FS100 and AF101 are much better value for money tools for videographers than 1D X.

Coming back to the new concept DSLR currently being developed (or possibly already developed and in testing), this is going to be much more video orientated than 1D X. Up to 4K resolution, quite possibly introduction of headphones jack, peeking, zebras, video optimized sensor, HD-SDI output, clean HD output and would be nice to stick at least one XLR input into that battery grip. Of course, except for 4K resolution this is just a wish list rather than a fact list. A few reasons why I’m only mildly excited about the announcement:

1: It is going to be as expensive as 1D X or even more, around $7k-$10k, again not 5D MKII price range. That is why people always talking about 5D MKIII, the price range, features for money. Ever since 5D MKI came out it, it was the best value for money stills camera for me; 5D MKII followed the suit, so Canon please just bring out the 5D MKIII already.

2: No idea when this new going to be released, wouldn’t expect Canon to release a $10k camera capable of shooting 4K resolution straight after they released $20k camera capable of shooting only 1080P and just 720p at 60fps. People buying C300 will not be happy to see cheaper DSLR perform better than high-end camcorder. I wouldn’t expect this camera to come out in next 5 months. We might actually see 5D MKII replacement before that.

So all in all, 3th of November wasn’t a historic day for me. Scarlet is the most exciting thing announced for me, but certainly out of my budget. 

The one camera that I’m currently excited about is Sony NEX-5N. That is what I’m calling exciting camera, incredible value for money. Tiny $500 camera with big features including 60fps at 1080p; not even Sony’s F3 or Canons new $20k C300 can do that; crazy! This is the camera that can shoot very cinematic looking videos; it’s compatible with majority of lovely, cheap vintage manual lenses out there and to take the full advantage of manual focusing it even has peeking, something that can’t be found even on latest $7k Canon 1D X. With compatible Sony lenses it will even autofocus in real time, again something that Canon’s new 1D X and even C300 won’t be able to do.

5N can be a great B camera, but it could even be a great A camera if you are shooting something for yourself. Of course if you turn up to a paid gig with a compact looking camera like this, your client will probably freak out, but only because they won't know what quality images this camera produces.  The best thing about this camera, it is affordable to almost anyone, there aren’t really any cheaper video DSLR cameras with APS-C sensor anyway, so if you are looking to spend some money on a video camera, the 5N is the one of best value for money cameras at the moment.  In fact I really want to buy one myself, maybe I will treat myself for Christmas.

I'm happy to welcome  you to the 2nd edition of “eBay Auction Bargains”. This is my weekly post with my latest eBay findings.  Rather than usual “but it now” listings, I will post the auction listings that will finish within this week or so.  I’m a massive fan of eBay and as mentioned before, most of my own kit came from eBay, even my own 5D, so I know how great these actions can be.  From my own experience final price of action listings is usually lower than it is of “buy it now” listings, because a lot of people can’t wait for the end of auction and happy to pay a bit more to have the desired item as soon as they can.  So let me show you what I found today.

Gini keeps listing great BIN deals. In my last to posts, I talked about great prices on the new iFucus and very cheap shoulder rig. Today I found 2 really good BIN listings which include both FF and Rig at a great price, making the deal even better if you are looking to buy both FF and Rig. At such prices, Gini really puts competition out of business. I use my Gini rig all the time and I love it, so I definitely recommend taking a proper look at these rigs if you still haven't got one. If the listing have ended, just see what GINI currently has on offer from their 2 eBay pages (1st rig is ongini778, second is on gini-2011). Most likely that they have listed more of the same of similar deals.

1: DSLR RIG SJ-5 Set is quite simple rig, but has everything to get you started including Gini's new i-Focus Follow Focus, which I ordered last week too.

2: DSLR RIG EXTREME-1700 is full blown rig, with loads of extra bits, including a top handle, magic arm, cage like brackets. Of course it also comes with the ifocus. At $299/£185 it is a great value for money. Just about 3 months ago I paid £300 for a similar Gini rig on it's own.

 DSLR RIG EXTREME-1700 on eBay

 2 days ago I ordered GINI’s new iFocus Follow Focus. I paid $299, but today gini-2011 listed some at just BIN price of $199, $100 cheaper than what I paid :(

There are 6 left at the time of writing. They get snapped up really quickly, around 1 every half an hour, so there is a chance there will be none left by tomorrow, unless they put some more up for the same price, which I think they might, because earlier there were just 2 left out of 7 and now it back up to 6 out of 7.

If you are looking for a decent follow focus at a bargain price,  this might be one of the best deal on eBay at the moment, so go grab it while it’s cheap, or you will end up buying it later for $299 like it did :)

Just noticed some incredibly good value GINI Rigs on eBay. Just $159/£99 for such a nice rig, I have very similar myself, which I originally paid around £300 for, so grab them while you can!

Finally my first edition of “eBay Auction Bargains”. This will be (hopefully) my weekly post with my latest eBay findings.  Rather than usual “but it now” listings, I will only post the auction listings that will finish within a week or so.  I’m a massive fan of eBay and as mentioned before, most of my own kit came from eBay, even my own 5D, so I know how great these actions can be.  From my own experience final price of action listings is usually lower than it is of “buy it now” listings, because a lot of people can’t wait for the end of auction and happy to pay a bit more to have the desired item as soon as they can.  So let me show you what I found today.