Posts tagged: ikonoskop
A couple of weeks ago we used the dII on a shoot that looked up front a bit a-typical for an 80MB/s kind of camera. Six interviews, somewhere between 15-30 minutes an interview, to be intercut.
Ideal opportunity to test out some new stuff:
- Canon 8-64mm S16 Zoom
- Vocas Rig
- Alphatron HD-SDI viewfinder
- Recording audio on-board of the dII
The Canon 8-64mm S16 Zoom is a marvelous lens, that has been used extensively for documentaries and independent feature films. It’s a very robust lens, very sharp, widest aperture 2.4, but it’s quite big (as big and heavy as the camera). From widest to closest zoom, it loses a bit of its focus.
To use a zoom like that, hand-held, you need a decent rig. At the Ikonoskop booth at IBC, I was able to test several rigs and set-ups for the dII. My favourite, by far, is the one from Vocas. Very light, compact, sturdy and high-quality (the leather handles are sublime). And I especially like the MFC-1 Follow Focus. It’s so compact and the gear wheel being underneath the lens is actually very clever and makes it work with all kinds of lenses no matter what mount (before the MFC-1, I used a Lanparte Follow Focus, big and heavy, but impossible to use in combination with, for instance, Zeiss Distagons mkI with 80mm fronts and the IMS-PL mount - it was just too clunky).
In the picture the shoulder pad and weight were only used for balance. Normally the shoulder pad has to be mounted a lot closer to the camera.
The DP in the picture is rather tall. To go easy on his back and because peeping down the built-in viewfinder all day can get quite hard on your right eye (using your left eye on the dII viewfinder is impossible, or you’d have to chop off your right cheek bone or something), we decided on using the all new Alphatron HD-SDI viewfinder (EVF-035W-3G).
This is such a nice combination with the Ikonoskop. Nice resolution, with false colour and focus assist. Worked all day on a single Sony battery (you can use the same type as on the Ikonoskop).
For the first time now, we recorded the audio on the Ikonoskop instead of a recorder like the Sound Devices 702T. Not a single issue there. The audio was stripped from the DNG’s using Ikonoskop’s Audio Tool and automatically synced with the footage in Resolve.
And yes. This job was conformed and graded with Blackmagic’s DaVinci Resolve 9. What happened to CineForm and SpeedGrade you might ask. I’ll come back to this.
Last July, the guys at Ikonoskop asked me if I’d be interested in becoming a distributor for Ikonoskop in the BeNeLux region. I thought long and hard about this and finally accepted.
You probably already noticed that I’m quite passionate about the camera and the company that’s making it. And I’ve been a supporter right from the start of this blog, otherwise I wouldn’t have called it “My Ikonoskop A-cam dII” (there’s actually alot of context in that title :-). But I’m really not much of a salesman.
I do like helping people understand the camera as much as possible and show them how to get the best results, though. And that’s what I plan on continuing to do. If along the way some of you get convinced that this is the camera for you, I’ll be glad to help you get one.
So that’s why you now find a link to a sales page on this blog. There are no surprises regarding offer or prices, although I do offer an interesting expansion pack if you decide to buy a Start Kit.
Anyway. I’ve sold by now a first camera to a most enjoyable Swiss filmmaker, Mr. Gilles Vuissoz. Gilles has been renting my Ikonoskop during a period of almost half a year now and like many others has fallen in love with the sheer simplicity of its design and usability. Gilles actually just perfectly fits the profile of the type of filmmaker this camera was made for, because he has spent most of his filming career as a DoP on 16mm.
But what’s really amazing about this first sale, is that it concerns a Panchromatic.
Gilles has been filming for many years now for a Swiss association called Plans Fixes. They have been making portraits of famous people from the Swiss cultural world on black and white 16mm film, since 1977.
And now, after 35 years, they have decided to go digital and have chosen the Ikonoskop A-cam dII Panchromatic as the ideal camera to continue building their wonderful collection of black and white memories of great minds.
I wish Gilles and his Panchro a wonderful collaboration that hopefully lasts another 35 years.
When I pre-ordered back in 2008 I didn’t have alot of lenses lying about (I still don’t), so I had to think about which mount I wanted on the dII. At the time Ikonoskop offered a PL-mount, C-mount and IMS-mount. There was even mention of a Leica-M-mount in the beginning.
The IMS-mount didn’t exactly ring a bell and there was no mention of the price tag on all of its adapters, so at the time I thought it wise to decide on one of the more known mounts. Considering my requirement for an inobtrusive light-weight camera and my knack for experimentation I settled upon the C-mount.
C-mount is a small mount with a thread of 25.4mm (1 inch) diameter and 32 threads per inch. Its flange focal distance is 17.5mm. You’ll find lenses with a C-mount mostly for use with 16mm film, for industrial use (Machine Vision) and for closed-circuit TV systems. That means a wide range of old movie lenses, high precision industrial glass and cheap CCTV zooms.
Some people say it’s too delicate a mount if you regularly and quickly need to change lenses, that the threads wear to easily. I suppose that depends on the quality of the material that was used to fabricate the mount and the nature of the person changing the lenses. For myself, I don’t really anticipate many problems.
The first thing I tried upon receiving the camera was mount it with a C-mount to Nikon F-mount adapter (that I bought a couple of years ago on eBay), to take some shots with a Nikkor AF-S 18-200mm (see footage below). Completely stretched out the lens is as long as the camera and it weighs almost as much. But the mount didn’t feel that delicate. But I wouldn’t advice using these modern digital DSLR lenses (as the Nikkor mentioned above) if you want to control your aperture ;-)
But what if I suddenly would like to work with PL-lenses?
I must admit that if I had to make that choice today I’d probably go for the IMS-mount with a C- and PL-adapter. Not that I can’t make that choice in the future. I can already use a C-to-PL adapter or I have the option to let Ikonoskop switch the front of the camera from C-mount to IMS-mount and this at a reasonable cost.
Fortunately new buyers don’t have to take that decision anymore, Ikonoskop seems to have done it for you. If you buy the dII today, it apparently comes with the IMS-mount (unconfirmed if you can still choose other mounts). But you still need to choose an adapter ;-)
Which one?
Within a week after visiting the Ikonoskop website for the first time in September 2008, I decided that this was/is the camera for me and pre-ordered it. I didn’t know at the time that it would take another three years until it’s delivery, but that’s another story.
But how did I know? What was I looking for?
- I do not care for the resolution war that was and is still raging. I believe in 1080p as I still believe in 16mm.
- What I’ll make with this camera will almost always be viewed on television screens and monitors. But still, when transferred to film, I believe RAW 1080p is up to the task in most theaters.
- I want an inobtrusive light-weight camera, that I can mount with all sorts of lenses. It has to be ergonomic and robust.
- But most of all. I want some timelessness (blasphemy in this digital age) regarding the format of my footage. Sourcefiles that are not hindered by changes in encoders and decoders and that do not suffer from any kind of lossiness due to compression (and in the mean time can be rendered to all kinds of compressed formats untill, one day we won’t need any compression anymore).
In short: I want digital negatives!
I’ve found this in Ikonoskop and their A-cam dII. Are you a believer?
