Chrosziel has released a device that brings servo capabilities to the Fujinon MK and Zeiss LWZ 3.0 lenses. We went hands on with the Chrosziel Compact Zoom Control Kit  at NAB 2018 and we found that it turns great cine zooms into run and gun ENG shooting machines. Details below:  It’s a common scenario. You buy a great cine zoom and find it excellent in narrative and other controlled environments, but when it comes to the unpredictable world of documentary shoots things start to go downhill. Having to reach for the cine lens zoom ring while taking your hand out of position on the shoulder rig is a recipe for disaster when it comes to following quick unpredictable action. Oh, and forget about zooming and focusing at the same time with a shouldered camera that doesn’t have a servo. Chrosziel has developed a solution. The Chrosziel Compact Zoom Control Kit, powered by D-Tap and controlled through LANC connections, converts your Fujinon MK (18-55 and 50-135mm) or Zeiss LWZ 3.0 lens into something more akin to the pricier 19-90 Fujinon Cabrio or 17-120 Canon, at least in terms of operation. Calibration of the beginning and end points on the zoom ring are automatic once you’ve attached the device to the lens with four included screws. Installation is fast and it takes under a minute to affix the unit to the LWZ 3.0. Especially designed with the FS5 and FS7 in mind, the Zoom control kit has a very low profile and doesn’t extend out from the lens to any great degree. It’s also light — weighing in an slightly over half a pound (0.65lb). I’ve seen attempts to add servo capabilities to cine lenses in the past and they’ve been much bulkier. The Chrosziel team also mentioned at NAB that they are meeting with multiple lens manufacturers in a quest to bring their servo zoom kit to other cine lens brands. At a price point of $1726.00, this is a solution that seems well priced and dramatically expands the capabilities of your existing camera setup. The MK series zoom control kit is currently shipping and the kit for the Zeiss LWZ 3.0 is available for pre-order and shipping soon.  More information on the Chrosziel Compact Zoom Control Kit is HERE.

During my latest visit to Japan I was lucky enough to be the first journalist who was allowed to independently film at SIGMA’s Art and cinema zoom lenses production factory. I hope you will enjoy this short video, as I was trying to make you guys feel as if you were visiting the factory together with me. It was the beginning of March and my request to visit SIGMA’s factory was answered positively. Shinji Yamaki-san at SIGMA was kind enough to pick me up and travel with me to Aizu where SIGMA’s factory is located. The almost four hour journey was extremely enjoyable, as it gave me a chance to talk and get to know Shinji-san, eat the best soba I ever had, while changing trains and witness how the sunny weather in Tokyo was changing to a white snow blanket as we headed north. Together with Kazuto Yamaki-san At arrival, I was greeted by Kazuto Yamaki-san, SIGMA corporation CEO. For those of you who are not familiar with SIGMA’s history, I’d like to mention that Yamaki-san took over the company during the beginning of 2012, after his father – who founded the company during 1961 – had passed away. During the short presentation I got from Yamaki-san before heading to our joint factory tour, he mentioned that SIGMA is currently employing 1600 people, while 1400 of them are working in the factory I’ve visited. As Yamaki-san stated, SIGMA’s biggest asset is its hard working people. Their level of dedication and care for details was clearly visible throughout my two day visit. I’ll leave you with the images I took, but would like to mention again that my respect goes to the people behind manufacturing the equipment we use! A special thank you to Kazuto Yamaki-san and Shinji Yamaki-san for being responsive and welcoming making this tour possible! Please share with us, if you are interested in seeing more “Behind the Scenes” of companies that are part of our filming industry.

The recently announced Fujinon MKX T2.9 cine lenses come with unique features for Fujifilm camera owners. We looked into them more closely … The E-mount versions of these MK lenses have been a big hit with cinematographers. But this is about more than just a simple mount change. When pairing these new cine lenses with Fujifilm X Series cameras, such as the new X-H1, the electrical contacts on the lens pass data to the camera. This allows the the camera to correct lens distortion as well as colour and brightness shading. Lens Data The lens data passed to the camera includes iris (T-stop) data, as well as focus distance and zoom information. As well as the obvious benefit on seeing this information displayed on the cameras LCD monitor, it also apparently allows for improved white balancing. We will be reviewing these two new lenses soon, so it will be interesting to see how this innovative feature works. The Fujinon MKX 18-55mm will retail for $3999. The Fujinon MKX 50-135mm will retail for $4299. As a recap, here are the main features of these two lenses: Fujinon MKX 18-55mm T2.9 & Fujinon MKX 50-135mm T2.9 Use an optical construction comprising 22 glass elements in 17 groups, with six super ED lens elements and two ED lens elements (two super ED lens elements and two ED lens elements for the 50-135mm). T2.9 aperture across the entire zoom range which facilitates the increasingly popular style of bokeh effect with shallow depth-of-field. This also eliminates the need to re-adjust lighting, contributing to shortening shooting time. The MKX lens achieves advanced optical performance despite its compact and lightweight body by incorporating the benefits of short flange focal distance of X Mount into optical design to the maximum extent. This accommodates shooting with a limited number of people. Do you own a Fujinon X Series camera? Do you think these new MKX lenses will make for a compelling, light-weight, documentary setup? Let us know in the comments below.

It is a big moment for many of us! Our FUJINON & cinema5D one minute film competition is coming to its end, and the winner is?  This is a recording of our live stream winners announcement from our YouTube channel. We received 233 eligible films from 56 countries! It was a lot of work and also fun for Johnnie and I to watch and judge them. Please watch the recording of the live stream to hear us talk about the films. The Winners All winners – as well as everybody who participated in the competition – will be contacted separately via email and notified. Everyone who participated will get our personal short feedback about their submission. Expect these emails during next week. 1st Place -Igor Lymar, “Holiday Reflections” Prize: Set of 2 FUJINON MK Zoom Lenses (FUJINON MK18.55mm T2.9 & MK50-135mm T2.9) inkl. Zacuto Scissor MK Lens Support 2nd Place – Sonia Pałęga, “Elaine” Prize: FUJIFILM X-T2 camera with a FUJIFILM XF 16-55mm f/2.8 R LM WR lens 3rd Place – Javier Acevedo Zapata, “My Christmas Tree” Prize: FUJIFILM X-E3 camera with a FUJIFILM 18-55mm lens The Runners-Up As mentioned in the live stream, it was very hard to decide on the winners. Here are, in no particular order, the runners-up. Amazing work, everyone! Julius Krenz- Holiday Reflections Marcus Dineen – Da Bomb Nico Wieseneder-Holiday Reflections Brian Muna- BELIEVE Jeff Dolen – 11:59pm Emeral Cooper – ‘Tis the Season Tetsushi Wakasugi- Holiday Reflections If your film isn’t shown here, it really doesn’t mean anything about its quality. We just received SO MANY great entries, it’s impossible to feature them all. If you want to click through the list of all over 230 entries, head over to YouTube and watch them in our playlist here (the playlist is ordered by the time of entry, so the order has nothing to do with our judgement). Thanks everyone for participating, we were truly overwhelmed!! We are really looking forward to run another competition like this soon. Stay tuned to cinema5D and please subscribe to our YouTube channel for future updates.

The first step in our One Minute Film Competition is now over, and there is no better way and time to expose our audience to the “behind the scenes” of making some of the valuable prizes that we and FUJIFILM/FUJINON will be presenting to the winners.  One Minute Competition update: First things first. It is with A LOT of appreciation that we would like to thank all the participants in our first ever film competition. The overwhelming response and engagement of the filming community in the event convinced us to continue and initiate future competitions like this one. 233 eligible films from 56 countries were submitted during the course of the competition (!) and now Nino and I are facing the long, responsible work of viewing all those creations and deciding the winners. We will live-stream the announcement of winners during Friday, February 9th at 7pm CET (6pm GMT/12pm EST/9am PST).  FUJIFILM/FUJINON Factory visit: Now, FUJIFILM was kind enough to privately host and guide me through one of its lens and camera factories located in Sendai, northern Japan. This factory is responsible for making the FUJINON MK lenses, X-T2 camera and GFX 50S camera and lenses. It was a great chance to see how some of our prizes are made and although it was a short visit, it was hard not to be impressed by the process of making these products literally by hand. I hope you will enjoy this short video and, like me, take one thing from watching it: regardless of our purchasing decisions, there are always hard-working, dedicated people behind the design and manufacturing of the equipment we use on a daily basis. Maybe it is a good chance to salute them all.  Music for the above video is taken from art-list. Theme: Oliver Michael – One Moment – Me and You and Firefly Are you curious enough and want to see more factory visits in facilities related to our industry? If so, which ones? Let us know in the comments section below!

We have to make some changes on the judging system of our FUJINON 1 Minute Film Competition in order for it to remain a FAIR competition. More below. First of all, thank you all for the OVERWHELMING number of entries to the competition which has been open for submissions since December 19th, and also to the truly high quality of entries that we are continuously receiving. It has been a pleasure to sift through the submissions for the team. The idea behind the judging system as explained before We wanted to involve the audience in the judging process and thereby only judge the entries with the top ten amount of likes internally in the cinema5D, to determine the three grand prize winners. Concerns about fairness However, there has been growing concern by many of you about the judging system, and we have received many comments and emails about this concern. Here your (and our) three main concerns: People with a big following on YouTube automatically receive more likes, despite the fact that their content doesn’t have to be much better. People with a big social media following can receive a lot more likes for the same reason. And most importantly: There has been evidence that a number of entrants have engaged in “like fraud”, i.e. it was clear to monitor that there have been a number of totally unnatural jumps in likes / thumbs up on several videos. While the first two points are of course troublesome, the last point is absolutely unacceptable for us. It’s simply not fair to make the shortlist like this. We were thinking about simply disqualifying the entrants where evidence of this happening was clear, however that is not always so easy. Not all services where you can “buy likes” work the same way. Changing the judging system We have therefore decided to change the judging system of this competition within the limits of our terms and conditions. While this might upset some of you, it should actually please most of you. We will dedicate a number of days to judge ALL entries, under the following criteria, in no particular order: originality and creativity interpretation of the theme “Holiday Reflections” storytelling cinematography to a much lesser extend, the like count will still be relevant in our judging (BUT it’s just one criteria among others and “like fraud” will be disqualified when discovered by our analytics) The internal voting will be very democratic and each judging team member will give marks for each of the points above, on the basis of which we will determine the three grand prize winners. We will vote at our sole discretion. We will also share constructive criticism about each film in one sentence with every entrant. Submission period extended until January 29th We have also decided to extend the competition until Monday, January 29th, at 23:59 CET, because we want to give people who hesitated to participate because of the judging system to still take part. We will decide on and notify the winners no later than Saturday, February 10 via email and on the site. The exact date for this will be shared a few days prior. We will live stream the winners announcement at 4pm GMT on Saturday, February 10 on the site.  Please click here if you want to submit to the competition. Here you also find all requirements to take part, Terms & Conditions and details about the prizes. It’s our first time putting up a competition and we had to learn too. Thanks for your understanding! Good luck and we look forward to many more great entries! Please understand that we cannot reply to individual emails about this competition due to the number of submissions. If you have any further questions, please ask in the comments below.

We’re proud to announce our first 1 Minute Film Competition, thanks to our partners at FUJINON! What do you have to do? Now until January 21st 29th, you can submit a video entry to our competition under the topic “Holiday Reflections”. How you interpret this topic is TOTALLY up to you – it can be taken literally or figuratively. It can be ANY genre – short film, documentary, music video or something entirely different. It’s really your choice! The ONLY additional requirements: every film is required to have a maximum length of 1 minute (60 seconds) and has to include one shot of (any) reflection on a glass or mirror surface. Please read and understand the full Terms and Conditions of this competition here. What can you win? All the prizes in this competition! Please note that the FUJINON 18-55 and 50-135 are only given out as a set for the 1st prize winner. Thanks to this competition’s sponsor FUJINON/FUJIFILM, we are proud to announce the following prizes for the three winners: 1st place prize: Set of FUJINON MK18.55mm T2.9 & MK50-135mm T2.9 (E-Mount or MFT modified versions of the lenses) – UPDATE Jan 4: Zacuto will add one of their Scissor Lens Supports to the winner of this package – an additional $200 value! (Head over to the update post to watch the video about this genius little add-on.) 2nd place prize: FUJIFILM X-T2 camera with a FUJIFILM XF 16-55mm f/2.8 R LM WR lens 3rd place prize: FUJIFILM X-E3 camera with a FUJIFILM 18-55mm lens Submit your entry here: To enter the 1 Minute Film Competition, upload your finished film to your own YouTube account, and fill out this form in its entirety. (Please make sure that you fill out every field.) SUBMISSIONS ARE NOW CLOSED. Thanks for participating. The winners will be announced around February 5th on cinema5D.com. All entries can be seen in this public YouTube playlist. As a 1st prize winner, you will not only win this lens, but also the FUJIFILM MK 50-135 How are the winners determined? Until January 21st, 2018,  any audience member can chose their favorites from the our YouTube competition playlist. Only “thumbs up” votes are counted for the public vote. (“Thumbs down” are not counted. – We will publish another blog post promoting the playlist once first entries come in!). When voting closes on January 21st at 23:59 CET, the 10 videos with the highest amount of public “Like / Thumbs Up” votes will enter the jury phase. From these 10, the cinema5D team will select the three overall winners (1st, 2nd and 3rd place) and announce them during January 24th, 2018, on the cinema5D.com website. UPDATE Jan 17, 2018: We will dedicate a number of days to judge ALL entries, under the following criteria, in no particular order: originality and creativity interpretation of the theme “Holiday Reflections” storytelling cinematography to a much lesser extend, the like count will still be relevant in our judging (BUT it’s just one criteria among others and “like fraud” will be disqualified when discovered by our analytics) The internal voting will be very democratic and each judging team member will give marks for each of the points above, on the basis of which we will determine the three grand prize winners. We will vote at our sole discretion. We will also share constructive criticism about each film in one sentence with every entrant. We also extended the entry deadline to January 29th (from 21th). The winners will be announced on Saturday, February 10th, at 4pm GMT / 5pm CET / 11am EST / 8am PST in a live stream on our site.   Where can I see all the entries? You can see all entries on this YouTube playlist. Fresh from the factory! Win a FUJIFILM X-T2 FUJIFILM XF 16-55mm f/2.8 R LM WR lens as the 2nd prize in the 1 Minute Film Competition. Q&A: Do I have to use FUJIFILM cameras or FUJINON lenses for the shoot? No. You can use whatever cameras or lenses you please for your shoot. Do I have to shoot a dedicated film for the competition? We would like to see films that are MADE for this competition. We reserve the right to disqualify any entry that does not fulfil the formal criteria (topic, length, the one shot of a “reflection” on glass or a mirror). Disqualification means that the film in question will simply not be added to the YouTube playlist and will therefore not be eligible to win. Can the film be longer than 60 seconds? No. Any entry longer than 60 seconds will be disqualified. Can the film be shorter than 60 seconds? Yes. Can I upload my film to Vimeo instead of YouTube? You have to submit a link to a YouTube upload and only the “likes” on that YouTube upload will be counted. However it is up to you if you want to do another upload to Vimeo, however we will only count the YouTube likes to determine the short-list. Is this competition open to participants from all countries? Yes! Will I get a confirmation email after I submitted my film? No – we check all entries manually several times a day. Your video will be added to the YouTube playlist if it’s eligible, so everyone can see it, however we will not email you about it. We will only email you if there is an issue with your video, so you can change it and resubmit.   Happy shooting :-)   Feel free to ask questions in the comments below.

The Heden FUJINON MK Zoom Servo brings you motorised control over the popular MK Zooms via the Smart Grip on the Sony FS5 and FS7. With a track record in the film industry since the 1960s, Sweden-based company Heden has pedigree in the market of lens accessories, having expanded from a core business in follow focus systems to wireless platforms. Recently, Heden was approached by FUJINON with the aim of creating a motorised controller for their new line of MK zooms – the FUJINON MK 18-55 and MK 55-135. The result is the Heden FUJINON MK Zoom Servo – a controller that not only gives you motorised control over the zoom, but also allows you to operate it via the native zoom rocker on the Sony FS5 and FS7/FS7 II Smart Grip. This does away with the need for an extra handle and rocker, keeping the system a lot more compact. For the Heden FUJINON MK Zoom Servo, the manufacturer decided to go back to its roots, building the design of the product from the ground up rather than adapting existing products. Heden decided to use motors featuring tried-and-tested technology that has proven to be rock solid for decades, deciding to keep things simple and reliable in the fine mechanics department rather than integrating bells and whistles such as integrated wireless receivers. Every lens out there is a little different in terms of the amount of force required to turn the zoom ring. Although the product has been designed with the FUJINON MK zooms in mind, Heden has left a margin in the power capability of the motor to potentially be able to drive other lenses as well. The Heden FUJINON MK Zoom Servo Kit consists of three components, namely a motor bracket, the motor itself and the motor driver, with the full kit retailing for €1,995. Heden is aiming to start shipping by November this year. Have you adopted the FUJINON MK zooms for professional use with your Sony FS5 or FS7? Could the Heden FUJINON MK Zoom Servo complete your setup? Let us know in the comments below!