The First Komodo Out in the Wild

[BrendanLeahy]

Not to shabby. It's a warmth sort of sensation. I actually test that stuff by putting the camera next to my cheek (on my face) like for a shoulder cam setup to see if it's too aggressive or not.

OH! And on the topic of that. I previously thought Komodo had "one fan". Oddly while filming at night I shined a flashlight through it and there seem to be two little tiny fans in there in vertical orientation. I like that I don't see them or really here them.

Awesome, thank you very much, Phil!

 

[Darius Lyles]

That tilta cage looks like that might be it. Love the tilta cage that’s on bmpc6K and the v mount plate in that teaser makes me super excited.

 

[Phil Holland]

Alrighty, a little round up of a week of product announcements and Komodo activities.

And some of this is too damn good actually. I moderately made this zoom week and there's a few really good options for Komodo. I'm not sponsored by any of these peeps so I'll give you some spicy perspective where I can.

First up, the Laowa 25-100 T2.9 zoom:

This lens has been shown before and it's bloody close to coming to market. So I'll tell you some things actually about it, some that might not be fully known. Laowa is planning a 1.4X expander, which takes this up to FF35. And they have a rear 1.33X anamorphic adapter, which I have here. It's a bit weird, but works. My perspective on this lens is it fills a gap of the "one banger". Much like the popular though discontinued Cook 18-100, this is pretty much the modern take on that concept. Not a super modern lens, actually has some vintage notes optically, but it does what you want it to do. It's parfocal, all that good and useful stuff. Has some decent lens flare too.


Now for some lightweight zooms announced today. The DZOFILM 20-55 and 50-125 T2.8. And I have some hot, hot takes for how these impact me directly and perhaps Komodo Stormtrooper owners.

I wrote a lot of thoughts on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCdg1D9HoTr/

But these are shorter lightweight and compact zooms and I've been filming with them since Komodo landed. And it would appear somebody has been following my interests in cleaner optics, parfocal, and pretty much zero breathing. And for the soon to be new White Stormtrooper Komodo owners, this pair of zooms is also available in white.

My real hot take is take these two and add a Tokina 11-20 T2.9 in to the mix which also doesn't breath and you have 11-125 covered in three extremely small lenses. Documentaries, Interviews, etc. Perfect combo. Heck, add that to the Laowa for that matter to flesh out the wide end too.

Candidly I didn't expect much because I knew both would come in around $5K USD for the pair, but I'm not sugar coating this, these are pretty damn nice.

But I have a more passionate position here. Because I still own Super 35mm lenses I love and not many know about.

I own a full set of Schneider Cine-Xenar III primes. And I actually love these lenses. They are unique and have a very special look to them. When I bought my set ages ago I liked their close focus, zero breathing, etc. But really they felt more like the closest thing at the time to a cinema-grade set of Leica-Rs, but done really well.

There were only two 14mm primes made. One of which was stolen at NAB one year and the other I knew about. And when Komodo became a reality in my life and I knew these lenses were going to play a bigger role in my filmmaking journey again, I hunted down the other 14mm from Schneider and bought it.

The potent thing there is with my prime set, until pretty much now, I didn't have zooms that paired well with them. And now I do. All have character that feels similar. This makes this much more ideal for a full production solution and it's hard to personally explain where this is coming from, but I feel oddly complete with the total solution put before me now. Odd part is I picked up that Tokina ages ago and knew it worked well with the kit. It actually took the place of that 14mm for a long time. But now it's part of the zoom side and the primes are fleshed out. There's actually one other prototype from the Cine-Xenar III set that if I can find it, I'll grab it. It's likely in a warehouse somewhere next to the Staff of Ra or something.


Anyways, I'll jump to the Tilta accessories now that I can post about them:

I mentioned this on the gram, but people will have to sort of choose their own adventure with Komodo accessories as every manufacturer has a unique spin. Tilta's solution is a cage with a 15mm quick release dovetail plate and their top handle doubles as side handle with a push of the button. The cage has lots of cheese to mount goodies too. Their small top plate and monitor mount are well small.

But the most interesting thing really is their V-Mount plate which mounts via the two BP slots straight to Komodo, which put the V-Mount at an unusual sideways position, but I haven't been able to even get a 150Wh battery to pop off of there while shaking it. This plate works best honestly with 98Wh compact V-mounts and keep the profile small and tidy. Pros and cons to this method as getting to the DC IN can be tricky with larger batteries and hot swap is off the table. But it's got all the D-Taps you need to power goodies and a USB port. They'll have a black and like bronze-ish pewter finish.

I have some more accessories to show soon. The weird fun I'm having is mixing and matching different companies solutions too, which is hilarious because none of them know what the other is doing. Make my Komodo look like a franken-rig. I'm still pretty into the Wooden Camera solutions overall and that's due to a few things I'll touch on in a bit. I also have grown fond of my GDU Timmy Ribs for reasons. Don't know if I need a full cage really, but some might just for the accessory mounting potential.

 

[David Rasberry]

Thanks reviewing the zooms. The DZO's are amazingly compact for T2.8. I'm a big fan of practical zooms. Do they vignette at all on Komodo at 6K FF?
When can you share some footage shot with them?

Any chance Laowa will make an aspheric wide angle adapter?

 

[Mestizo Devon]

Alrighty, a little round up of a week of product announcements and Komodo activities.

And some of this is too damn good actually. I moderately made this zoom week and there's a few really good options for Komodo. I'm not sponsored by any of these peeps so I'll give you some spicy perspective where I can.

First up, the Laowa 25-100 T2.9 zoom:

This lens has been shown before and it's bloody close to coming to market. So I'll tell you some things actually about it, some that might not be fully known. Laowa is planning a 1.4X expander, which takes this up to FF35. And they have a rear 1.33X anamorphic adapter, which I have here. It's a bit weird, but works. My perspective on this lens is it fills a gap of the "one banger". Much like the popular though discontinued Cook 18-100, this is pretty much the modern take on that concept. Not a super modern lens, actually has some vintage notes optically, but it does what you want it to do. It's parfocal, all that good and useful stuff. Has some decent lens flare too.


Now for some lightweight zooms announced today. The DZOFILM 20-55 and 50-125 T2.8. And I have some hot, hot takes for how these impact me directly and perhaps Komodo Stormtrooper owners.

I wrote a lot of thoughts on Instagram:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCdg1D9HoTr/

But these are shorter lightweight and compact zooms and I've been filming with them since Komodo landed. And it would appear somebody has been following my interests in cleaner optics, parfocal, and pretty much zero breathing. And for the soon to be new White Stormtrooper Komodo owners, this pair of zooms is also available in white.

My real hot take is take these two and add a Tokina 11-20 T2.9 in to the mix which also doesn't breath and you have 11-125 covered in three extremely small lenses. Documentaries, Interviews, etc. Perfect combo. Heck, add that to the Laowa for that matter to flesh out the wide end too.

Candidly I didn't expect much because I knew both would come in around $5K USD for the pair, but I'm not sugar coating this, these are pretty damn nice.

But I have a more passionate position here. Because I still own Super 35mm lenses I love and not many know about.

I own a full set of Schneider Cine-Xenar III primes. And I actually love these lenses. They are unique and have a very special look to them. When I bought my set ages ago I liked their close focus, zero breathing, etc. But really they felt more like the closest thing at the time to a cinema-grade set of Leica-Rs, but done really well.

There were only two 14mm primes made. One of which was stolen at NAB one year and the other I knew about. And when Komodo became a reality in my life and I knew these lenses were going to play a bigger role in my filmmaking journey again, I hunted down the other 14mm from Schneider and bought it.

The potent thing there is with my prime set, until pretty much now, I didn't have zooms that paired well with them. And now I do. All have character that feels similar. This makes this much more ideal for a full production solution and it's hard to personally explain where this is coming from, but I feel oddly complete with the total solution put before me now. Odd part is I picked up that Tokina ages ago and knew it worked well with the kit. It actually took the place of that 14mm for a long time. But now it's part of the zoom side and the primes are fleshed out. There's actually one other prototype from the Cine-Xenar III set that if I can find it, I'll grab it. It's likely in a warehouse somewhere next to the Staff of Ra or something.


Anyways, I'll jump to the Tilta accessories now that I can post about them:

I mentioned this on the gram, but people will have to sort of choose their own adventure with Komodo accessories as every manufacturer has a unique spin. Tilta's solution is a cage with a 15mm quick release dovetail plate and their top handle doubles as side handle with a push of the button. The cage has lots of cheese to mount goodies too. Their small top plate and monitor mount are well small.

But the most interesting thing really is their V-Mount plate which mounts via the two BP slots straight to Komodo, which put the V-Mount at an unusual sideways position, but I haven't been able to even get a 150Wh battery to pop off of there while shaking it. This plate works best honestly with 98Wh compact V-mounts and keep the profile small and tidy. Pros and cons to this method as getting to the DC IN can be tricky with larger batteries and hot swap is off the table. But it's got all the D-Taps you need to power goodies and a USB port. They'll have a black and like bronze-ish pewter finish.

I have some more accessories to show soon. The weird fun I'm having is mixing and matching different companies solutions too, which is hilarious because none of them know what the other is doing. Make my Komodo look like a franken-rig. I'm still pretty into the Wooden Camera solutions overall and that's due to a few things I'll touch on in a bit. I also have grown fond of my GDU Timmy Ribs for reasons. Don't know if I need a full cage really, but some might just for the accessory mounting potential.

Have you tested any amount batteries that fit flush with the body using the title mount?

 

[M Harvey]

Great post on lenses and accessories, Phil-- thanks! Especially excited by your report on the zooms, since I often don't love the look of even quality glass in this price range...

 

[rand thompson]

DZOFILM 20-55mm and 50-125mm T2.8 Super 35mm Zoom Lenses Introduced


By Cinema5D


Article

https://www.cinema5d.com/dzofilm-20-55mm-and-50-125mm-t2-8-super-35mm-zoom-lenses-introduced/

DZOFilm Website
http://www.dzofilm.com/index.html

 

[Alain M]

Have you tested any amount batteries that fit flush with the body using the title mount?

Awesome summary update and the V-Mount flushed into Komodo seems so interesting and good... I am sure a flushed version non sideways will be available soon and the way to go.... GDU batteries for sure seem the best option for either

Thanks for sharing Phil!

 

[Bob Gundu]

Awesome summary update and the V-Mount flushed into Komodo seems so interesting and good... I am sure a flushed version non sideways will be available soon and the way to go.... GDU batteries for sure seem the best option for either

Thanks for sharing Phil!

I think it’s sideways to not block the ports at the bottom.

 

[Todd G. Peterson]

Curious to know what the Komodo experience is like from an AC perspective? Reds have always been a bit more oriented towards a single op in the sense that there isn't much in the way of controls on the AC side (unless using the sidekick, which I never loved). The Komodo being a small utility camera with the screen on top seems to assume that you don't have an AC adjusting the camera. As we've seen with the Alexa Mini, a utility camera has a way of becoming quite popular on productions small and (very) big for A cam. If I put myself in the shoes of an AC on the Komodo, who is unable to see the top screen and using foolcontrol on a device, I don't get warm feelings. It doesn't feel solid to me, but maybe I'm being too old school. Thoughts?

 

[Phil Holland]

Curious to know what the Komodo experience is like from an AC perspective? Reds have always been a bit more oriented towards a single op in the sense that there isn't much in the way of controls on the AC side (unless using the sidekick, which I never loved). The Komodo being a small utility camera with the screen on top seems to assume that you don't have an AC adjusting the camera. As we've seen with the Alexa Mini, a utility camera has a way of becoming quite popular on productions small and (very) big for A cam. If I put myself in the shoes of an AC on the Komodo, who is unable to see the top screen and using foolcontrol on a device, I don't get warm feelings. It doesn't feel solid to me, but maybe I'm being too old school. Thoughts?

I'm likely not the best person as my general relationship between my AC and myself is more lenses related and I handle camera things. I'm not normal in terms how that generally works on sets.

I will say one fundamental thing. RED CONTROL works better than DSMC2 or DSMC for sure. Whole different world there now that these days mainly due to WiFi stuff evolving a bunch in the last 5+ years. A little bit of a game changer IMO. Previously I would use Fool Control, but honestly much like everybody else on earth connectivity for my applications were a bit spotty, which is partially why a hard line connection was even created.

Komodo however does have wireless monitoring which happens via RED CONTROL and has some range to it.

Also, not exactly revealed yet, is some more external camera control stuff that's coming shortly. To that point I guess what I'm saying is you can build a rig to make it more AC friendly for sure if that's the goal.

If it was me and my general hopes for how this works, I liked the ideal of the old DSMC controller, the REDMOTE. Similarly a wonderful idea, but plagued by connectivity issues. With Komodo and likely "the future" I'd like to get to a place where somehow, someway you could hard connect a device via USB via some sort of cradle or whatever, and then when you need to pull that control away from camera it intelligently can switch to WiFi "seamlessly". I believe the map for this ecosystem is there in 2020 to make this possible. That's not in there now obviously, I mean that's a lot of code to make that happen, but it's not impossible.

Strangely really only doable well in the last few years, but yeah, that would be hot biscuits. There's a lot of stuff on that level and a bit beyond that have opened up recently for digital cinema camera application these days. I'm betting we'll see a lean towards some of these ideas.

To the secondary point there, the menu system itself is extremely AC friendly in my opinion. Komodo is a refined menu system. Even stuff I have been recommending for a while got slung in there. Most things are 2-3 clicks deep. If you can browse a mobile website (that simplified accordion menu), you can use this thing. Also, the control interface in terms of buttons allow for it to be placed in housings, used with gloves, etc. A bit more laborious than using the touch screen in tandem with the physical buttons, but RED's making tools for professions that need certain things done if you are filming underwater, in weird ways on ground, above ground, and even in space.


And yep, Bob's right about the Tilta V-Mount. It's sideways to avoid sticking out of the top too much or below too much. Like I mentioned, it's pretty much a perfect fit for the smaller 98Wh batteries recently that have entered the market. Seems to hold well, I had some curiosities about mounting V-Mounts sideways, but the lock is solid so far. The biggest difference between it and Wooden Camera is the orientation and how it interfaces with the camera. Tilta goes straight in to the BP mount. Wooden Camera goes into the DC IN and allows DC pass through. As well as being able to use a smaller single BP battery on camera to allow for hot swap and something else I'll show shortly.

I'll echo my statement above there too. Komodo really is going to be how you want to use this thing. The smallest configuration is just using the BP batteries obviously. Then from there it's really how big you're willing to rig it and what you want to do with it. For me next level after mini-ninja camera mode is tiny through moderately sized V-Mounts to power things like 5" and 7" monitors and focus motors and audio stuff and a coffee mug heater

Some of the other Komodo people have been asking which camera strap I'm rolling with when I pair it all down. My traditional Nanuk strap is a bit too large IMO for Komodo, but more ideal for DSMC2 fully outfitted. Everything it seems I do with Komodo can be described as about a 1/3rd of the weight of my DSMC2 rigs unless I'm going nuts with a bunch of accessories.

 

[James Sielaff]

DZOFILM 20-55mm and 50-125mm T2.8 Super 35mm Zoom Lenses Introduced


By Cinema5D


Article

https://www.cinema5d.com/dzofilm-20-55mm-and-50-125mm-t2-8-super-35mm-zoom-lenses-introduced/

DZOFilm Website
http://www.dzofilm.com/index.html

AWESOME!

 

[Todd G. Peterson]

I'm likely not the best person as my general relationship between my AC and myself is more lenses related and I handle camera things. I'm not normal in terms how that generally works on sets.

I will say one fundamental thing. RED CONTROL works better than DSMC2 or DSMC for sure. Whole different world there now that these days mainly due to WiFi stuff evolving a bunch in the last 5+ years. A little bit of a game changer IMO. Previously I would use Fool Control, but honestly much like everybody else on earth connectivity for my applications were a bit spotty, which is partially why a hard line connection was even created.

Komodo however does have wireless monitoring which happens via RED CONTROL and has some range to it.

Also, not exactly revealed yet, is some more external camera control stuff that's coming shortly. To that point I guess what I'm saying is you can build a rig to make it more AC friendly for sure if that's the goal.

If it was me and my general hopes for how this works, I liked the ideal of the old DSMC controller, the REDMOTE. Similarly a wonderful idea, but plagued by connectivity issues. With Komodo and likely "the future" I'd like to get to a place where somehow, someway you could hard connect a device via USB via some sort of cradle or whatever, and then when you need to pull that control away from camera it intelligently can switch to WiFi "seamlessly". I believe the map for this ecosystem is there in 2020 to make this possible. That's not in there now obviously, I mean that's a lot of code to make that happen, but it's not impossible.

Strangely really only doable well in the last few years, but yeah, that would be hot biscuits. There's a lot of stuff on that level and a bit beyond that have opened up recently for digital cinema camera application these days. I'm betting we'll see a lean towards some of these ideas.

To the secondary point there, the menu system itself is extremely AC friendly in my opinion. Komodo is a refined menu system. Even stuff I have been recommending for a while got slung in there. Most things are 2-3 clicks deep. If you can browse a mobile website (that simplified accordion menu), you can use this thing. Also, the control interface in terms of buttons allow for it to be placed in housings, used with gloves, etc. A bit more laborious than using the touch screen in tandem with the physical buttons, but RED's making tools for professions that need certain things done if you are filming underwater, in weird ways on ground, above ground, and even in space.

Thanks Phil for the detailed reply. This is quite helpful. I'm glad to hear that Red Control works better. As you rightly pointed out, there's been a big shift to wireless and wifi. I'm comfortable with a Terradek, but less comfortable with Wifi and camera control. Maybe that's my age showing. Something like a modern Redmote would be great, especially in locations where there is a ton of wireless activity in the 2.4 GHz and 5 GHz spectrum, which is everything from wifi to microwave ovens.

It sounds like Red finally listened to feedback about the cumbersome and complex menu system on DSMC/DSMC2 with the new control interface. I find buttons to be more reliable than touch screen, especially in adverse conditions, but simplicity is key. This is something that I respect Arri for doing. They've been the antithesis of Sony or Red in terms of menus and controls. The buttons and menus are not ideal, but I still love how simple it is to set and just record. It's one aspect of film that I miss. It was simple to operate, and thus the mind of the dp/op/ac could be more focused on the creative than the technical.

 

[andrewhake]

Sort of inspired by Phil's belly cam setups I realized I already had some nice rifle slings and I found some really nice QD mount adapters in 1/4-20 that can easily mount to most camera rigs.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0829LRVNL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Really nice for a simple hand held setup that gives you a good way to support the weight of the camera and should work very well with a Komodo and some Timmy ribs.

 

[Alain M]

I think it’s sideways to not block the ports at the bottom.

True dat. Makes sense...

 

[Phil Holland]

Me. Komodo. Zeiss CP.3 35mm. Crazy Grade.

This is how I've essentially looked for the last 5 months.

 

[rand thompson]

 

[Les Hillis]

You can't trick us with your crazy grades Phil...



Superhero status restored.

 

[Sabovic Adis]

Bucky Barnes, that you?

 

[Jake Wilganowski]

Phil seems like the Loawa has much more "character" and less contrast than the DZO. Can you elaborate anymore on the DZO?