Specs

• 21 elements in 18 groups, including 6 ED elements, 1 SR element, 2 aspherical elements, and 1 fluorite element 
• Reflective Nano Crystal, ARNEO coatings to cut down on chromatic aberrations and a fluorine coating to resist fingerprints 
• 5 stops of built-in optical VR image stabilization, the most Nikon has ever included in a lens 
• 9 rounded aperture blades for beautiful bokeh 
• Multi-focus system with two af drive motors 
• Weather-sealed construction, with two customizable function buttons and a custom control ring
• Weighs 3.17 lbs
• The eleventh lens to join the Z mount family
• Available for $2,600
• Available in February for $2600 at
  • https://www.adorama.com/nkz70200.html
  • https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1538574-REG/nikon_nikkor_z_70_200mm_f_2_8.html
  • https://www.wexphotovideo.com/nikon-z-70-200mm-f2-8-vr-s-lens-1728151/
  • https://www.parkcameras.com/p/3243260Z/nikon-z-mount-mirrorless-lenses/nikon/nikon-70-200mm-f28-s-z-mount-lens

More info

• Pro-grade Z mount telephoto zoom lens. Covers the versatile 70-200 mm focal range with a constant f/2.8 maximum aperture.
• Superb performance. Sharpness and contrast are exceptional throughout the frame. Focusing is smooth, fast, and silent.
• Advanced optical design. 21 elements in 18 groups, with Nikon’s ED glass and SR glass as well as anti-reflective ARNEO and Nano Crystal coatings. Chromatic aberration, coma, ghosting, and flare are thoroughly countered.
• Ready for video. Focus breathing is all but eliminated, and stable aperture control delivers natural exposure changes throughout the scene.
• OLED lens information panel. Quickly confirm aperture, focus distance, exact focal length, ISO, and depth of field right on the lens.
• Fn button. Assign as many as 21 different functions to the lens’ Fn button, from AF lock to metering, bracketing, and more.
• Workhorse. Tough, compact build with extensive sealing to protect from dust and moisture.

GH2 froze during long recording. Not sure for how long it remained frozen since the camera was fixed on tripod and I have been messing with sound recorder, all the time checking the red record circle on display, which was frozen, that i haven't figured out immediately. I continued filming after reinserting the battery.

Tomorrow morning, on the card I have 00-03.mts spanned files that are not recognised in Premiere as spans, but all work, and 04 is the beginning of new spanned sequence. I am missing 10 or more minutes of the show (EDIT: between that 03 and 04, to make it clearer).

Does this mean that it crashed on spanning point and that it is pointless to try with recovery software or something..

I want to make the following picturew iwth the GH3:

http://www.daveyjphoto.com/tagged/long-exposure

and here the tutorial:

http://www.daveyj.ca/fireworks

2 problems I have with the GH3 there: When I want to make a picture that starts out of focus, it automatoically focusses what I push the button. I have set the menue from "Focus" to "Release" but no difference. OK, I can search for a target elswhere and then refocus or use manual focus mode, so that is possible.

But the 2nd problem is a hard one: When I do a longe time exposure, for example 3 seconds or also "B" Bulb mode, during the taking of the picture, the live viwe is gone. So how can I refocus then? I have to do it blind, trying before hand where it is is focus like written in the tutorial, but he used a 5D Mark II. So he has a mirror. We don't have one and still have no picture.

Does anybody know, how to keep the picture on the screen while taking the picture? Any assistance would be helpful.

(Possible before December 31st, beause ther I would like to try it :-)

Thanks @Vitaliy_Kiselev, @driftwood, and the rest.

==MY TEST==

I went on a shoot this weekend, and was using Sandisk Extreme 16gb 30mb/s cards. I wanted to ensure both spanning and playback in camera for the shoot, so I went with driftwoods "spanmybitchup" patch. I did just a few short preliminary tests: the test I did was to shoot the papasarts star chart (which I've attached--I also attached the more extreme codec test chart v2 2010), and let it run. I waved my hand around in the frame from time to time and also had some talking to get audio. Everything seemed good: I was getting spanning and smooth playback in camera with audio. (EDIT: also attaching Stray's death charts with color information!)

==MY SHOOT==

So during the shoot, after a few shots, I was getting the message "motion image cannot be played" for all my clips (or something like that I don't remember exactly)--my heart sunk! An actor asked me to check to see if we recorded something on a previous take, I had to say that "yes it was" without checking. I was worried about requests for playback--and this was only with one actor: imagine this on shoot with clients! For certain shots, I wanted to be sure that something was recorded since I wasn't at the camera, and I couldn't do this. The scene I was shooting was an actor in a car at night--he was lit and most everything else was dark. That's when I got the messages. I put in a new Sandisk card, and formatted it. Reshot the same scene and I was getting the same error.

==LESSONS==

1) In camera playback is important at least for some of us, and for some, like me, it is even more important than low gop. For me, I am willing to forego a very very high quality low GOP setting (awesome work driftwood!!) that doesn't have playback in camera on good SD cards for an improved long GOP with ultra reliable in camera playback. I'm NOT saying that everyone wants this or should want it (especially if you have the cash for more super high end SD cards or for extra harddrive space). But I'm guessing some people are in my situation as well.

2) It seems there's a relatively standard procedure for patch development (using streamparser, tweaking settings incrementally, etc etc). BUT there seems to be no standard procedure for testing spanning and in-camera playback. You might not think that makes a difference, but it seems that it does: it seems to matter what you shoot when you are testing things like spanning and in-camera playback. Or, at least the number of clips you shoot or the ISO you shoot at makes a difference: otherwise, I don't know how to explain the divergence between my pre-shoot tests and what happened on the shoot. I welcome some constructive thinking about standardizing spanning and camera playback tests.

==DESIRES==

The ideal for me would be to get a hack that improves quality over the stock settings, that has very very reliable spanning and in-camera playback with audio, and works on good quality cards like the Sandisck 30 mb/s (16gb). I know some people are getting the SandDisk extreme pro 64gb cards... but a lot of people (like me) already have a stash of good quality cards and don't want to fork over even more money to get these super high end cards.

I did test w/ @cbrandin 's (Chris's) 66M patch. We know that this doesn't span (but getting around 10 or 11 minutes is okay for me, although I'd love spanning). But what I did notice is that I couldn't get in camera playback with this either. I'm going to try the 44M patch.

Thoughts?

I'd love to hear from someone who's done this before - successfully:

in 2 weeks, I will shoot a classical concert (orchestra), on a great looking concert stage, with two GH2s. One's going to be a static wide shot and the second one will shoot close up and different angles. The concert will run about 90 minutes total. The location will be bright enough, but I'd say I most likely will have to use an ISO of 640 or 800 in order to be able to shoot with an f 5.6.

I do own two fast 64 GB 95mb/s SandDisc cards. - I'll be shooting this in 24p.

I certainly want it to look as good as possible (with as fine a noise grain as possible - considering my ISO), but I also need about 40-50 minutes of continuous recording time per segment - and the full 90 minutes should fit on each of the 64 GB cards.

I'd really appreciate any real world feedback for this kind of task. VBR or CBR? What kind of bit rate should I be going for? Would any of the new Driftwood patches be suited for this?

Thank you so much in advance.

--- Markus ---