Gadgetory

hey what's up guys i'm pbht here and welcome back to the first dope tech episode in a little while but i'm glad it's back so the last one was actually on this crazy high end ridiculous piece of video gear the camera robots this one is also returning to another insane really high-end piece of video gear this this is the Venus optics LA WA macro probe lens as you can tell it's super worthy of the name so I've actually had this lens for a couple weeks now started messing with it it's definitely not the type of lens that you use very often it's super specialty but it's already responsible for one absolutely crazy shot in the last video the one plus seven Pro review definitely check it out if you haven't already I'll go ahead and drop a link below that like button okay let's rewind for a second so the company Venus optics makes a bunch of other weird specialty lenses like this one this super ultra wide tilt shift macro lens that I've used for a couple videos especially car ones but why did this one specifically I mean it probably would catch your eye - but why this one why the probe well you might be like me and you might have seen a couple clips of this lens floating around the internet there's even one really well done viral video of someone literally shooting this lens through various subjects and getting all these crazy shots and then most recently it appeared in this behind-the-scenes video on Twitter from Philippa Zito of The Verge as the critical tool for getting that crazy intro shot from their galaxy fold review once I saw that that sort of piqued my curiosity I looked it up turns out it was on B and H with like expedited shipping and that was sort of all I needed to see so within a couple days that was here at the studio so what's the deal if you're a video shooter or a creator or youtuber or anything why on earth would you want a crazy lens like this if you think about it this is a lens that's made specifically for video and it's kind of all in the name the probe lens and there are a lot of crazy things about this lens so this is what a normal camera lens looks like you've probably seen one before this is what a cine looks like made specifically for video and this is the probe lens it looks pretty wild it's about almost a foot and a half long just a few centimetres wide for most of the barrel and the specs its full-frame fully manual 24 millimeter macro lens f-14 to f40 f-14 to f40 what yeah now that's weird let's break this down so first of all the fact that it covers full-frame is pretty amazing it's a fully manual lens which means the aperture ring and the focus ring are both d clicked and fully hand operated instead of electronic there also happens to be seven aperture blades by the way and 27 different optical elements in the whole tube and it's a macro lens meaning the minimum focus distance is really close one and a half feet but when you measure a minimum focus distance from the flange or from the sensor basically that one and a half feet puts it just inches away from the end of the barrel of the lens which is also pretty crazy and then the 24 millimeters is also odd most macro lenses are around a hundred millimeters in focal length which is great that gets you really close to the subject but also really isolates it with the super shallow depth of field a 24 millimeter macro it still lets you get super close but it keeps this wide-angle field of view and more is in focus and on f-14 to f40 is kind of a blessing and a curse on one hand if you could go all the way wide open to F 2.8 or f/4 something you'd probably get almost nothing in focus so it kind of saves you from that but on the other hand at f-14 wide open it means you need a lot of light for this lens like a lot of light and then keeping up with the probe theme the front end of this lens is actually waterproof so you can not only probe you know small spaces but you can submerge it even get underwater shots if you want to and then you can see up front there's actually this ring of that is right LEDs because this lens has lights built-in to the lens it's a lot so if you're shooting in a very small space or a dark space you can use the light to illuminate your subject there's literally a micro USB port on the barrel of this lens that plugs into it and it comes with a micro USB cable in the box so if you attach it to some sort of power brick like I did and then plug it in and turn it on you end up with this sort of a magic wand of an experience it's pretty bright - that's all the LEDs lit up at once a ring light at the end of your probe lens it's crazy but of course when it all comes down to it of course the shape of this lens is what makes it such a unique tool obviously being so narrow you can get right up like super close to things you can be in small spaces and then of course you're sort of really close to something while being far away from it at the same time and there's also a bunch of YouTube videos detailing a bunch of examples of this even that viral video depicting kind of shooting it the shooting part is fake there's nothing detaching from the lens here that's definitely edited but the shots it got that they included those shots are actually real and they're super well done and there's so many other good ones so that of course got the gears turning about how to possibly use the probe lens for a tech video there are a shot and a tech video or just to shoot tech in some way and of course we saw Phil's video with the Galaxy fold so the story goes as you know I got the oneplus 7 pro a couple weeks beforehand and had this lens in hand the entire time so I knew I had to try something so of course to maximize how dramatic it is you want to get as close to the phone as possible and like I said even at f-14 wide open you need a ton of light to get even see anything usable even in broad daylight or super strong studio lights you got to crank the ISO at f-14 the thing is phone screens are actually really not that bright and if you shine lights at them they get less bright so it turns out that's actually why the Verge's video was shot in this dark setting with a dark background because it's the only way to really see the phone's display with this lens so that's why I ended up having to do basically the same thing for the 1 plus 7 Pro phone screens just aren't bright enough to compete against other lights so the only way to really see it vividly is to turn the rest of the lights off kind of like how your phone screen looks the brightest at night but we had some other practicals and some other lights in the scene and then even after we set everything up with a shot like this the work isn't done until a little bit of coloring a little bit of editing to brighten up the phone denoising effects adding and potential even sound design etc but the final shot is so worth it so really as it's turning out the best way to maximize this lens when shooting objects with it is number one to get really really close to your subject usually a small subject and then you know play with movement a bit and specifically things around the barrel to really get that perspective that it creates of being like a tiny person on like a small surface with things going past you so that's what we tried to do so here are some other examples of some shots we've done with the probe lens all right so this was a fun one yes in the studio we do have CD racks that have never held a CD in their life instead they hold the smartphone's don't worry it's perfect so I was literally just wondering what it would look like to move through the phones as if you were like a bug flying through them so the red is on a slider we pointed lights at it like lots of lights and there's almost no other point to this shot other than really just seeing how cool it would look from that crazy inside perspective we had a couple different versions you know pull versus push moves but other than that there's no subject in the middle we literally just got the shot to see if you could get it and you couldn't with any other traditional lens even a GoPro wouldn't fit in the opening this lens is fitting through all right so this was just fun and I think a lot of that's just cuz it's really colorful and I was hungry but I think it would be even more awesome with maybe the robot or with possibly a true slow motion camera like a phantom or something crazy but the setup is similar it's got a lot of light and then just timing the MMS falling over and spilling basically over the lens and that was the challenge is to time it right so this was shot in slow motion the red does handle 120 FPS at 4k so that was not a problem but we had plenty of other versions and other bloopers with this shot with the mm spilling everywhere and weird timing because it's human error you know you're not gonna get it perfect every time but the final version it couldn't have worked out any better with the mm bouncing pretty much right over the lens just like a transition all right shout out to Andy so this one actually is inspired by that viral video where it looks like it goes through this brush with all the bristles this one just fake plants so for this one I was thinking we were gonna use the light on the front of the lens for this one but after a few test shots it turned out to definitely still be too harsh like a spotlight so we turn that off and basically double down on lighting the environment a lot better so there's still a ton of light here and the original shot was actually pulling the move on the slider backwards so the fake grass would sort of naturally move over to cover up the lens as it goes past so the final shot you see is just playing it back reversed and then the lighting on the Android at the end as it dims out that was just timed by hand just by moving the light I was holding 100% practical effects hundred-percent Pro blends so this was a horizontal slide of course as you could tell similar lighting setups the last one but just moving the lights higher up so they didn't glare off this matte black keyboard so much and then you can actually see the RGB lights better I'm actually honestly surprised they showed up on video so well and then just getting super close to the keyboard kind of like you really couldn't with any other lens so that was a fun one the perspective we imagined when we were dreaming up this shot is like the zipper sort of opening past you like you're this tiny like a bug again and this giant zipper is sort of chasing you away the tough part is obviously sense of the depth of field is so shallow it's super easy to go in or out of focus if the timing which is by hand isn't absolutely perfect so there's plenty of takes of that where my hand goes in and out of focus so I didn't worry about that too much instead the more interesting part is making it feel like the zipper is closing around you and being so low to the ground like only the probe lens can definitely help with that so this is the last and I'll say the most difficult one just because it's entirely handheld and free-flowing and it is not a lightweight camera but the perspective is basically as if you're you know attached to the marker like you're a bug holding on to the marker for dear life as I write something and it kind of turned out pretty well and you could probably do this with another 24 millimeter lens if the minimum focus distance was close enough but you know that was fun to shoot anyway but yeah that is the probe lens it's it's clearly not a conventional lens and there's almost no reason to actually go get one you kind of have to invent ways to use it but those couple times where you do actually find a good use for it and it turns out to work really well it's so worth it so that that's what makes this dope tech so of course now that you've seen it on video you'll be the first to recognize it when you see a shot occasionally from it in a future video kind of like the robot shots you guys recognize I promise not to overuse it but I'm super glad we have it thanks for watching catch you guys in the next one peace