Videographer Devin Graham of Devin Supertramp has published a new video in which he unboxes $221,000 worth of Leica Summilux-C lenses. "When deciding to purchase these lenses, it was a six month process," said Graham, who also explained while retrieving a lens box, "These are like a holy experience to me."
Graham chose the Summilux lenses over Leica's Thalia lenses due to their ability to shoot at a lower key stop, he explains in the video. The Summilux lenses were used in several notable productions recently, including: Stranger Things, Beauty and the Beast (2017), and Justice League. Overall, the purchase and subsequent unboxing involves half a dozen lenses: 16mm, 21mm, 29mm, 40mm, 50mm, and 75mm.
And if the video above isn't quite enough expensive lens unboxing for you, check out Graham's video from January below, in which he unboxed $25K worth of Sigma Cine lenses:
Granted these are some nice LIeca lenses, but I can't help but think what I could have done with $221k. LIke buy a house, take some nice vacations and maybe some more lenses for my D750 and XT-2 (and probably still have some left over).
DPR's teaser headline notwithstanding, but where was the unboxing of the Summilux lenses? What I saw were the Sigma lenses being exposed to view along with an explanation of the rationale for the move to the Leica lenses.
Watching him operating and struggling with the camera on the steadicam rig was quite interesting :-) Putting these lenses on a Red system always feels weird to me.
21mm is 21mm. The RED cameras have a smaller sensor than a FF camera, so there will be a magnification factor. The main differences in cinema lenses: The focus doesn't "breathe". If you run a non- cine lens from closest focus to infinity, the angle of view will shift slightly. The focus is precise. The apertures are clickless, no stops at each aperture. The apertures (T-Stops on a cine lens) are very accurate.
Devin wants to get into more cinematic stuff versus making vapid Youtube videos, but vapid Youtube videos is what got him to where he is in the first place. He's inspiring to me as a filmmaker simply for his hustle--and should be to others as well for the same reason.
Its an established fact now that the western world has become the safe haven of terrorists and financial offenders.....why don't these western countries extradite those bank robbers to the Indians........now it's clear who is trying to escape.......
Now ,you are blaming the west! Star your extraditing procedure.It must be started from guilty source. You were asking about bank robbery and I said that you are better at that.We dont need to learn any of that.
For your information the extradition procedure has already started, hope you get your facts right next time..........and about robbery of Indian resources , please read some history first before commenting.......
The question is: who is funding all that gear? I understand this is a review but why get them when youtube compression is going to degrade the quality of the results to a point anyhow?
Devin's revenue streams are (in no particular order): 1) Youtube ad revenue, 2) stock footage for high-end displays, 3) sponsored videos, and 4) commercial contract work. He is making plenty to purchase those lenses.
Yes, and i have no problem with that... after all it is a website about gear. But... unboxing videos? that is pretty low. I am pretty sure there are lots of unboxing orders of much more than a quarter million worth of cinema grade gear at every big movie studio from time to time.
I don't find the thing interesting to be shared ... OK the guy is happy, i would be too, he shared his moment with his friend, all cool. But that being a world-wide event :) ... well... as i said, i a pretty low, low for DPR...
Congratulations Devon. Awesome for you man and thanks for taking the time to share such a rare experience with the rest of us. You should be very proud to have built your career to the degree that you can enjoy the best. Bravo Devon!
I'm happy for him and his production company. It's always fun to get new tools/toys, especially when they are the cream of the crop. So I don't say this because of sour grapes, but it strikes me as odd that he keeps saying he picked these lenses because someone else uses it or likes it. Never heard him say HE liked that particular focal length. Kinda like driving a Ferrari because a lot of winning racers have the same car. But that's no guarantee that you will be as good. That's a hell of a lot of money to pay for something because someone else likes it versus because YOU love it and had to have it. Maybe he does fantastic work and more power to him for being able to get these jewels. Just was expecting a better reasoning as to why he selected these.
That looks like a lousy box. Surely not Leica standards. I bet you have to send something in that box via airmail, or international, and it does not get to destination in one piece.
Let's see... mounting your own Leica cine lenses, some of the top shelf glass nonetheless, onto a RED with a Helium 8K S35 makes one "not a real director"?
"...anger leads to hate, hate leads to suffering"... so much anger here! Yeah yeah, unboxing videos are borderline blasphemy these days. That said... if you know anything about this dude, Devin Graham, then you know that he puts out more creative work and actually uses all of his gear more than the overwhelming majority of folks on DPR forums combined. And unboxing a rather crazy premium cine lens package is somewhat entertaining, not that different then someone showing off their new 911 Turbo for the first time. No biggie, chill ;)
“And unboxing a rather crazy premium cine lens package is somewhat entertaining, not that different then someone showing off their new 911 Turbo for the first time.” To be honest... both are pretty boring to watch: though good on Devin for his work, etc. still doesn’t make unboxing videos worthwhile!
I enjoy unboxing my own equipment more than watching others do it, but seeing that it seems be a craze that is catching on, how about an unboxing forum on DPR?
What is it about all this unboxing videos on YouTube? I just don't get what's the deal about watching someone else unboxing something. Maybe I'm already too old?
Now the real question is does the Leica set look better enough to justify the price? The standard size of the Leica's is definatly a pro level advantage.
Peter Jackson might have a more expensive kit. Anyway, if someone is buying equipment for work, sometimes the equipment is expensive so that's to be expected/not a big deal.
Unboxing videos are worship ritual to the god of capitalism where is it more about the procurement and display of the item than the item's utility. What an ephemeral and distinctly mortal "holy experience"...
Well, although a capitalism might very well aknowledge these are beautiful lenses, the first thing he'll tell you is that he did an investment . He invested in a better tool that will help him leverage his skill in order to create better movies and so he expects to make more money and a return on his investment within 6 years. Now, the word you're looking for is consumerism, but it's not as fashion an negatively connoted.
Actually, we're still doing reviews. The next phase, which is full, in-depth lens reviews with proper data in them, is a lot harder to figure out, and takes longer than 300-word news stories. But they're on the way!
@Barney You last full lens review was the Sigma 85mm F1.4 on Feb 8, 2017. So you haven't published a lens review in over a year. How can that be considered a site for lens reviews? You have NINE full time writers for this site, but you don't even publish an article a day. And by article I mean a text that is over a page long and required some testing/research. Press releases and crosslinks to other content can be nice but where are the indepth articles that we all miss?
Like I said - they're on the way. And we don't have nine full-time writers, incidentally. Our Editorial team consists of seven content-creators, which includes Rishi and our news editor, DL. We also have a small number of external freelance writers. Of those people, DL is based in New York and doesn't create review content, Rishi is working on a large number of projects including several outside of our team (and including lens reviews, incidentally), and the rest of us have plenty of other responsibilities beyond just writing for the site. This can sometimes mean that any one of us might go days without publishing anything under our own byeline. It doesn't mean we're not busy.
We're actually posting more in-depth content (by your definition) than ever before. The overall rhythm of publication has increased a lot over the past year, so it might be getting a little harder to find - please let me know if this is the case.
Since Allison actually pulled these numbers this morning, I'll share some stats with you - this is for February:
Total pieces of content published: 156
Of which, 122 were classed as 'news', four were in-depth interviews with senior executives, three were opinion articles, and six were reviews. We posted four sample galleries in February, created two videos, wrote two hands-on product overviews, and we updated two buying guides. On top of that were several explainers, guest posts, and various other articles.
Of the 156 total posts, 42 were about cameras, 24 were about lenses, and another 24 were about accessories. The rest covered emerging technologies, smartphones and general interest.
I should add that February was a short, relatively quiet month.
@Barney Britton I appreciate your effort, and this is certainly more than I thought, although I think especially February was a busy release month. But according to your stats you published 34 non-news articles in February, which is roughly an article a day. Is that a lot, for such a team size? Also, maybe I am mistaken, but those two videos were sponsored content right? Do you really want to count those into your publication body?
This critique is certainly harsh, and I do think you work hard, but it just seems that this site could publish so much more if the focus was somewhat different.
"this site could publish so much more if the focus was somewhat different"
We could very easily publish more if we focused on short, lightweight content without much original in-house analysis :) Also bear in mind that there's a hell of a lot of time and effort put into some of those 'news' articles. Just look up the Sony a7III launch article for one example.
I certainly take your point, and publishing more lens reviews (just to pick up on the original point) is a major priority, but one which (trust me) takes a lot of groundwork to even get started, let alone keep running on an ongoing basis.
Re: sponsored video content, our long-form videos are funded externally but we have complete editorial control over them and they're created by our in-house team (with a small team of trusted external collaborators). I would hope that they add value as part of the general content mix. They're very distinct from advert or advertorial (which I would not count).
This is a gear site. I am here for gear information/reviews, I neither want or need content, that isn't allowed to mention drawabacks or compare featured products to other products.
And if I want to learn something about bike building I have other and more in depth sources. Thanks but no thanks
I am a daily visitor to the site, and I quite enjoy the news/content mix. Looking forward to the promised lens reviews! (Just one thought: Maybe you should not spend so much time and effort on those Sony launches, and reserve some for other stories. ;-) )
It's been a very very long time since we were just a gear site... if we were still posting content in the same way we did ten years ago we wouldn't exist as a commercially viable website, I'm afraid.
Barney, thanks for engaging. Of course I want lens reviews. But lenses are such a huge challenge as there are so many and so varied. For example, many will want 24-70 and 70-200 reviews. Not me, give me a Voigtlander 40/1.2 FE mount review. There in lies the challenge. I assume that as a commercial site you have to justify time spent with potential traffic generated. BTW - I'd far prefer reviews of RAW editors :)
There was a time when DPReview was regularly reviewing lenses (like Photozone or Lenstip), and it's since that time it has stuck on my daily viewing routine. But I've forgotten when that time was. :)
@Barney "It's been a very very long time since we were just a gear site... if we were still posting content in the same way we did ten years ago we wouldn't exist as a commercially viable website, I'm afraid." If that implies that you need sponsored content to be a commercially viable website, then please rethink your business model. I don’t know who thought this was a good idea, but since when is it ok for a reviewer to do advertisement. You are lucky, that you have build up trust over many years, but that is imho a no go. In which other industry is that ok? Imagine a car reviewer would produce Toyota ads, would you still trust him? And I get that you think you are not paid for reviews, but for other content, that has no effect whatsoever. But just think about that again, even if that is true it just damages your reputation. I would much rather pay a monthly fee, than see you ever do sponsored content again.
I dont want to teach you how to works, but it looks like in your new formula works well with the exception of some content (like this one) that generates a lot of negative comments while others are very positively welcomed. You may need to adjust your selection of news. On the other side one full year with no lens reviews while a lot of people start bashing lens reviews from dxomark does not look like a smart move. There is a big void that someone have to fill!
C'mon guys.... Your comments distract DPR's staff from gear testing. Btw I would be very happy if I was an investor in DPR regarding its huge appreciation and awareness and influential position comparing to the number of its staff. More efficient than Canon's or Adobe's...
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