EOS M - Mosaic Engineering Anti-Aliasing VAF Filter

[alpicat]

A few months ago @regularfellow mentioned he'd put an anti-aliasing filter on his EOS M to get rid of the aliasing and moire. I managed to find a cheap one on ebay recently, so have tried the same thing. I got the Mosaic Engineering VAF-50D Optical Anti-Aliasing Filter for the Canon 50D.

I got round to making a video with it yesterday using mv1080p rewire mode (full sensor 3x3 line skipping), 14 bit lossless raw @ 1736x1158. It works fine, it doesn't get rid of the aliasing 100% - still there in extreme situations, but the reduction is substantial and youtube compression seems to get rid of it completely. I stuck the filter into an EF-M to EF adapter using sellotape. It's impossible to fit it directly in front of the sensor or in a Viltrox speedbooster as it's too large - I actually tried to fit it by cutting the filter's frame off, but the glass started cracking straight away so stopped that attempt immediately (you can see a crack in the photo below on the top right corner of the fulter, but it doesn't affect the image luckily). 

This was shot using the 2nd May 2019 build from Danne.

[Danne]

Hehe, not bad actually. Nice hack 

[alpicat]

@Danne thanks! I was very intrigued by what @regularfellow did and I wanted to try it myself, was very lucky to find one 2nd hand Don't know if mosaic engineering has them in stock any longer as their website says backordered for all their filters. Hopefully one day they'll make one specifically for the EOS M and maybe M50.

[andy kh]

Wil this vaf work in 720p 50 fps 3X3 sampling? If so i want to invest in it. I love slomo video and i have been thinking of buying a used 5d iii at the same time i love my 70 d's auto focus so if the vaf works in 720p 3X3 sampling i wil buy a vaf instead of buying a 5d iii

[Kharak]

I thought the VAF's had to be placed precisely to each its own designated Sensor, so the filter "fills in" the gabs that will cause the Aliasing and Moire? No ?

[alpicat]

@Kharak - you're right, I was wondering about that but I took the risk and bought this anyway as it didn't cost me much. I wouldn't pay full price for a brand new filter unless it were specifically designed for the EOS M - I'm sure that would work better, reducing aliasing even further. As it is now I have no way of aligning the filter accurately and it sits quite far from the sensor. This probably affects image quality slightly, but it seems good enough to me so far.

@andy kh  I'll have to try that but I've never been able to get higher frame rates to work on the EOS M without errors requiring a restart and corrupt footage. I guess it should work though if it's 3x3 line skipping. Also there's a VAF filter specifically for the 70D which helps. 

[Danne]

How about 48fps in this version? Or even 50fps mv720p maybe.
https://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=9741.msg208959#msg208959

[alpicat]

@Danne I'll try it tomorrow, see if I have better luck this time!

[andy kh]

@andy kh  a I guess it should work though if it's 3x3 line skipping. Also there's a VAF filter specifically for the 70D which helps.

im guessing the same that it should work in3X3 sampling 720p mode and im aware of the vaf for the 70D but i think its expensive and not worth to buy a new one