Education on Lenses

[realgray]

My first post! Hey everybody, thinking of getting a 35 mm adapter for my camera and with that comes a whole lot of choices regarding lenses. Does anyone know of any good resources for lens education out there. Doesn't matter if it's free or not, I just want to increase my education on the various lenses out there.

[Ryanwar7]

Welcome to the forum.

The first thing you should do is read all of the stickies at the top of the different topics. For example http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=51963 (http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=51963)

Also one thing that I have found helpful is using searching through old threads that people have made. Most the of the questions that you can think of have already been asked many times. If you don't want to wait 60 seconds between searches, just go to google and type in "site:dvxuser.com" (without quotes) followed by what you are searching for. For example: site:dvxuser 35mm lens info .

This site and the people who frequent it have an amazing amount of information and can be extremely helpful. Take your time, do a lot of reading and searching, and you will learn so much more than you could even think to ask about. Have fun!

Cheers,
Ryan

[Jeff Anderson]

http://www.kenrockwell.com/nikon/nikkor.htm

[Joseph Stunzi]

Feel free to PM and I'll chat with you over the phone about all of this!

[dadoboy]

Dang, Joseph you're too nice :).
I would buy a cheap $50 Canon or Nikon or Minolta manual focus camera with a 50mm lens from Ebay and start from there. You'll see what you need pretty quick - wider, longer, more macro, etc... I would also suggest a photography class, but you may be in more of a rush than that.

[Joseph Stunzi]

Buy glass with manual aperture control. Canon glass doesn't always have that... especially the EOS lenses. FD might though! I'm a Nikon fanboy myself.

[David Jackson]

Thanks, Jeff, now I've just spent the last 6 hours reading about Nikkors. I wish the guy had a little bit more info about a prime set for video/motion. The 'manual focus' section offers some good suggestions, but on a still it's easy to just keep the shutter open longer and use the slower lenses he picks.

Now I don't know if Speed First is still the best policy. I do want an 85/f1.4 though!

[realgray]

Thanks guys for the help. I've been filming with a Sony HVR-V1U for quite a while. I transcode the HDV to prores to remove the pulldown to get some great 24p images but the DOF is terrible if not impossible. I also have a few Nikkon still lenses and got a burnin desire for that kind of control. I've been reading the forum for hours (which is easy to do :) ), and now I'm trying to figure out what adapter to go with(there are a lot). The V1U is not a good camera for low light so light loss is a concern. Have most of you been using still lenses in your adapters or has anyone had luck using Cinema lenses like an Arri? Is there a big difference? Thanks again for the help and thanks to the guys that started this forum.

[Joseph Stunzi]

Thanks guys for the help. I've been filming with a Sony HVR-V1U for quite a while. I transcode the HDV to prores to remove the pulldown to get some great 24p images but the DOF is terrible if not impossible. I also have a few Nikkon still lenses and got a burnin desire for that kind of control. I've been reading the forum for hours (which is easy to do :) ), and now I'm trying to figure out what adapter to go with(there are a lot). The V1U is not a good camera for low light so light loss is a concern. Have most of you been using still lenses in your adapters or has anyone had luck using Cinema lenses like an Arri? Is there a big difference? Thanks again for the help and thanks to the guys that started this forum.

I urge you to call me seriously Gray.... typing everything you need to know up would take hours. Cinema lenses are pricey to own. $100k a set for the quality ones that are respected within the filmmaking community. Nonetheless, most people use still lenses or rent cinema lenses. There are significant differences. The way you rotate the lens to focus is different. The amount of rotation needed to go from one end to the other end of the lens is significantly different. The focusing mechanism (external vs internal) and whether the lens physically breathes is different. Cinema lenses shouldn't optically breath either! It's unreasonable to think that you're going to shoot with cinema lenses unless you're a rental house or one rich dude. If you're shooting a feature and have a budget to rent some... then perhaps.