Other: The power and flexibility of an ENG camera and zoom lens

[Doug Jensen]

Cinema cameras cetainly have their place, but I gotta say how great it is to be primarily shooting with my Z750 and a Fujinon ENG lens again. Yesterday i was shooting a SpaceX booster coming back into port after landing on a barge hundreds of miles out at sea, and it was such a good example of how I could never have gotten the variety of shots I needed for the client in such a short amount of time. The wind was blowing 25 mph and spitting some rain, i had to move locations a couple of times, and there's no time for lens changes and nobody is going to stop and wait. You either get the shots you need to make an edit or you don't. I kept thinking, how the hell would I be getting the coverage with a S35 or FF camera? I love this business.

BTW, zooms are "in" again. Now that most people can't do them any more, clients see a zoom as something different. What goes around comes around.

[cyvideo]

Yes it's nice to have that long arm to be able to reach out and pull your subject in ever so smoothly to give your viewers a changing perspective that you don't see so much these days. Other than in sport where the long zoom is still king regardless of sensor size.

Chris Young

[Doug Jensen]

Another lost art is the ability to do a nice slow creep-in on an interview soundbite. You never see that anymore, but I still love it. It helps if the shooter has some editing experience and can listen for the beginning of a good soundbite and then time the move accordingly. It can't just be a random zoom in, it has to be driven by the soundbite itself. Especially effective when you see the tears start to well up -- get ready to start the move! Obviously, a similar effect can be done by keyframing a 4K clip on an HD timeline but it doesn't look as organic and the giveaway is the DoF doesn't change during the zoom. You can't beat a real optical zoom for that kind of effect.