stephen natanson
Member
Thank you very much Greg, Jarred and Evin. Much appreciate the various links and also the photos. Very interesting and quite a lot of choice. Goes to show that I have been shooting too much video as I didn't have any idea that Arri had a tilt shift mechanism for PL mount lenses. I presume, although it is not clear in the documentation they give, that you have to remove the original PL mount of the camera to be able to use it. Otherwise it would only be usable for macro work.
Wonderfull if Red could build something similar. Simple, cheap tilt shift front lens mount. I guess asking too much. Fancy bit of machining.
Lensbaby is just the sort of simple, optically horrible thing, which can produce wonderfull results in particular situations. Cheap and simple. Fascinating, definatedly something to play around with. Just the sort of thing that one would not use shooting 35mm where experiments are very expensive. This is where RED will shine. Freedom to do things that previously were impossible or at least very difficult.
Another blow for freedom are those small, reasonably fast, light zooms that you have posted. The 17-35mm F2.8 looks like a perfect solution for most of the s35 shooting. Wonder what the Tstop value is (what is the effective maximum aperture) and how sharp they are compared to primes? You are going to lose something, but how much and in which part of the zoom range?
The other DX lens 18-200 ED,AFS-VR is an incredible range for such a tiny lens so I presume the quality is not up to scratch, does any one know or have used one or read a review? I found one negative review (Weaknesses = NONE !?!? How about severe light fall-off up to at least f/8, which Nikon Capture cannot correct (PTLens can)? How about strong pin cushion distorsion above 30mm? How about loss of sharpness in the corners (nothing can correct that)? Compare with your 80-400 VR to see what I mean. With my 80-400 VR I never had to fix distorsion or vignetting, nor did I notice corner softness on digital. The 18-200 has its strengths and I'm keeping mine, but "no weaknesses" I think is a strong exaggeration.) and several positive ones. I wonder what the actual size of the DX format is compared to S35mm film should be considerably smaller, maybe someone con provide that off the top of their head? Probably the difference would fix the vignetting problem the review talks about and may also resolve the corner softness and some of the pincushion distortion. I checked the Fstops 3.5-5.6 not bad considering it sells for around €900. Using or adapting lenses like these for run of the mill work and renting lenses for special higher budget projects looks like the way to go.
Depending how sensitive the sensor is (this is crucial for the RED camera) a lot could be done with these lenses. If the sensor is not very sensitive than the saving on lenses will not be worth the extra cost and time of extra lighting equipment and crew needed for interiors and night work where you wouldn't be able to depend on available light much.
Appropos for those who are worried about the DOF in 35mm, (besides the fact that people used to work this way for years and not worry too much about it) it is only really a problem with fast medium to longer focal length lenses. So the more the sensitive the sensor the more you can stop down the lens to a comfortable DOF. In fact slow zooms such as the DX above are quite difficult to use to send the background completely out of focus.
Thanks again for the information. I for one would like to avoid having to spend a fortune on expensive, heavy, large cinema lenses for my day to day work. Less cost, less weight, less people more freedom is what I want.
Wonderfull if Red could build something similar. Simple, cheap tilt shift front lens mount. I guess asking too much. Fancy bit of machining.
Lensbaby is just the sort of simple, optically horrible thing, which can produce wonderfull results in particular situations. Cheap and simple. Fascinating, definatedly something to play around with. Just the sort of thing that one would not use shooting 35mm where experiments are very expensive. This is where RED will shine. Freedom to do things that previously were impossible or at least very difficult.
Another blow for freedom are those small, reasonably fast, light zooms that you have posted. The 17-35mm F2.8 looks like a perfect solution for most of the s35 shooting. Wonder what the Tstop value is (what is the effective maximum aperture) and how sharp they are compared to primes? You are going to lose something, but how much and in which part of the zoom range?
The other DX lens 18-200 ED,AFS-VR is an incredible range for such a tiny lens so I presume the quality is not up to scratch, does any one know or have used one or read a review? I found one negative review (Weaknesses = NONE !?!? How about severe light fall-off up to at least f/8, which Nikon Capture cannot correct (PTLens can)? How about strong pin cushion distorsion above 30mm? How about loss of sharpness in the corners (nothing can correct that)? Compare with your 80-400 VR to see what I mean. With my 80-400 VR I never had to fix distorsion or vignetting, nor did I notice corner softness on digital. The 18-200 has its strengths and I'm keeping mine, but "no weaknesses" I think is a strong exaggeration.) and several positive ones. I wonder what the actual size of the DX format is compared to S35mm film should be considerably smaller, maybe someone con provide that off the top of their head? Probably the difference would fix the vignetting problem the review talks about and may also resolve the corner softness and some of the pincushion distortion. I checked the Fstops 3.5-5.6 not bad considering it sells for around €900. Using or adapting lenses like these for run of the mill work and renting lenses for special higher budget projects looks like the way to go.
Depending how sensitive the sensor is (this is crucial for the RED camera) a lot could be done with these lenses. If the sensor is not very sensitive than the saving on lenses will not be worth the extra cost and time of extra lighting equipment and crew needed for interiors and night work where you wouldn't be able to depend on available light much.
Appropos for those who are worried about the DOF in 35mm, (besides the fact that people used to work this way for years and not worry too much about it) it is only really a problem with fast medium to longer focal length lenses. So the more the sensitive the sensor the more you can stop down the lens to a comfortable DOF. In fact slow zooms such as the DX above are quite difficult to use to send the background completely out of focus.
Thanks again for the information. I for one would like to avoid having to spend a fortune on expensive, heavy, large cinema lenses for my day to day work. Less cost, less weight, less people more freedom is what I want.
