Reservations to close...

An 18-85 zoom is the perfect range for an S35 zoom. It covers 90% of of the focal lengths generally used.

Wide angle lenses are generally the toughest to design. As has been said repeatedly, the 300 is the just the first lens that'll be available. There's no other significance to it being first.
 
in general : 18-100mm, 20-60, 20-100,17-102 zooms are the hollyood standard for 35mm camera on tripod/dolly - that ranges works very good shooting interiors ... same lens works good outside too .... many times depending on shots for the day etc one may switch to a 25-250mm ... for exteriors many times you'll find "A" camera with the shorter zoom and "B" camera with the longer ...

for hand held or steadicam you would switch out to prime or a very short zoom ( 3X zoom range)
 
EL_STUPIDO said:
Can someone point me to a good website to get more educated on that front?
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No need to leave DVX User for that. Just check out this excellent thread on lenses right here: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=63803

At 390 posts it is a long read, but if you're serious about learning, read it, and basically all your questions will be answered there. There have been 15,536 views of that thread to date...make yours number 15,537 and you won't be disappointed.

Gibby
RED #8
www.cut4.tv
www.4umat.com
 
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Doc Holliday said:
stupid question. I have not shot 35mm in quite some time. How does 18-85mm compare anglewise to say the dvx 100 zoom?

thx
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The DVX lens is about a 32mm-325mm for comparison.
 
Just a reminder, RED ONE uses a Super35 sized sensor, which is smaller than a full 35mm still camera frame. So the 18-85mm zoom is actually roughly equal to a 27-125mm on a 35mm still camera. The 35mm equivalent focal lengths often specified for video cameras (like 32-325mm for the DVX) is for the 35mm still camera format.

Proteus made a very nice summary of these conversion factors here:

http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?t=64685
 
Good Point tim.. that is assuming the Red lenses are marked for Super 35mm instead of 35mm... and of course that all goes out the window when your shooting windowed mode 2k.. I wonder if the Red lenses will have both markings , windowed and standard.
 
New Shipping Dates?

New Shipping Dates?

Maybe this has been up for a while, and I didn't notice, but if you look at the reservations page on the RED site (http://red.com/reservations.htm) it quotes an estimated ship date for both the camera and 300mm lens of "end of 2006" (it was originally "early 2007" wasn't it?) and "end of 2007" for the zoom lens.

Things are obviously moving fast!
 
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I know the specs aren't nailed down, but I have to ask anyway: will the 18-85 be light enough/short enough to make it a reasonable lens for handheld operation? Or is this a lens built for sticks/dolly?

Also, to ask a question that's already been asked, should we be hoping for 4K imagery shot with the lens to be made available before reservations close?

Sorry for re-asking questions, I'm just hoping for a different response. :)
 
On a 35mm movie camera, the DVX lens would be considered about a 19-190. So 18-85 is a pretty good wide angle and a modest telephoto. With the shallow DOF, you don't need so much telephoto for cinema work, so 18-85 will probably be a real workhorse as far as appropriate focal lengths go.
 
It would be harder to go any wider than 18mm without making the lens more complex, larger and heavier. I think it's an excellent range.
 
Jarred Land said:
Good Point tim.. that is assuming the Red lenses are marked for Super 35mm instead of 35mm... and of course that all goes out the window when your shooting windowed mode 2k.. I wonder if the Red lenses will have both markings , windowed and standard.
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Jared,
I think it would be the equivalent as shooting s16 as it would be in windowed... or slightly larger than a 2/3 inch video camera.
Most s16 camera have 11-110 mm lenses as a standard, the previous generation of Regular 16 mm lenses were 10-100 Zeiss for example. They had to go longer for s16 to cover the image area. The reason you would want the millimeters to stay the same is so you can figure out DOF on a Samcine or similar DOF calculator. Depth of field is a matter of the length of the lens and apeture no matter what your image area is. Lenses made for 16mm will work on 35mm once you get into the longer end say over 40mm. Most 35mm lenses work on 16 it is just more telephoto. If you calculate for compensation of image area you get into a fuzzy physics problem.

If you shoot a Hasselblad with a 60mm x 60mm image you get a "normal" lens of about 80mm. So a really wide lens in this format is say 30 or 40mm. This is why the 65 mm Arri has so shallow a DOF, the movie "Far and Away" was shot in 65mm and American Cinematographer had a great article about the problems they had in keeping the DOF acceptable for projection. Making focus pulling very critical.

Less DOF as the image gets bigger and more as it gets smaller. This is why we see dust specks on the front element of our little 1/3 inch chip cameras when we stop down, like the DVX etc. Usually the suggestion is to use as much ND or fast shutter speed to keep the DOF a shallow as possible to avoid this.

Depth of field calculation is important in 35mm so you know the range of what is generally percieved as sharp. The proper millimeter markings are crucial for the focus puller in 16 and especially in 35mm the only diference between the 2 is what they call the circle of confusion. Which I won't talk about because it might confuse everyone... :)

So much for a tinfoil hat moment!

briferg
 
With technology forcing the average user's mindset towards a skewed concept of focal length [consider 1.6x crop DSLRs, 2/3" HD sensors, little camcorders, little point-and-shoot cameras, 16mm film cameras], many forget just how wide an 18mm lens in super 35mm really is.
 
Definitely. But if using it in "windowed sensor" mode, it isn't going to be that wide anymore, it will experience the same "crop factor" that we get when using 35mm lenses on a 16mm camera. 18mm is nice & wide on S35, but it's not wide at all on 16mm.
 
Of course. That could almost add value to the lens in my opinion. Lets say that the user is shooting 2K for this mystery shoot.

They have an 18-85mm at S35 outputting to scaled 2K. They can also set it to crop 2K from a S16 frame area, effectively increasing the focal length to 36-170mm [I forget if the 16-35 conversion is 2x... if not, I made those numbers up]. Obviously there are DOF differences between utilizing the different sensor sizes, but that could be taken care of with a little creative aperture work. So now this 2K shoot has 18-170mm all in one magic lens.

If my logic is flawed, I'm not surprised. Stranger things have happened. Either way, don't forget that both scaled 2K and windowed 2K will be possible.
 
Actually this does sound plausible. It would be cool too. Imagine shooting a wide shot of the Serengeti on the 18-85mm at S35 scaled to 2K, then when you spot a cheetah going on the hunt, switch to 2k windowed and presto you have a multiplier on your lens and 120 fps to boot!

This is why I wish there were more controls on the operator side of the camera instead of the back. I hope there are switches that let you control the crop/scaling directly instead of going through a menu.
 
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