Do You Own Cine Glass?

Im just thinking about the 'non synch wide' .. is this something in your lexicon? going far enough out that the shot can be pasted over any part of the chat without seeing a mismatch of flapping lips. AFAIK it is as crucial as wildtrack for pasting together a coherant bit of chat in 'television' or anything else with spoken sound - but if all is to music it matters not :)
 
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Run&Gun said:
I don't know if you pull the servo grip off of your Cabrio, Charles, but if you leave it on and and your guys use those servo's to change focal length, then the Canon could work for you. I'm pretty sure the Canon's have a similar feature that my Fuji ENG lenses have, where you can set end stops on the front and/or back end of the lens. They aren't physical stops, just setting a window for the servo travel, but serves the same purpose. I used to use it when I had a matte box on my W/A in certain scenarios, so that I wouldn't zoom out too far and vignette.
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Yes, I am aware that this functionality exists in the Canon zoom servo. Unfortunately I have the servo removed for nearly everything I shoot, because it's just in the way most of the time, using external motors as we do. It is possible to jack into the handgrip and take control of the zoom function via our remote, but it's more efficient just to take the whole thing off and install a zoom motor to keep everything in the family (and the Preston motor is a bit more precise than the servo).

On the very odd occasion I'll use my Cabrio in a run and gun or doc type situation and I have to remember that I even own the handgrip! I'd say I've used it three times in maybe 5 years now.
 
CharlesPapert said:
And here's my dirty secret (bucking the current wave)
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Less than you'd think.

These days, I end up talking to people working on all kinds of productions, and the reality is that the Angenieux or Fujinon zooms that people "have on the truck for emergencies" are actually being used to shoot quite large amounts of some quite high end shows because it's such a massive timesaver. Nobody notices. I'm frequently asked not to publish that fact in relation to any particular production, and I would be very prepared to believe that there are people beard-stroking over images they believe were shot on some expensive-as-a-house set of primes which were actually shot on a Cabrio. With a warm black pro-mist. And some atmos.

The zooms survive on the basis of being technically excellent. Primes, too often, do not, and as a result are frequently outperformed by zooms.

I have a quote from a very senior person, which I wish I could publish, about how a very prominent name actor noticed with approbation that a sequence was being shot much more quickly than usual, making life much easier for the actors, and asked which camera was in use. Of course, it wasn't the camera. It was the Fuji zoom.

P
 
morgan_moore said:
I guess it depeds on your weath and place in the industry. Im at a level of poverty that if Im gonna spend $5k on something I need it to be a 'commercial tool' that will pay for itself.
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I feel you, Sam. I appreciate saving money for other people just as much as I do for myself. IIRC, Josh has basically a complete set of sony GM primes and zooms (8+ lenses), so if he's considering a cine zoom then he's looking for something extra

Im suggesting that if your lenses are to be a 'commercial tool' then you need to deal in sets that match physically and optically starting at a minimum of 18s35 or 24ff, ideally 15/2s35 20ff.
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It seems to me that the budget-conscious way to achieve the stated goal is a Canon 18-80 (poor man's cabrio) on a c200 or some other s35 camera. Full-frame doesn't seem to have the right lens available now, certainly not for $5k, outside of the Sony 28-135 which has major drawbacks.

Then to round out the range of the 18-80 you could get the Canon cn-e 70-200 and a Tokina cine 11-16. And a handful of fast primes for low-light or selective focus.

But I'd get the 18-80 for starters.

I won't be getting any cine zooms because i don't need or want them, but it's an interesting problem. I have the 28-135 and rarely use it. If sony comes out with a better midrange zoom I'll consider it

I feel quite strongly.. having peddalled throgh a bit of YT and cvp lens page that there is being a lot of fools gold sold - lens 'sets' that will not make a return and leave the buyer in a bad place financially.
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Most definitely. I think that newsshooter is still pretty honest though

I did watch a dzo video which had a pair starting at 20. That is quite an interesting thing. But the chap pumping them up made me feel ill.. like 'you will get noticed haveing white lenses' 'no one will notice the reflections' - I spend my time trying not to be noticed.. and everyone director, mother, client, will see reflections.
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Yeah, having a white lens is foolish. Or a white "stormtrooper" camera... I feel like there are 2 types of cameramen: those who care about how they look and those who care about how their footage looks
 
That's funny, Phil! And yes, I know a number of other DP's and shows using the modern lightweight zooms for sure. I think the point I was trying to make about my "dirty secret" is that I don't make a secret out of it. I am tasked with being as efficient as possible on nearly every job I do, and part of that for me is working with equipment that doesn't throw up obstacles, which most vintage lenses do. I mentioned earlier how Speeds require the motors to be shifted around every time you swing I lens, I forgot to say that they also bind when you use a clip-on mattebox, requiring more torque out of the motors. Who has time to deal with this?!

While the Fujinon gets little love from the cool kids (it falls into "boring/sterile/clinical" territory), the Angenieux products seem to avoid this, mostly because they will flare more when asked to. Thus they are spoken fondly of as "Angies" like they are cute housepets or something. I shot (and surely posted here at some point) a blind test between the Cabrio, one of my Aluras and a couple of "Angies" and no-one has yet to properly identify which lens is which...that tells me everything I need to know.
 
Coming from my low point even Ive bigged up my 35-70 as apart from the opening master I coud cover most scenes with it without a lens change.

And id give some serious thought to getting onto my 18 quickly when going this two lens route.

Dare I say ive been adding grain vignette and flare in post for some time enough that many Insta heros were not walking yet.

Its how its done - shoot clean and fast dirty up in post!

==

I feel like there are 2 types of cameramen: those who care about how they look and those who care about how their footage looks

Shame Im the latter and the former makes more coin until you hit the CP level of grown up production. Production done my grown ups.

 
CharlesPapert said:
equipment that doesn't throw up obstacles, which most vintage lenses do.
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I have noticed people are becoming more willing to make much more public statements about the downsides of this old-lens obsession.

Often they're people who have rented some celebrated set of ancient greats and, giddy with excitement, run them wide open, only to belatedly realise that back in the day, "normal" was f/5.6, and at 2.0 "characterful" just becomes "bad", no matter how many oscar-winners they were used to shoot in the 70s.

People are more often reaching for sharp, modern lenses and filtering for effect with subtle grades of things like black satin, black glimmerglass and hollywood black magic, and leveraging the extra half an hour they can shoot into the dusk without the image turning into a bucket of goo. That ability is worth real money and people are starting to realise that.

In part this has been provoked by the (equally ill-advised) rush to full-frame, given that some of the most well-loved lenses don't cover big chips. Let's just say I talk to more people using Supreme Primes than DNAs, not that you can get either these days.

Zeiss CP series still seems to be the one to own, inasmuch as with the help of Tiffen you can make it do more or less anything - on any format you like. That's the boring, practical reality.

P
 
Phil Rhodes said:
I have noticed people are becoming more willing to make much more public statements about the downsides of this old-lens obsession.
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Glad to hear. And yes I generally shoot with either Glimmerglass or Black Diffusion FX to round off the crispiness of my lenses, unless I'm shooting a commercial that requires that look, or green screen work or the like.
 
Given a proper modern optical design the only advantage of a prime over a zoom is wider aperture and size/weight. Optical performance is not a significant factor or even a true differentiator.

I think it is telling that in the late 1990/early 2000s as Angenieux and then others were making lightweight zooms more available in the pro cine world, many productions were leaving the primes behind in favor of these versatile compact zooms. Back before RED ushered in mass ownership of S35 camera gear, many professionals chose to rent compact zooms and not bother with primes. With the advent of RED and others, an exponential wave of camera owners required S35 and now full frame glass. With the many startup lens companies or stills companies that have shifted into the cinema world, there are very few making lightweight zooms. This is mostly because it is far more expensive and complex to develop these compared to primes. There are a notable few such as Tokina, Sigma and more recently Laowa and DZOFilm who have entered the lower cost lightweight zoom arena, but that is a small number compared to the two dozen or so prime sets that have debuted in the past few years. In a few years from now it will be interesting to see which of these products survives in the market.

Back in the day as an indie cinema guy with a Super-16 package, I owned a set of primes as well as a zoom. There were jobs for each but rarely for both. It came down to a style for the work at hand.
 
Yep, good historical notes there Mitch!

In the 90's I spent a lot of times on primes because of Steadicam (and sometimes handheld) before the modern lightweight zooms appeared. It was a good exercise because it got me thinking for each setup which prime would be the optimal one to suggest for a given shot, mostly motivated by laziness (didn't want to put up a 32 or 35, balance it out and put the rig on only to realize it should be a 40). Also that same laziness made me less inspired to set up the lens then pull it off and mount it on a finder for rehearsals and put it back again after, so I trained myself to visualize the framelines of a given focal length to be able to give notes on lighting as we walked through a shot. I've definitely gotten rusty at it compared to when I was doing it day in and out. And I'm not joking, all of that "gained wisdom" was in the name of laziness.

Mitch, do you remember Panavision's initial attempts in those days at lightweight zooms, I think they were Canon still conversions? Like a 24-70. They were very mushy as I recall. Definitely once the Angeniuex's showed up, that changed everything.
 
Does the cabrio really have as low distortion at 19mm as an equivalent modern prime?

Do you all think these zooms will survive the transition to 8K? I see some DPs saying the cabrio is a touch soft wide open as compared to T4. You can't say that about a modern prime at T2.8!

lastly, based on what you all have said, it seems to me like it would make an awful lot of sense for Fuji to make a T4 FF lightweight zoom. Their Premista T2.9 only goes from 28 to 100mm, which seems like a shame to me relative to the 135mm-equivalent reach of the Cabrio.

With a fast wide-angle prime (as Charles likes to complement his zoom with), you could get even shallower DOF on FF vs S35 while achieving parity of DOF on a T4 zoom
 
I think the (bigger) lens makers are/will taking some time to see FF as not a temporary blip (whatever one thinks of that)

Fuji are probably licking thier wounds on the s35 18-55 which was released for the fs7 about a month before it was cancelled.

We are still in a bit of a mess with lens mounts as canon r(?) mount is a hashup.

We have the c70 a s35 camera with r mout and no s35 lenses in that mount.

We have c300/500 in emount that no one wants to buy into as they know thier next camera will be r mount.

sony have crossed this bridge a few years back with the emount (and some pain in droppig the more solid fz mount)

on the proper sets is there any mount apart from pol that can acutally take the torque of a motor?
 
morgan_moore said:
on the proper sets is there any mount apart from pol that can acutally take the torque of a motor?
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The only other mount I've seen on set in my time on "proper" sets was the Panavision mount. Outside of using small cameras like DSLR's, Blackmagics etc for specialty work where they might be E or EF mount.
 
morgan_moore said:
torque of a motor?
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One of the problems here is that many of the less-expensive lens control systems are actually pretty functional, but often lack variable torque - and the only available torque setting is vastly too much for many situations. Lightweight still photo lenses (and even modern low-cost cine lenses) tend not to require much torque; it's as if these things are set up to constantly operate ancient, massive and unmaintained cinema zooms which would give a conventional focus puller carpal tunnel in an afternoon. As a result it's sometimes impossible to use the automatic calibration system as they'll dislodge aftermarket gears, jump teeth, stress the focus mechanism, torque the mount, and so on. I've not seen EF mounts appear to struggle too much under this sort of abuse, but that's probably only because something else gave way first.

I have a PD Movie Remote Air Pro 3 here, and honestly, the auto cal is unusable on anything less than a Canon 50-1000. In the cold. And way too easy to activate accidentally.
 
Sam, they're talking about real lenses for real cameras. We're talking about toys. Sony hasn't crossed a bridge -- the Venice 2 is still PL mount.

My takeaway from this discussion is that Zeiss CP.3's are a great investment. Cabrio if you're confident about shooting S35 but, as you say, that's up in the air
 
That was my point ref focus torque and non pl mounts.

I meant Sony have crossed a bridge to emount in af terms.. while canon is still in a mess with ef and r - all the good cameras being ef while all the good lenses are r that dont fit them :)
 
Well the nikon mount (an example that I know well) has a pin in the body and a circular indent in the lens - by definition the indent has to be bigger than the pin else it would not fit in, ergo the lens has a rotational freedom of the diameter of the indent minus the diameter of the pin - it is similar on other dslr mounts where an internal focus motor does not torque the mount and stbility between frames is not part of the design spec.

PL is differnt in that it has a taper on lens and mount and the tightening ring mates the two tapers together giving a Positive Lock.

Of course motor control helps but fundamentally mounts like the F mount to not include rotational stability in the origial (1960?) design specification. Rumour has it that such mounts are actually fail soft design so the lens would seperate from the body using the mount ring in a scrificial manner before significant damage happens to lens or body.

Off topic .. I dinged my 1985 50-300 nikkor and was able to get a replacement mount from them which I found to be bogglingly excellent.

Back on topic.. an understanding of such mounts may limit ones expectaions when using 'cine' glass on non pl adapters. Lens feet obviously help but retard lens changes significantly.

There is a significant risk that a rack on a canonr r will be smoother than a canon rigged with a vintage lens and focus motor.
 
I think what we're discussing here is the difference between breech lock mounts (PL, Panavision, B4, Canon FD, a few others) and bayonet mounts (basically everything else). Yes, everything should be a breech lock mount, which is not only stabler but also at least notionally maintains better precision flange focus distance, but they aren't. Boo.

In theory it's possible to get very nice follow focus behaviour out of the modern Canon gear, but you do need to be running an up-to-the-second Canon camera with an up-to-the-second Canon lens in exactly the right circumstances. The stars have to be in alignment. Break any of that and it turns into a juddery mess. It'll always be possible to do impressive, desirable things when we require equipment be selected from a very narrowly-defined range of compatibles. The ability to build things from modular parts is important, if only because it maximises the value of people's investments.

Often film and TV gear takes modularity to an unhelpful extreme - look at the explosion-of-wiring rigging on almost any camera on a high-end show these days - but it has its purpose and we should not overlook that in pursuit of shiny objects.
 
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To answer the OP: NO, but I rent when I absolutely need cine glass.

Those rentals are becoming fewer. This year, zero rental of cine glass. Last year twice. The year before 6 times - there's a pattern here...

Would I love to shoot on cine glass more often? Yes, but to do that I need a bigger team and more camera support, so a bigger budget and production. Fun for me, sometimes, not always.

Is using still lenses a compromise? Yes AND no, - not for what I shoot 99% of the time and quite often it is superior to cine glass for a number of reasons; weight, AF, versatility, creativity, and affordability for eg.

Oddly, sometimes I feel life would be far easier with a good old-fashioned ENG lens and a smaller camera sensor - something I'm looking at adding back to my kit.
 
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