FS7: 35mm lens e-mount under 1000 euro
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Nirv
Carbonite Member
The answer is yes and no. 40 year old glass cannot compete on the numbers game of modern lens design as science and engineering has moved on such that flares are very well controlled and the lenses are sharp right into the corners but...is that everything. I prefer the look of my Nikkor AIS lenses to anything else including modern Nikkor glass and focussing the right way is easy to pick up. The best prime lens I have is the 35mm f1.4 AIS but it'll be slightly softer than the modern 35mm f1.8.
My advice would be to pick a 'team' and stick with them otherwise you'll end up with a menagerie of lenses that won't match one another in sharpness nor colour.
Instead of just 'review' sites try http://www.flickriver.com/lenses/ . You can easily compare the various manufacturers' 35mm lenses via the medium of 1000s of photographs. The look of the lenses is more important than the specification numbers IMO. Try comparing contemporary glass e.g. the Nikkor 35mm f1.8G IMO makes mincemeat out of the Canon f1.4L, it's not even close. But of course it's just a matter of personal preference and there will many who prefer Canon.
JPNola
Veteran
Infinity is in the future. Everyone knows that. You fool NO ONE with your crazy talk, Nirv.
rogar-BigGrin(DBG)
There's the rub - you'll only know for sure if you test it for yourself.
This forum sometimes reminds me of hifi forums I used to read - strong voices insisting you must have this bit of gold-plated unobtainium and that bit of oxygen-free copper, woven in to liquid silk by Swiss virgins. Robust opinions that are never objectively put to the test in blind A/B comparisons.
Test it for yourself and I suspect you won't see much, if any, difference. And if you can, you're much better placed to put a value on it and to ask yourself if it's worth the extra - either in visual quality or ergonomic ease. I've yet to see an online lens test that really convinces me of the qualitative differences between lenses - other than minor colour biases or contrast curves. You'll see plenty of comments from others that swear one is better than the other, but - for me - it more often than not feels like Emperor's new clothes.
Back in the day, I sat many a time in a Pinewood or Soho viewing theatre, assessing differences between film stocks and lenses prior to production. On a huge screen, you could make informed opinions - and even then, the differences were often subtle and really it was just a nice luxurious experience, at the expense of Fuji and Kodak etc.
But for web/TV? No - the effects of compression and transcoding have far greater impact on what your audience will see. But I know that can be difficult to say if you're a jobbing camera op, faced by lunatic production people who don't know their arses from their elbows.
Hey, I know this will provoke some ire. It's not aimed at anyone personally - I just think the human conditions of cognitive dissonance and expectation bias keep lens manufacturers in business, while the truth - as always - is represented by the law of diminishing returns.
Test. Test. Test. Then you'll know how you want to spend your money.
Ben.
Ben Scott
Veteran
Old glass on modern sensors is a lovely way to get a lovely organic rendering. But there's good vintage glass and awful vintage glass and a hell of a lot of cheap but 'fine' vintage glass.
Coatings on a modern lens like an Otus are a thing of wonder - so flare resistant and pushing micro contrast to the nth degree and making chromatic abberation practically non-existant. But sometimes you want a low-con flare monster so out come the old Russian lenses.
Coatings on a modern lens like an Otus are a thing of wonder - so flare resistant and pushing micro contrast to the nth degree and making chromatic abberation practically non-existant. But sometimes you want a low-con flare monster so out come the old Russian lenses.
Nirv
Carbonite Member
Infinity is in the future. Everyone knows that. You fool NO ONE with your crazy talk, Nirv.
This guy gets it!
<a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aox_4-JNed8" target="_blank">
morgan_moore
Major Contributor
I would agree with the sentiment of a $50 lens and $20 adapter.
Such a lens will probably have better manual focus than a modern equivilent.
Also I have a wonky theory that super sharp glass tends to bring out purple fringing in the FS7 esp in HFR mode.. best to pre soften the image
S
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Nirv
Carbonite Member
Also I have a wonky theory that super sharp glass tends to bring out purple fringing in the FS7 esp in HFR mode.. best to pre soften the image
S
I'm sure the F55 and probably the F5 have an extra layer of image processing that sweeps up this crud. The most expensive lens I bought (Nik 24-70) can be a disaster on the FS7, it rings like church bells and moirés for fun. Not a wonky theory at all. An AIS low pass filer is a much better option.
I agree with bengiles sentiment a few posts up. The majority of my shooting on my FS7 is done with still lenses that I bought in the $600 - $2k price range... long before I ever had the camera. And I'm happy with results. I also have a couple of older Canon FD lens' that were purchased for next to nothing and they do have a different "organic" look to them (though again, hard to tell when going straight to web and I feel like the same results can be achieved in the grading using newer lenses).
And then I also just finished a higher budget shoot using all Canon cinema primes (the six lens set). And yes, the images were nicer, creamy bokeh and repeatable FF was a joy. Are they worth the $ ???..... that's a question that each owner/operator probably has to answer for themselves based on the type and frequency of gigs.
And then I also just finished a higher budget shoot using all Canon cinema primes (the six lens set). And yes, the images were nicer, creamy bokeh and repeatable FF was a joy. Are they worth the $ ???..... that's a question that each owner/operator probably has to answer for themselves based on the type and frequency of gigs.
JPNola
Veteran
Just to put that particular argument to bed... You don't need cine lenses until you need cine lenses. And when you need cine lenses you NEED cine lenses. And little about that need is for static non moving image quality. Hope that clarifies everything
I WANT a cool set of Cine primes. But I wouldn't gain any work by having a set of high quality Cine primes and I wouldn't be able to charge extra for any Cine primes I own. If I tell the types of clients I have that I can provide cine primes for X additional dollars, they are going to say thanks but no thanks. I cannot recall receiving any job offer where they requested primes. Pedestrian primes or super high-quality primes. I cannot recall any job where I had a situation where I had to have a prime.
Should I land one of those "true" DP gigs, a commercial gig, it is likely to be a gig where there is the budget to rent a set of higher end primes and it would only be appropriate to seek rental of primes that I own IF the job called for the particular type of primes I own. I would not want to become boxed in because of owning a set of primes. That is, were I regularly getting commercial jobs I wouldn't want all my commercial work to be on the one set of primes I happen to own. Maybe someone who owns a set of high-end primes can speak to that issue. If one owns, say, a set of Cooke primes, is there a danger of finding yourself suggesting Cooke primes on a commercial spot that calls for a different look than the Cooke look, just to get the rental on your primes? Realistically one cannot own all the great prime lens sets. It would easily cost half a million $ to own them all. If you own a set of high-quality primes only some of the jobs you get are going to call for that particular set of primes. There will still be jobs for which the prime lens set you own is not appropriate.
What impetus I have to pick up a few single primes or, eventually, a complete set of primes is purely to obtain in my work the photographic results a prime can achieve over a zoom. But the reality is that the photographic result a prime achieves over and above that of a zoom isn't all that significant in terms of the whole. Not likely something any client or even any viewer is going to pick up on in the produced product. The god's honest truth is that I get hired more because of factors having little to nothing to do with the images I produce than I do because of the images I produce. Rarely am I asked for a reel. And when asked for a reel it isn't going to be use of primes that visually impresses a prospective client as much as other things such as lighting, composition, camera movement, subject matter, etc.
So maybe in all this rambling I am asking the potentially blasphemous question of - When are prime lenses ever necessary?
I recently had a job that was more cinematic in nature. The client wanted it to be on the Amira. I pushed for using primes but the client said they didn't have the budget for primes. The Director said he didn't want the production to be slowed down by using primes. So we went with the Canon Cine servo zoom instead. The client loved the resulting product. The spot received rave reviews. Everyone was pleased as punch despite having forgone the prime lenses. I got paid. I am pleased with the spot. The client wants to hire me again. No prime lens involved.
Don't get me wrong- I know the greatness of primes. I'd love to shoot extensively on primes. I love the qualities that primes can achieve. But, outside of super-wide shots and specially shots such as close-up work / drone / steadicam / tilt-shift work, are primes a luxury only? I've been on feature films and tv series where darn near every shot was done with a zoom lens. Being that entire award winning docs, entire Emmy winning tv series, and entire successful features are shot exclusively on zooms, what need is there for the regular Joe owner / op to use primes nevertheless own primes?
The topic starter expressed a desire for prime lenses. Why? What need could he possibly have for a prime? Is it, as is the case with myself and primes, purely a want and not a need?
So, back to Ben's comment regarding needing cine lenses- when is that?
[ I am seeking to learn, always. So be kind if you would in educating me. You don't know if you don't ask. ]
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Ben Scott
Veteran
I much prefer shooting on primes and do whenever in controlled environments.
When you need 'cine' primes or cine glass period, is when you need to be able to accurately perform focus / iris moves with a precision and repeatability, and where you need to keep breathing and CA to a minimum. Where the cost of not having them is more expensive due to fluffed takes etc.
Where you need a set of cine primes is where you need a colour and iris-matched set of glass to go through a whole production where the price of fixing stuff (where possible) is more than the price of just renting the correct thing.
Or, of course, if you can afford them just get them cos they're cooler.
When you need 'cine' primes or cine glass period, is when you need to be able to accurately perform focus / iris moves with a precision and repeatability, and where you need to keep breathing and CA to a minimum. Where the cost of not having them is more expensive due to fluffed takes etc.
Where you need a set of cine primes is where you need a colour and iris-matched set of glass to go through a whole production where the price of fixing stuff (where possible) is more than the price of just renting the correct thing.
Or, of course, if you can afford them just get them cos they're cooler.
JPNola
Veteran
Ha! The amount of discussion of primes, the number of articles regarding primes, and the obsession with primes seems to me a bit disproportionate considering that likely around 95% of all professional video is shot on zooms. In addition to the fact that zooms are far more complex in terms of engineering and far more difficult to produce. Yet primes are the rock stars. Even though few in video ever need prime lenses.
I was typically wordy in my post above, so let me now focus on this one question for owners of cinema prime sets:
How do you balance the desire to get a rental with the needs of the particular project?
It cannot be easy to pass up $4k in lens rental in order to stay artistically "true" to a project where the client would have been perfectly happy either way.
And Ben, do you find that you have to be mindful not to force the distinct Contax look onto a project simply because you own a set and have them at your convenience?
Ben Scott
Veteran
The Contax glass is capable of a lot of different looks and I've done sharp, modern and contrasty with them as well as low con flarey.
That said I've sold most of my old set now so it's a moot point
Basically you rent the posher glass for the project if the project needs it and can afford it. I don't charge anyone extra for using my lenses so would be budgeting in advance for glass rental on a project so it's not money that would be coming my way otherwise.
Everyone always needs primes. The world would be a better place if more people believed that. Zoom with your feet.
That said I've sold most of my old set now so it's a moot point
Basically you rent the posher glass for the project if the project needs it and can afford it. I don't charge anyone extra for using my lenses so would be budgeting in advance for glass rental on a project so it's not money that would be coming my way otherwise.
Everyone always needs primes. The world would be a better place if more people believed that. Zoom with your feet.
Liam Hall
Veteran
I use mine on nearly every shoot. Sometimes I'll shoot everything on primes, other times I'll favour my zooms. I once shot a forty-five minute documentary on just two primes.
dmitrizigany
Veteran
On the lower end of things... Most of the time I'm in situations were I don't really have time to switch between different primes. Problem is even the cheapest 24-70/2.8 zoom (Tamron) would be at least €1200 with an adapter. I almost get three Samyang primes for that money and they are T1.5 so can give a look I can't achieve with the zoom so I would need both anyway... And in most situation were a zoom would be really handy, I mostly also would like auto focus, which means the Sony 24-70/2.8 at €2.500... Which buys me a whole set of Samyangs or a pair of Veydras...
Lenilenapi
Carbonite Member
I'm in the same situation as JPNola. Nearly all my clients don't want to wait on primes so I can't justify the investment. Only time I really need them is for interviews in small spaces when I want f1.4 to soften the background.
JP - I think it comes down to the type of projects you work on...and you do have to be honest with yourself and not take out a 2nd mortgage to have a cool set of primes without perhaps a change in other mentality as well.
(I'm still saving toward owning my first set.) I agree with Ben's assessment in post #32 & #34 above though. Definitely want to try and limit the type of work I do that doesn't strive toward using primes.
(I'm still saving toward owning my first set.) I agree with Ben's assessment in post #32 & #34 above though. Definitely want to try and limit the type of work I do that doesn't strive toward using primes.
JPNola
Veteran
Which set of primes are you looking to obtain?
And Ben, why did you get rid of your Contax set? You loved your Contax! Was it to be able to afford the Zeiss glass you recently obtained? ( Otus, was it? )
Ben Scott
Veteran
I don't know what this means, or have never been in an environment where it has come up. If it takes 20 secs to change a lens how much of an issue is that?