GH4 A Proper Video Lens

There are plenty of 2/3" B4 zoom lenses costing well under $10,000 new. And if you get a lens from about 15 years ago before they started branding them as HD, you can get something almost as good as today's HD lenses for a few hundred dollars.

Some people try so hard to get photographic zoom lenses that have some of the same properties as a proper video lens. Why mess around with that? Get a proper video lens, and a proper converter. From experience, I'm telling you, a proper video lens is a much better way to shoot video. You get a lens that's parfocal, has an integrated back-focus adjustment, a constant aperture, and smooth & responsive manual controls. These things make a lens a joy to use, and it translates to better looking video.
 
Paul F said:
No, optical science is not a barrier. But when combined with mechanical requirements that cinematographers want, it gets very expensive.
Click to expand...

I wasn't asking for a cinematography lens, I was asking for a proper video lens. Big difference, that.

True, the two Sigma's mentioned don't have item 3 on my list, but there is a reason that appears third and not first or second. And I'm not at all convinced that making the focus ring mechanical and adding an iris ring would add significantly to the price. If anything, I would expect it to be cheaper to buld mechanical focus.
 
Last edited:
balazer said:
Some people try so hard to get photographic zoom lenses that have some of the same properties as a proper video lens. Why mess around with that? Get a proper video lens, and a proper converter
Click to expand...

The ideal is a proper m4/3 video lens, no converter required.

There certainly seems to be enough people who want them. We just need lens makers to actually build them.
 
The main problem is that there is no market for such a lens. That may not make sense. But consider the 2/3" lenses on B&H. Indeed, there are $5000, and $8000 lenses. Depending on the quality, they go even higher in the $20k range. For the same specification in a 4/3" lens, the glass has to quadruple. While the price might not quadruple, it certainly would be a lot more that for a 2/3" lens. The other factor is that the possible market for 4/3" video is tiny compared to the 2/3" market. With much lower volumes comes much higher prices per unit. Manufacturers know no one in the 4/3" market is going to buy a lens for the price they can offer it.
 
Paul F said:
The main problem is that there is no market for such a lens. That may not make sense. But consider the 2/3" lenses on B&H. Indeed, there are $5000, and $8000 lenses. Depending on the quality, they go even higher in the $20k range. For the same specification in a 4/3" lens, the glass has to quadruple. While the price might not quadruple, it certainly would be a lot more that for a 2/3" lens. The other factor is that the possible market for 4/3" video is tiny compared to the 2/3" market. With much lower volumes comes much higher prices per unit. Manufacturers know no one in the 4/3" market is going to buy a lens for the price they can offer it.
Click to expand...

Worse, the glass has to octuple, because doubling in three dimensions = 8-fold increase. Which is why Fujinon Premier Pro lenses, which do have impressive specs (18-85 f2.0 covering S35) are impressively priced at $87,500 and weigh 15 lbs.
 
Paul F said:
The main problem is that there is no market for such a lens.
Click to expand...

That's a point worthy of debate. I certainly want them. Some of the folks responding here seem to want them. Whether or not there's enough folks like us...I can't say.

Certainly with the sheer number of people shooting video on DSLRs these days, it seems there would be plenty of market for such lenses.


For the same specification in a 4/3" lens
Click to expand...

There's the flaw in your argument. I'm not asking for parity with 2/3" lenses, most if not all of which are designed for broadcast level cameras which themselves rarely dip below the $5,000 mark. I don't necessarily need all those feature and definitely don't need that kind of quality for event work. I just want 4/3 zoom lenses properly designed for video. We have quite a few primes that fit that call. We have a couple of zooms that come close, they just need the proper ring design.
 
I think that the best chance of getting a m43 zoom lens with all the manual controls is for someone like SLR Magic or Cosina/Voigtlander to make one. But I don't think they will do it unless the m43 market grows significantly, because zoom lenses appear to entail a major jump in mechanical and optical technology and thus R&D and manufacturing expenses that would not be justifiable unless they can sell a lot of them.

My reasonable(?) wish for a m43 video lens would be a 12-100 constant f/4 or 12-75 (or there abouts) constant f/2.8, with OIS. Declicked and stepless aperture ring, parfocal, internal non-rotating zoom would be nice, but I wouldn't hold my breath because they would have to sell such lens in volumes to still photographers too in order to justify its development.
 
Shenan said:
My reasonable(?) wish for a m43 video lens would be a 12-100 constant f/4 ...... with OIS. Declicked and stepless aperture ring, parfocal, internal non-rotating zoom would be nice, but I wouldn't hold my breath because they would have to sell such lens in volumes to still photographers too in order to justify its development.
Click to expand...
FYI, what you're describing actually sounds a lot like the DVX200's lens. It's 12.8-167, but in the range of 12.8-90mm it holds f4, and has OIS, stepless aperture, parfocal focus, and internal non-rotating zoom. Plus silent video autofocus and a silky-smooth servo that takes about 3.5 minutes to go from wide to tele on its slowest setting, and about 4 seconds on its fastest. If you don't need to hold f4, it can open up to f/2.8 at its widest, and it can go past 90mm out to 167mm at f/4.5.

I don't think you'll see such a lens made for an interchangeable lens camera. It's highly complex and likely relies heavily on the camera's processors to do all that it does. It uses (IIRC) 17 elements in 11 groups, many of which move independently, to get that range. I would say that if such a lens were made interchangeable, it would probably need its own servo handle with computer control in it to handle all the processing that goes on inside, and it would probably end up costing as much as a DVX200 does.
 
Thanks, salvo. But both those lenses fail the very first (and most important) feature of a proper video lens - 2.8 or faster at all focal lengths.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top