Can anyone recommend a lens for GH2 shooting a lecture exactly 90 feet away?

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peximus

Member
I have a budget from the client to rent any lens and any adapter (preferably available at borrowlenses.com). I am not allowed to buy anything to keep (public funds involved). So that rules out buying any Canon FD lenses to fit with the adapter I already have, and I couldn't find anyone who rents FD lenses (obviously). I am trying to get as close to a detailed portrait of the lecturer as possible. I don't need shots of the whole stage, but it wouldn't hurt if there was a good zoom i could rent to get the stage to augment my footage (maybe a Canon L Series?). But in general i prefer primes. Oh.....I didn't mention that I am not allowed to move from this platform at all during the actual lecture :) The end product will NOT be an end to end video of the event, but rather a 90 second highlight video shot with the purpose of displaying to future potential funders the value of the event. Before and after the lecture, I will be getting brief interviews of attendees, plenty of b-roll, and other miscellaneous shots. I have plenty of suitable lenses for those shots. The client wants a few clips of the actual lecture sprinkled into the highlight video, but i don't need anything continuous. I don't have a decent telephoto, and with the GH2's crop factor, I wasn't sure which telephoto would fit 90 feet exactly. Remember, can't move at all, so if the lens is too short or too long, I am out of luck....and yeah, i really want to avoid zooms, because i am just that much in love with prime glass. But i am open to suggestions.

What say you?
 
70-200mm 2.8 Zoom from any major manufacturer. At that distance and focus length, your focus plane is going to be razor thin. Just did something like this shooting from 60-120 feet with AF100 and the 70-200mm was just about perfect. Head to toe on the wide and waist up full telephoto.
 
I guess I am going to have to break down and go with the zoom, huh...

I've used the Canon 70-200mm L series a few times in the past when I had a 5d... I am a bit worried about the lack of aperature control using an adapter but I figured I'd ask to Borrowlenses to make sure they send it to me pre-set at 2.8, so I can let as much light in as possible. I have a fear that I'll get the lens at it will be set at some ridiculous aperature, forcing me to track down someone with a Canon camera to adjust it...i have friends with Canons, but i hate bugging people to do stuff like that especially since everyone is busy...

i kinda knew deep down that your reply was what I was going to end up doing....maybe i just needed a cosign.... so thanks dude, i appreciate the suggestion!
 
peximus said:
I have a budget from the client to rent any lens and any adapter (preferably available at borrowlenses.com). I am not allowed to buy anything to keep (public funds involved). So that rules out buying any Canon FD lenses to fit with the adapter I already have, and I couldn't find anyone who rents FD lenses (obviously). I am trying to get as close to a detailed portrait of the lecturer as possible. I don't need shots of the whole stage, but it wouldn't hurt if there was a good zoom i could rent to get the stage to augment my footage (maybe a Canon L Series?). But in general i prefer primes. Oh.....I didn't mention that I am not allowed to move from this platform at all during the actual lecture :) The end product will NOT be an end to end video of the event, but rather a 90 second highlight video shot with the purpose of displaying to future potential funders the value of the event. Before and after the lecture, I will be getting brief interviews of attendees, plenty of b-roll, and other miscellaneous shots. I have plenty of suitable lenses for those shots. The client wants a few clips of the actual lecture sprinkled into the highlight video, but i don't need anything continuous. I don't have a decent telephoto, and with the GH2's crop factor, I wasn't sure which telephoto would fit 90 feet exactly. Remember, can't move at all, so if the lens is too short or too long, I am out of luck....and yeah, i really want to avoid zooms, because i am just that much in love with prime glass. But i am open to suggestions.

What say you?
Click to expand...

At 90' and with the 'kit 14-140' lens, at 140mm the 'area' of the frame will be approximately 6' high x 11' wide. This would work for a full shoes to head shot, but if you wanted a mid to head shot, you'd have to get a longer lens...

I found a field of view calculator a while back but have lost track of it... the above calculations were given my my Toland App on my iPhone.
 
awesome....never thought to find an app. i searched the web and couldn't find a calculator, which i thought was weird. thanks for the info!
 
A Nikon 80-200mm is a great choice - it has an aperture ring on the lens so you don't need to worry about an adaptor. I didn't see it listed at lensrentals.com but it's an immensely popular lens so someone is sure to have it available for rent.
 
peximus said:
awesome....never thought to find an app. i searched the web and couldn't find a calculator, which i thought was weird. thanks for the info!
Click to expand...

I actually found one that did the inverse calculation. That is if I wanted to fill the frame with a 6 foot object, at X distance, what lens would I need... I thought I had put it in my bookmarks... but alas... it's not there...

Now I'm not one to shy away from trig calculations... but I really don't have the time... So with the Toland App all I did was plug in 140mm and 90', and it gave me the bounding box dimensions...

What I was thinking of was surf pictures, and I estimated I wanted a surfer, on a board in a crouch, perhaps 5' to be about 2/3 of the frame high, at about 200 yards. I think I ended up with about a 350-400mm lens requirement... And I'd want a zoom to be able to widen up quickly if there was some action. In my area there is some amount of 'ego' type requests for this sort of thing...

As it is I haven't had the time or the money to rent such a lens...
 
Buy a FD mount 70-200 probably f3.5 like a Vivitar Series One, then rent it out to your client. KEH has them in EX condition for about $30-.
 
Ditto on the Nikon 80-200/2.8. Will work with any cheap dumb adapter and optically excellent.

Depending on the lighting, something mildly obscene like the Sigma 50-500 AF-D could yield a lovely close up
 
au8ust said:
200mm on GH2 would a lot shaky.
Click to expand...

Well, my assumption would be that the OP is going to mount the camera on a tripod. However, I think one should also make sure the lens it self has a tripod mount, because the weight of the lens, hanging on the adapter, could cause problems as well. The Nikon 80-200mm that I have does not have such amount, but I believe the 'newer' version does. It may be better to put the lens on the tripod, and have the camera 'hanging', as it is lighter than the lens...
 
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