Cine Lens Review with Test Footage - What do you think?

Seems breathing is good. I cant see the point of a 'set' starting at 25 on an S35 camera. First shot your director will want a 'master' and you wont be able to deliver because you needed a 16. Why test for CA when you are only seeing the sweet middle of the glass. CA will show on the edges using a full frame sensor. EF mount? can that handle the torque of a follow focus.. probably not so you will get image jumps when changing focus direction maybe.

Not set ready I guess.
 
For the stuff that I shoot, 25 is wide enough. Having a 16mm option for Super35 would be nice. For full-frame shooters, probably not necessary. That is the advantage of full frame glass on super35, it's using the best part of the glass. I haven't had any issues with follow focus with an EF mount going back and forth. I've never heard of that issue before. The EF mount seems pretty solid so far. What camera and glass are you using?
 
thefilmaddict said:
For the stuff that I shoot, 25 is wide enough.
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I agree. If you want to make your footage look UN-cinematic then use a super wide angle lens. I have a 20mm full-frame lens that I almost never use on my full-frame cameras because it is too wide. 25mm is plenty wide enough for most purposes.
 
This is my perspective.. a 'cine lens' would typically be used for production of cinema narrative fiction. Shoots at a level where the end goal is to show it in cinema theatres. Surely that is what 'cinematic' is.

As the DOP on such a shoot you will typically not decide what is 'cinematic' or shoot what 'you shoot' - you will deliver images to the director and producers to get the coverage they feel they should deliver to the editor.

(nothing here says it looks nice or is even going in the film - only that it must be done)

Yes the DOP will input on look of course.

The last film I worked on had a set down to s35 10 (indeed little used - but on set at all times) the film before had a 24 full frame.

In both cases arri remote focus systems where used that significantly torque the lenses. AFAIK only PL is designed to resist such torque.

Im not a matte box geek.. but I think that was standardised at 114mm?

The cameras were Alexa LF and Red Epic.

==

I sound like a snob here or going for 'cine' points or something.. not so .. I genuinely feel that one should not 'invest' in 'sets' of glass that do not have an available wide. Not as a commercial choice anyway. For home projects one can of course enjoy anything.

I half want some s35 cine glass that is well matched and affordable so watched with interest and probably should have thanked the OP for his efforts in a kinder manner :)
 
morgan_moore said:
. . . the film before had a 24 full frame.
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And 25mm is a deal breaker?

Should I feel fortunate that I have never worked on any shoot where someone else dictated which lens I had to use? I can't imagine working under such conditions where the people who hired me didn't value my judgement and skills. You have my sympathies.

Super wide angle lenses scream ENG video, not cinema. And I can 't think of any feature films I admire where such extreme wide focal lengths were used.
 
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25 full 35 chip is quite different Fov to 25 when you are stuck at s35

yes its not really different from 24 :)

ive only observed these bigger films from the lowly grip seat - they are good and bad :)
 
Yes and it's not the torque on the EF mount, it's the deflection, the bending moment that exists because the flange is not snugged. I like the U12K because you can switch out the mount. I use EF mainly because I shoot it more like ENG from the shoulder with zoom and OIS, and operate the focus with my fingers, but if I was shooting cinema with follow focus I would definitely use PL.
 
Doug Jensen said:
And 25mm is a deal breaker?

Should I feel fortunate that I have never worked on any shoot where someone else dictated which lens I had to use? I can't imagine working under such conditions where the people who hired me didn't value my judgement and skills. You have my sympathies.
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I had to really think about this. It's been a long time since I've worked with a director who calls the lenses, but it used to be more of a thing. Of the big names, Spielberg certainly does, Kubrick was another.

Doug Jensen said:
Super wide angle lenses scream ENG video, not cinema. And I can 't think of any feature films I admire where such extreme wide focal lengths were used.
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Speaking of Kubrick, he made many wonderful compositions with wide (sometimes extremely so) lenses. Clockwork Orange, Dr. Strangelove and The Shining come to mind (the 9.8mm Kinoptik was used brilliantly to exaggerate speed and scale in the hedge maze).

I recently shot a narrative project with two scenes in a tragically small bathroom, about 5x10 feet. Had no choice but to use my rarely-pulled out Tokina 11-20 (S35 lens) for the wider shots. Glad to have had it.
 
There's no question that super wides come in handy sometimes, but the fact that a certain set of matched cine lenses doesn't have anything wider than 25mm seems a silly reason to shoot down the whole set. I have a Duclos 11-16 (S35 only) that has come in handy a couple of times, but the use of such lenses is rare and I doubt the viewer would notice or care if a wide angle lens that was used didn't come from a matched set. As the OP said in his video, he doesn't have the 85mm lens from the set yet, and THAT should be his next purchase. Frankly, I'd be more interested if the set also had a 105mm or 135mm, rather than something wider than 25. To each his own. :)
 
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I guess if you dont have a whole set you can save bucks and cobble together something with contax or fd or nikkor.

you move into sets when you have grown out of contax/fd/nikkor/olly hodge podge
so a set of three with an emergancy tonka 11-16 on top seems odd because its not a set - its still a hodge podge

But this is to me a valid statement..

“these lenses are good for 90% of shots but you wont be safe on set unless you have an emergency tonka zoom too.”

i was indeed going to mention bathrooms - lifts (elevators) is the other one

ive got a tonka 10-22 and a canon 10-20 and a ff nikkor 14 - all pretty horrid mainly unused and good for keeping me out of prison. My ff 18is my first “nice” lens that i enjoy
 
Duckos? Tonka?! Sam-speak!

I always struggle with the "desert island" motif of what would be my most minimal prime set. Depends largely on the project. I do find myself on the 28 and the 40 more than anything else, but I wouldn't want to rely on that being my widest or longest either. As far as the importance of matched sets vs the "hodge podge", I'd rather have the variety than sweat the difference in look, but then again my lenses all match each other pretty closely anyway (the neutral world of Aluras/Cabrios/Zeiss/Tokina/Sigma), and the rest we take care of in the grade.
 
Chaps I joke about - sorry.

MIght one also might one consider testing some lenses without pointing them at a chart a joke?

Im both a joker and also very serious about what I think works as 'an investment' - for example the recent C5d test of some 'AF cine' lenses brushes over thier lack of hard stops which will AFAIK create problems with calibrating focus motors and renders them a 'fail' as cine lenses

Im not telling anyone that Im worth listening to.. C5d Allard and the like suggest they are fonts of knowlegde.

Papert, Jensen, Yedin et al. actually have a clue :)
 
Allard is Newsshooter and definitely has a clue. Forget his ACS title, he's generally knowledgeable and writes great reviews.
 
NorBro said:
Allard is Newsshooter and definitely has a clue. Forget his ACS title, he's generally knowledgeable and writes great reviews.
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Of course. Most of my beefs are with the titles of the sites most likely. (and thier suggested terms of reference)

To me a bit of news shooting kit is robust enough to go to Gaza piled in the back of a land cruiser with half a dozen folk piled on top of it. Hence feeling 'newshooter' does not have thier correct terms of reference. No sticky out micro HDMI cuts the mustard. At all. Ever. An eng 2/3 camera is one of the few bits of kit that can be considered appropriate to news shooting*. Im sure Doug would agree there.

To me ''cine" kit will be ready to plug onto a a narrative feature film and integrate with 'normal' narrative kit.. focus motors, SDI monitoring jammed TC et al. So again 'cineD' does not test or comment inside its terms of reference.

Im lucky to have done a few of all of these types of jobs over the decades and have a good concept of which kit is battle ready and which isnt.

So of course it is 'terms of reference' not actual knowledge that I think is misplaced.

These sites have influence and by failing to pan.. and I mean completely rubbish.. micro HDMI for example they do none of us a favour.



*and very maybe the xf605.. which is why i find it so interesting.
 
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It's just branding...no point to change name after 10-15 years. Cinema5D was clearly named after the camera and their change to CineD was a bit more appropriate as the world moved on from the 5D Mark II.

Newsshooter could be shooting the news, tech news to the people. :)

Also has some value to some of those guys as they cut their teeth shooting news and documentary-like projects before the YouTube generation.
 
What about this very forum? DVXuser. Doesn't "DVX" refer to Panasonic cameras? Is anyone here shooting on Panasonic, let alone a model with "DVX" in the name?
 
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