Discussion - Are we too concerned about our kit/lenses?

R

robster180

Active member
Hi all,

I just wanted to gauge your opinion about something...

One of my clients is a big budget Film distributor for the movie industry I'm talking Oscar winning films, and I create little vignettes for the marketing dept.
This provides me with access to hundreds of stills from their movies.
As I work away on these images I notice tons of Chromatic Aberration and all sorts of 'character' which some people would call a fault.

Looking on the web at popular film/photgraphy sites, I notice hundreds of comments regarding such and such a lens being too soft or this lens having too much C/A.

So what I'm wondering is...Have we become too way obsessed with details which matter less and less in the overall presentation of an image?

If lenses in the industry are being used which display artefacts that others are hyper critical of, are we at the stage of ever diminishing returns and should just ignore these minute details and instead be happy with the kit that we have/own/borrow/rent?

There's no right or wrong answer I'm just interested in your thoughts!

Thanks!
 
Lenses matter. The lens is the first thing light passes through in its way to the exposure plane, whether film or digital, so the exposure can be only as good as the lens itself.

Every lens has its own personality as well. It may include CA, or barrel distortion, or slightly unpredictable flares. It might offer a vintage look or feel, and may even be a vintage lens. In a very objective sense, one could argue that lenses with known imperfections should be avoided so as not to lessen the quality of light coming into the camera. In a subjective, and rather abstract, sense... who cares? Lenses are chosen for their personalities. Perhaps that chromatic aberration was intentional, or perhaps everything else the lens had to offer above other choices outweighed the slight CA.

Take the HOLGA plastic lens, now available with DSLR mounts. It's a pretty piss-poor lens if evaluated in a completely objective, technical context. But it is loaded with personality, and there's very little quality control out of HOLGA so every one of them is different. That look can work for experimental films, or projects that want to evoke a feeling of decades-old home movies on cheap cameras.

A good director and/or DP will choose a lens specifically for a project and often rent what's needed. For the indie filmmaker, it may be wise to own a small selection of general-duty lenses (sharper, fewer artifacts in the images) for projects where rental isn't possible and a technically-neutral lens makes more sense, then to rent for special projects where budget allows for a more intentional lens choice.

robster180 said:
Looking on the web at popular film/photgraphy sites, I notice hundreds of comments regarding such and such a lens being too soft or this lens having too much C/A.
Click to expand...

Hundreds of comments from whom? Are they users whose projects more often require a sharp, neutral lens, or are they hundreds of backseat cinematograhpers? Sure, anyone can put a lens up against charts and such, and easily post Internet comments about what that proves, but what about putting that lens to work in the real world and knowing where it does and does not truly work for crafting an effective image? The same goes with all the pixel-peeping and Xcam vs. Ycam threads we see around here; in the end it is just a tool, and it is the user that make the tool work.

So is it "character" or is it "fault"? I say it depends on who you ask. There's an old saying that "a craftsman knows how to avoid mistakes, but an artist knows how to use them."
 
The above pretty much ends the thread. But I'll post anyway. Generally, my answer would be that if you're worrying about minute details too much or not depends entirely on if you know what you're talking about, and what your work looks like.

A student filming his first short with a borrowed camera and some friends who have never acted before probably shouldn't be concerned about CA, which is never really deal breaking in my experience. Even more so if they're worried about an properties of the lens based on something they read on a forum once, with no understanding of what it means. When shooting the corporate work that I often do, it mightld be silly for me to talk too much about the type of softness and vintage rendition I get from the old lenses I like so much. But if I'm shooting a commercial, it matters. If I'm shooting a narrative, it matters. Even some of the corporate stuff (I mean explainers and communications by that) benefits. But when I talk about switching lenses, I always have a good reason.
 
robster180 said:
Hi all,

I just wanted to gauge your opinion about something...

One of my clients is a big budget Film distributor for the movie industry I'm talking Oscar winning films, and I create little vignettes for the marketing dept.
This provides me with access to hundreds of stills from their movies.
As I work away on these images I notice tons of Chromatic Aberration and all sorts of 'character' which some people would call a fault.

Looking on the web at popular film/photgraphy sites, I notice hundreds of comments regarding such and such a lens being too soft or this lens having too much C/A.

So what I'm wondering is...Have we become too way obsessed with details which matter less and less in the overall presentation of an image?

If lenses in the industry are being used which display artefacts that others are hyper critical of, are we at the stage of ever diminishing returns and should just ignore these minute details and instead be happy with the kit that we have/own/borrow/rent?

There's no right or wrong answer I'm just interested in your thoughts!

Thanks!
Click to expand...


Yes!
 
We are obsessed. But that comes with the territory. Humans are never satisfied with anything. Look at the cameras and lenses available today. The simplicity of being able to shoot with 4k video, not messing with film stock, editing on a computer instead of a splice block. We have lens choices from $100 to $50,000. There is something for everyone. But post an announcement about a new lens that has just broken new ground and people will post complaints about it being too expensive, not fast enough, not enough zoom range, too heavy, the witness marks are the wrong color. On and on we go. So enjoy our obsession. Its what drives us.

Meanwhile, we'll go make some films, commercials, wedding videos, corporate films and good stories with the equipment we have and lust after the equipment we don't.
 
i think the majority people are too concerned over the gear they are using. some so much that it stifles creativity. i've been guilty of it myself.
 
It depends. . .in your work (if you do this for a living), are you ultimately the one that determines what you use on a gig or do you have the type of clients that demand/require certain specs/types of gear/codecs etc.? If it's all up to you then yes, maybe, unless you're seeing other people's work greatly surpass your own strictly in terms of gear quality. If you have clients that require you to have certain gear, then no.
 
maybe...all joking aside sometimes it is people getting some stupid recommendation from a friend or website, other times its a production company or network with an established workflow or somethig theyre trying to match or some necessary bitrate or codec required for quality standards purposes.
 
Ok so it appears that we're all a bunch of level headed people here who can see past keyboard pontification and criticism from people who should know better.
So less of a debate to discuss than I thought...thanks for your views
 
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