Does anyone use the kit lens for anything?

Richard J. Johnson

Richard J. Johnson

Joystick Member
I'm about to spend a lot of money on glass and kind of forgot about the lens I have already. Is it good for anything. I'm late to the 7D party so if there is another thread please direct me to it.
 
LOL. That is great. So pretty much worthless unless I'm skydiving?:smile: I wish I had been more educated on the lens factor when I bought it. I would have gotten the Tamron or something and spent a little more.
 
What lens did you get? The 18-135 isn't bad for video work, and it has a pretty decent range. Only real problem with it is that it's slow, but then again, all kit lenses are usually quite slow.
 
Yea as far as the quality of the glass. kit lenses are usually ****. The main difference you will see (if you can get past the fact that they are usually slower than a turtle with a broken leg) is the CA, distortion , vignetting, less bokeh and general lack of sharpness compared to their more expensive counterparts.

Personally, I would use them as a somewhat comical doorstop, problem is that kit lenses can't even do that well.
 
Yeah. I have the 18-35. With the other glass I hope to purchase friday. I don't know how much use it will get.

Barry_Green said:
What lens did you get? The 18-135 isn't bad for video work, and it has a pretty decent range. Only real problem with it is that it's slow, but then again, all kit lenses are usually quite slow.
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N635DC said:
The main difference you will see ... is the CA, distortion , vignetting, less bokeh and general lack of sharpness compared to their more expensive counterparts.
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In stills, yes.

In video, no. I've tested this to death, and the kit lenses on the GH1 and 7D are just as sharp in video mode as the best high-buck still lenses. The video mode on the DSLR is "the great equalizer."
 
Barry_Green said:
In stills, yes.

In video, no. I've tested this to death, and the kit lenses on the GH1 and 7D are just as sharp in video mode as the best high-buck still lenses. The video mode on the DSLR is "the great equalizer."
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Interesting, I still haven't jumped on the "still camera body for video" bandwagon. Call me old fashioned. Have you hammered out why the lens gives different results in video mode?
 
RyanT said:
Because the resolution is so much less. It's only 1080, and it's definitely not a raw image.
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And when you say "only 1080", recognize it's not coming near to filling out that 1080 frame.

In general the video mode uses less than about 10% of the total sensor, so the lens doesn't need to be anywhere near as sharp for video as it does for stills.
 
Usage aside? Some benefits, but not really in terms of sharpness. I mean, I can pretty much guarantee that other than usage, you will see absolutely no difference at all in any way from using $5,000 Zeiss Compact Primes, or $1,000 Zeiss ZF lenses -- they use the same glass, with the big difference being the PL mount and the housing.

But the usage thing is huge. Cinema-style focusing, perfectly accurate focus marks, common front sizes, ability to use matteboxes and industry-standard follow-focus units all without hassle, smooth-moving iris rings with infinite positioning, those are all big benefits to the cinema shooter.

PL lenses are typically pretty sharp glass, with nice contrast etc., and having a PL mount would let a shooter use his/her favorite lens sets on the 7D. The look you get from a Cooke S4 is different from the look you get from a Zeiss Ultra Prime, for example; people typically say the Cooke S4 is softer and warmer, the Zeiss is sharper with starker contrast. The softer/sharper thing would probably be neutralized by the DSLR's sampling methods, but the color and contrast issues would remain.

PL glass can also be over-romanticized; I think the ZFs or Canon L glass will in most ways deliver better images than the old Zeiss Super Speeds. Especially when the Super Speeds are used totally wide open, they're not pretty at wide-open.

So -- glass can make a difference, in terms of flare performance, contrast, warmness, barrel distortion, maximum f-stop, properties like that. And in stills, glass can make a huge difference in sharpness and chromatic aberration. On a DSLR, sharpness and chromatic aberration differences are largely neutralized by the DSLR's sampling, but the other issues may still apply.

And, for sheer workability in a crewed cinema environment, the cinema lenses have many advantages. However, the smaller production can achieve some of those by having your SLR lenses modified for installation of standard-size gear rings, standardized fronts, and de-clicked irises, by a technician such as Matt Duclos of www.ducloslenses.com.
 
I understand and appreciate some of the usage advantages but I think I understand you and others are saying the sharpness and contrast factors are pretty much lost on the soft and relatively narrow dynamic range of the 7D.

Doesn't that beg the question as to why anyone would want to introduce a 7D into a "crewed cinema environment"? I understand using it in an educational effort but in a professional cinematic effort with a full paid traditional crew, what is the point of a 7D with a PL mount?
 
Tiny size, ability to work fast, low cost, and sensitivity. The Red One will produce a better image in just about every imaginable case, but a Red kit costs $30,000+ and it's huge and it needs a big huge heavy tripod and it's about 160 ISO so it needs bigger more expensive lights and that means maybe needing to tie in to house power, or having more hassle to distribute power... plus, a Red would need a full-size body-mount Steadicam to float it, and a heavy expensive jib arm that can support 30 pounds, and on and on... Cheapest decent tripod for a Red One costs about $7,000, for example.

But if you've already crewed up and have a Red and a bunch of PL lenses on hand, a 7D with a PL mount as a second or third body seems like a no-brainer to add to the mix. Throw the 7D on a Steadicam Merlin, or cram it in a corner of a shot, or use it for handheld with a stabilizing shoulder rig, or as a "crash cam" (although I wouldn't put a PL lens on a crash cam), or ... lots of places it could be used.
 
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