C300: EF-S lenses better than EF lenses ?

I think EF-S lenses should be preferred on an APSC sensor where the equivalent lens exists. The image circle is designed for maximum resolution for these sensors. But in many cases, there is no equivalent. For example, the fast, wide primes. Or if you want weather sealing, many f/2.8 crop zooms don't have it.
 
It really comes down to the individual lens. There is this sort of individual characteristic they have which you learn to know over time. I find I much prefer my 15-85mm and 17-55mm APS-C lenses over the 24-100mm. IMHO, for wide-angle zooms, I think the APS-C lenses win. And for extra-wide you pretty much have to go with APS-C. But there are really solid choices that are much cheaper than full-frame equivalents.

For telephoto, that's where I use the full frame zooms. Canon's 70-200mm lenses are far above the APS-C telephoto lenses.
 
I think there may be a little confusion concerning Canon EF-S, EF lenses which only cover a S35 sensor, and EF lenses which cover a full frame sensor.
 
Yes that's the point. Is it worth the price to buy a Full Frame EF lense for an APS-C sensor or not ? A much cheaper EF-S lense can do better ?
 
Keep in mind the C-series is Super35 and slightly larger than APS-C. I have had some EF-S lenses vignette on C-series bodies. That is why the C100 has an "EF-S" Mode, which crops the sensor slightly and than interpolates back up to 1920, which in itself is not really ideal.

Also, primes will almost always be sharper than zooms in my experience.
 
Michel Talaïa said:
Yes that's the point. Is it worth the price to buy a Full Frame EF lense for an APS-C sensor or not ? A much cheaper EF-S lense can do better ?
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It's worth owning full frame glass if you need to shoot with a full frame sensor camera, or you want to use a SpeedBooster.


The majority of my lenses cover a full frame sensor. I also own a few zoom lenses which only cover a S35 size sensor, but none of those lenses are are Canon EF-S.

For what it's worth, I have never had a client tell me that they were unhappy with the video or stills I get using full frame lenses.


From memory the only Canon EF-S lenses available are....

10-18mm f4.5-5.6
10-22mm f3.5-4.5
15-85mm f3.5-5.6
17-55mm f2.8
17-85mm f4.0-5.6
18-55mm f3.5-5.6
18-135mm f3.5-5.6
18-200mm f3.5-5.6
55-250mm f4.0-5.6
24mm f2.8
60mm f2.8
 
I own the 60macro 2.8. Its a fantastic lens for a dslr and is quite damn sharp. I should throw it on my fs700 and do some pixel peeping although it has a serious DoF so idk how useful it would be for any moving image.
 
So, my understanding is that L lenses have a better build quality than normal EF lenses and EF-S lenses but, opticaly, they are not much better than those lenses. Am I right ?
 
Macaholic said:
Keep in mind the C-series is Super35 and slightly larger than APS-C. I have had some EF-S lenses vignette on C-series bodies. That is why the C100 has an "EF-S" Mode, which crops the sensor slightly and than interpolates back up to 1920, which in itself is not really ideal.
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Vignetting with EF-S lenses is pretty common in my experience. Particularly with C500 & C300mk2 when going to DCI 17:9 4096x2160/2048x1080. 3rd party lenses that are made to cover the wider Nikon crop sensor (f.ex. Sigma Art 18-35) typically don't vignette on the Canon Cinema EOS S35 sensors. F.ex. Canon EF-S 17-55/2.8 is unusable in 4K/2K 17:9 mode on C500/C300mk2, while possible to use in UHD/HD 16:9 mode.

Don't think I would call the C100 EF-S crop an 'interpolate back up to 1920'. Sensor is 4K, so plenty of resolution to feed into the 1920 pixels without any dirty tricks! But then again I don't know how Canon does this processing as I wasn't even aware the C100 had the EF-S crop feature.
 
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Michel Talaïa said:
So, my understanding is that L lenses have a better build quality than normal EF lenses and EF-S lenses but, opticaly, they are not much better than those lenses. Am I right ?
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The bottom-line is "you get what you pay for." If you buy a $300 EF-S it's not going to compare optically to a $1200+ L-series lens. But if you get a $900 EF-S lens, it will compare with L lenses. You have to be more careful with EF-S. Because APS-C tends to be a more consumer format, there are consumer lenses that are inferior. Whereas most full-frame lenses are built with professionals in mind.

Selecting lenses is all about priority. Do you want a long zoom range? Wider aperature? Constant aperature? Wider angle? Light weight? Parfocal? Sometimes your priorities will lead you to L-lenses, sometimes they will lead you to EF-S lenses.

I own 2 L lenses, 2 FF non-L, 3 EF-S lenses and 2 non-Canon APS-C lenses. They all have their function.
 
Thank you all for these answers. I have a C300 Mark 2 and I am going to take those lenses:

- Canon EF 24-70mm L II USM for fiction and documentary (4K and HD)
- Canon EF-S 55-250mm STM for conferences and run and gun work (HD)
- Canon EF-S 24mm STM and/or 40mm STM for gimbal (4K and HD)

Do you think it is a good choice for a start ?
 
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brettsherman said:
The bottom-line is "you get what you pay for."
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Not really. S35 is nearly half the size of FF35 so you are paying for image circle coverage you may not need.. basically catching light that then bounces around inside the lens risking flare and ghosts.

That said most EFs glass is build to a budget that the FF glass is not so the ff glass is often better.

S
 
Michel Talaïa said:
Thank you all for these answers. I have a C300 Mark 2 and I am going to take those lenses:

- Canon EF 24-70mm L II USM for fiction and documentary (4K and HD)
- Canon EF-S 55-250mm STM for conferences and run and gun work (HD)
- Canon EF-S 24mm STM and/or 40mm STM for gimbal (4K and HD)

Do you think it is a good choice for a start ?
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If you are really concentrating on zooms with a more modern look then I would likely go a different route.

Tokina 11-16mm, Sigma 18-35mm, Sigma 50-150mm
 
Michel Talaïa said:
Thank you all for these answers. I have a C300 Mark 2 and I am going to take those lenses:

- Canon EF 24-70mm L II USM for fiction and documentary (4K and HD)
- Canon EF-S 55-250mm STM for conferences and run and gun work (HD)
- Canon EF-S 24mm STM and/or 40mm STM for gimbal (4K and HD)

Do you think it is a good choice for a start ?
Click to expand...

For documentary (especially run n' gun work) I would go with something wider (17-18mm). You want to be able to cover the action...
 
Parrot said:
Don't think I would call the C100 EF-S crop an 'interpolate back up to 1920'. Sensor is 4K, so plenty of resolution to feed into the 1920 pixels without any dirty tricks!
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True the sensor is 4K, and probably true that you will get a better image by using the EF-S crop mode in camera versus doing it in post, but the manual itself says that noise will be more apparent and image quality will be "slightly effected". I feel like this is happening in the last stage of the image train, and not before the HD Oversampling Process takes the 4K RGB and squeezes it down to 1080...but I could be wrong on that front.

Interesting to know about the non-Canon glass not vignetting as much, I was surprised to see how much more the EF-S glass vignetted in DCI but it makes sense. Honestly though, if I'm shooting for DCI the chances of using EF-S glasses are greatly reduced. I hate scaling my video by non round numbers, as it can result in degradation, so I rarely letterbox 17:9 to 16:9 if I can avoid it.
 
David, Sigma Arts looks great but I read on the forum that Canon doesn't support these lenses with the EOS C line. What does that mean? Aperture, DPAF and Focus Assist will not work?
 
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