Expensive Lenses and Video... Do They REALLY matter?
- Thread starter KennonF
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Ian-T
Veteran
This is exactly my experience...
WhiteMonkey
Well-known member
I'm going to rent some Zeiss CP now. I used Canon EF primes for my last film.
What about focus pulling, aren't the Compact Primes more geared for that?
What about focus pulling, aren't the Compact Primes more geared for that?
Jarrett P. Morgan
Well-known member
I think that the biggest pull on the hotrodded 7D is the ergonomics of the cine lenses.
Green Hornet
Veteran
They all have different looks.
Zeiss breathing looks worse than anything else to me.
L glass or Nikons are all I ever need/want.
Zeiss breathing looks worse than anything else to me.
L glass or Nikons are all I ever need/want.
Snapper123
Well-known member
I'm personally just fuddled with how in the world any sort of glass makes things look more "videoish" than not. Sure, a lens may make a small difference in contrast or sharpness (basically a change that a simple filter or in-camera setting seemingly would do), but I'd think it'd be impossible for any lens to add video-ish contrast or harshness. I think it's more along the lines of that Canon glass is actually better than many Cine lenses or Zeiss lenses *proven by charts and tests*, which makes the imperfections of Canon's fraudulent video technology that much more appearant. Is it possible that all these cine lenses are simply muddying up the image like a blur filter?
Typically 'video' cameras have a huge depth of field whereas more feature films don't, unless the DP wanted it that way.
Aside from fast apertures, there may be little to chose among lenses. However, cheaper lenses won't give you the opportunities in low light unless you then add lighting. For me that's simply not an option in most cases and I find I'm shooting at f1.4 - f2.0 at ISO 1250 and above just to get a good exposure. F22 would be out of the question
amiga500
Active member
I've tested all my lenses on my 7D, and was surpised to found that the ones I thought were shitty were very nice.
I'm talking Nikon mount lenses with not very well known brands and really old, compared to some new lenses I had and prefer the old ones for video. Now for stills the new ones were better, sharper.
I'm talking Nikon mount lenses with not very well known brands and really old, compared to some new lenses I had and prefer the old ones for video. Now for stills the new ones were better, sharper.
Michael Carter
Veteran
However, cheaper lenses won't give you the opportunities in low light unless you then add lighting. For me that's simply not an option in most cases and I find I'm shooting at f1.4 - f2.0 at ISO 1250 and above just to get a good exposure. F22 would be out of the question
But then, suddenly, you have given up all aesthetic control of your shot. DOF and (for all you guys who's only 1.4 lens is a 50mm) framing and image styling based on field of view are all unavailable to you. You've just thrown in the towel on massive parts of your visual vocabulary.
The issue in that case isn't "cheap lenses", it's an overall cheap approach to a project. How can you afford a wide lens that shoots at 2.8 or less, but actually lighting a scene is "out of the question"? A $1500 lens and a couple of shop lights seems like a missed opportunity to me.
Exact, I mean this in no way as a personal slam against you, but rather against the sort of imbalanced mindset behind the "get the sharpest fastest glass you can afford" and thus deciding glass is the only important aspect of shot design - often (it seems) simply because one has good glass.
EDIT: Though I guess if you shoot weddings that's all moot... but I've spent far, far more $$ on lighting than lenses.
...because we shoot mainly events where the videographer has to be totally discreet, not in your face with a light on the camera, no lighting the room because people want low lighting etc etc as they enjoy their event.
Yes, in many ways you are right that we are giving up the creative parts, but there are times when you just can't use lighting and as much as you'd like to shoot this one at f8-f11, it's just not practical. When I can use lighting, I do. I don't have as much invested in lighting as lenses, but it's all relative to how much it gets used. Most of my lighting is for green screen work.
You are right that many people seem to buy the 50/1.4 as their only low light / shallow lens. I encourage everyone to explore other focal lengths, not just in the Canon L range but in the Sigma, Tokina, Tamron and all the others are can be mounted via adapters. We absolutely use a variety of lenses, including 14, 24, 35, 50, 135 and some f2.8 zooms between 24mm and 200mm. We never shoot wide open if we can avoid it, but sometimes we have no choice.
I'd love to setup lighting, change the lighting for different shots, have a take, review the footage, have another take, review it again, oh, move a light, have another take, but life ain't like that in 'one take live shooting'.
Many people look down on event videographers. I'll be the first to admit that not every shot is perfect, not every shot is how I'd like it to be, but to those who sneer, think about this.... if every TV show and every Hollywood movie had to be shot in a single take without the director having chance for a retake, without the director being able to shout 'cut', where the actors just start acting randomly, whether the cameras are ready or not, without any direction or control, I think we'd get somewhat different shows / feature films
In terms of the mindset of 'fastest / sharpest glass', I completely understand where you are coming from, and up to a point I agree. You need to buy the lenses that "do the job" rather than "it must be fastest / sharpest". For me, I need 'fast' glass because of the type of shooting I do, end of story. For others, budget is more of a concern, and credit to the many people who make great movies with the absolute minimum of kit. I really enjoy the times I get to shoot things that aren't real time one shot wonders. I like lighting as much as the next guy, and retakes are a godsend.
Phil Holland
Member
I'll jump in on this as I've been working professionally with the 5D Mark II since 2008 and have had my material shot out on an ArriLaser used on big budget features.
Expensive or not, lenses do indeed make a difference. Quality glass is still quality glass. Whatever the cost.
That said, let's use the Canon 50mm lenses as an example. The 50mm f/1.8, the 50mm f/2.5 Macro, 50mm f/1.4 and the 50mm f/1.2L all produce lovely images both in stills and video. The interesting thing here is each lens has a different effect on the image. In terms of light gathering, flatness, build quality, and contrast primarily. The range of price on all for lenses varies from sub $100 to just a bit over $1500.
Only you can determine what's most important when it comes to your captured image and what "look" you'll like. Some people are extremely picky about such matters, some not so much.
I agree with Barry and others that video, especially how it's captured on most modern hdSLR cameras, does indeed step on the picture quality. However, most of us would prefer to capture more detail/resolution than less detail. I should actually say workable detail here. If you start out soft it's real hard to pull more out of an image, but it's very easy to go from sharp to soft.
Something to note here. Every piece of 5D Mark II footage I've shot that's been used for feature work has been sharpened in post and has had a new curve at a minimum applied to it. On top of that much of the material has been run through noise reduction, moire reduction, and has had a grain profile added back into the image to give it more of a Super35 feel. Not to mention color correction and grading on top of all that.
Now that said, many people aren't exporting for a 40 foot screen and trying to mimic a 2k or 4k filmout. It's important to always know where and how your work will be seen. Even if you are just uploading to say youtube or vimeo for web you would want to use optimized compression technique to maximize your resolution/detail.
An interesting thing to note in terms of visual effects and digitizing and exporting films. Almost all houses scan at higher resolutions and res down to their working resolution. In Los Angeles that's usually a 6k or 8k original scan going down to 2k or 4k workable resolution. Modern digital cinema cameras are paving a new way to look and work on that material though. Specifically the resolution and captured dynamic range. In the next year or two many pipelines and workflows are going to be rewritten or stretched to handle the material that the newer digital formats provide. This actually isn't new, every camera that's been released and utilized has caused a whole heck of a lot of head scratching these past few years. Once you have a good workflow producing quality material though a lot of that worry goes away.
Back to lenses. I mostly shoot with primes. Most of those are Canon L series. I prefer fast aperture primes over zooms primarily. One issue that I have though is I'm also a photographer, so image quality beyond 1080p (which isn't even the lines resolved with these cameras) is a concern of mine. In fact many modern dSLRs at full resolution really reveal lenses quality issues. I find that typically primes produce the highest quality image. I own a ton of primes covering 14mm through 600mm (not mentioning fisheyes here), yet I only own two zooms. Those two zooms are quality zooms though, 24-70mm f/2.8L and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS. Actually a funny oddity here is you can probably make do fine with mid range primes, but when it comes to zooms you should probably drop a bag of gold or two.
When purchasing lenses over the years I usually purchased based of their image quality and flexibility. Meaning, I'd ask myself "Does this lens open up any new worlds for me?". That's an important question. Whether it's a macro focusing ability, faster aperture, wider or longer reach; those are thoughts that should go through peoples heads.
I know many people who are happy with f/4 zooms or even variable aperture zooms. But there's a world of low light imaging that's really just out of reach for glass that slow, not to mention more control over your in focus image. That said, there's some great f/4 glass and if low light and depth of field aren't your biggest concerns, they will serve you very well. For me I know I shoot in a variety of environments. Some of which I have control over the lighting, some where I don't, and some where I have no idea what the lighting conditions really will be until the day. So I usually make sure I have a "dress" for every occasion or possibility.
A bad situation is where you find yourself with no "solution" to an imaging situation. If you can't go wider, longer, or faster in situations where a lens could solve that particular problem, you'll know you're in a bad place.
My advice? In terms of shooting video, get a good range of lenses that cover a variety of lengths. If you are shooting more events than say movies or commercials you'll likely find more of a desire towards a couple quality zooms as you may not have time to switch lenses during the "action". If you are looking to maximize your control over the image and have the ability/time to think and compose your frame, fast primes are a great way to go.
Cost really isn't the question at all.
The only important thing really is to purchase lenses that you'll use, enjoy, and try to get the most out of them.
Expensive or not, lenses do indeed make a difference. Quality glass is still quality glass. Whatever the cost.
That said, let's use the Canon 50mm lenses as an example. The 50mm f/1.8, the 50mm f/2.5 Macro, 50mm f/1.4 and the 50mm f/1.2L all produce lovely images both in stills and video. The interesting thing here is each lens has a different effect on the image. In terms of light gathering, flatness, build quality, and contrast primarily. The range of price on all for lenses varies from sub $100 to just a bit over $1500.
Only you can determine what's most important when it comes to your captured image and what "look" you'll like. Some people are extremely picky about such matters, some not so much.
I agree with Barry and others that video, especially how it's captured on most modern hdSLR cameras, does indeed step on the picture quality. However, most of us would prefer to capture more detail/resolution than less detail. I should actually say workable detail here. If you start out soft it's real hard to pull more out of an image, but it's very easy to go from sharp to soft.
Something to note here. Every piece of 5D Mark II footage I've shot that's been used for feature work has been sharpened in post and has had a new curve at a minimum applied to it. On top of that much of the material has been run through noise reduction, moire reduction, and has had a grain profile added back into the image to give it more of a Super35 feel. Not to mention color correction and grading on top of all that.
Now that said, many people aren't exporting for a 40 foot screen and trying to mimic a 2k or 4k filmout. It's important to always know where and how your work will be seen. Even if you are just uploading to say youtube or vimeo for web you would want to use optimized compression technique to maximize your resolution/detail.
An interesting thing to note in terms of visual effects and digitizing and exporting films. Almost all houses scan at higher resolutions and res down to their working resolution. In Los Angeles that's usually a 6k or 8k original scan going down to 2k or 4k workable resolution. Modern digital cinema cameras are paving a new way to look and work on that material though. Specifically the resolution and captured dynamic range. In the next year or two many pipelines and workflows are going to be rewritten or stretched to handle the material that the newer digital formats provide. This actually isn't new, every camera that's been released and utilized has caused a whole heck of a lot of head scratching these past few years. Once you have a good workflow producing quality material though a lot of that worry goes away.
Back to lenses. I mostly shoot with primes. Most of those are Canon L series. I prefer fast aperture primes over zooms primarily. One issue that I have though is I'm also a photographer, so image quality beyond 1080p (which isn't even the lines resolved with these cameras) is a concern of mine. In fact many modern dSLRs at full resolution really reveal lenses quality issues. I find that typically primes produce the highest quality image. I own a ton of primes covering 14mm through 600mm (not mentioning fisheyes here), yet I only own two zooms. Those two zooms are quality zooms though, 24-70mm f/2.8L and 70-200mm f/2.8L IS. Actually a funny oddity here is you can probably make do fine with mid range primes, but when it comes to zooms you should probably drop a bag of gold or two.
When purchasing lenses over the years I usually purchased based of their image quality and flexibility. Meaning, I'd ask myself "Does this lens open up any new worlds for me?". That's an important question. Whether it's a macro focusing ability, faster aperture, wider or longer reach; those are thoughts that should go through peoples heads.
I know many people who are happy with f/4 zooms or even variable aperture zooms. But there's a world of low light imaging that's really just out of reach for glass that slow, not to mention more control over your in focus image. That said, there's some great f/4 glass and if low light and depth of field aren't your biggest concerns, they will serve you very well. For me I know I shoot in a variety of environments. Some of which I have control over the lighting, some where I don't, and some where I have no idea what the lighting conditions really will be until the day. So I usually make sure I have a "dress" for every occasion or possibility.
A bad situation is where you find yourself with no "solution" to an imaging situation. If you can't go wider, longer, or faster in situations where a lens could solve that particular problem, you'll know you're in a bad place.
My advice? In terms of shooting video, get a good range of lenses that cover a variety of lengths. If you are shooting more events than say movies or commercials you'll likely find more of a desire towards a couple quality zooms as you may not have time to switch lenses during the "action". If you are looking to maximize your control over the image and have the ability/time to think and compose your frame, fast primes are a great way to go.
Cost really isn't the question at all.
The only important thing really is to purchase lenses that you'll use, enjoy, and try to get the most out of them.
ROCKMORE
Veteran
The better the quality of your lenses regardless of the cost, the better images you will be able to create.
Great post Phil... btw... do you use the unsharp mask to sharpen? And if so, what setting do you usually go for? Also, do you have your picture profile sharpning set to 0? When you say you add a new curve at a minimum... what do you mean? And finally, do you think that the image deteriorates every time you had an image correcting filter?
One thing that was interesting for me when transitioning from photography to videography, was to see in real time the quality measures of lenses. I think video helps you to learn the characteristics of lenses much faster than with photography. Things like purple fringing/chromatic aberration, finding the sweet spots of the lens (sharpness), flaring and vignetting.
I agree with Barry that 1080 isn't there to see the resolution. My target is a plasma screen in my living room, which is nowhere near as sharp as my computer monitor. I invest in good glass, but in the end, you can't see the sharpness provided by the equipment. If your deliverable is for the big screen, maybe thats a different story. I do invest in the better glass personally, because the resale value actually appreciates over the gold ring glass. So you end up kind of renting the glass.
I agree with Barry that 1080 isn't there to see the resolution. My target is a plasma screen in my living room, which is nowhere near as sharp as my computer monitor. I invest in good glass, but in the end, you can't see the sharpness provided by the equipment. If your deliverable is for the big screen, maybe thats a different story. I do invest in the better glass personally, because the resale value actually appreciates over the gold ring glass. So you end up kind of renting the glass.
Phil Holland
Member
Depends on the footage really. Unsharp mask is usually the way to go. Neat Image has an interesting sharpening effect as well. The key is to not go overboard when it comes to sharpening, just enough to bring out some edges and textural detail. It's usually around a 0.5 pixel adjustment.
Yep. My picture profile sharpening is always set to 0. I find that anything sharpened in camera produces either edge artifacts or halos that are difficult to recover from.
The secondary curve sort of squeaks out more detail in the shadows really. This is all before color correction or grading, so if you want that shadow detail it's there for you to use or squash into the dark abyss.
Image quality is my biggest concern. I'm not "baking" in my corrections other than a flat picture profile, so everything is adjustable later if need be.
Since we are dealing with a compressed format already I'm more concerned out of what can be achieved with the material rather than keeping the original file in pristine condition. Now if we are talking about other cameras like the Alexa or Red there's a whole other conversation that occurs and we are trying to keep the original file in a much more "stable" condition.
I think some images might explain what I'm doing a bit more.
Here's a test I did a couple days ago using the new Marvels Cine 3.3 Picture profile against my older Canon Neutral/flat settings.
This is all at ISO 640, f/8, and 1/50th with a 50mm f/1.2L on a Canon 5D Mark II. Rim light is 5600k, ambient fill around 3000k. Focus is locked on the "models" eye. Light is pointing down at the Passport ColorChecker.
Canon Neutral Flat - bigger
Marvels Cine 3.3 Profile (no contrast) - bigger
My corrections: Curve, sharpen, noise reduction, grain profile - bigger
My final grade with moire reduction - bigger
If you look at this guy's right shoulder and see where that core shadow rolls off into the background shadow area you'll notice actually separation in the values with that extra curve applied. In the first image there's almost no tonal variation between those two points, even with those flat settings. Also, his ribs reveal a lot more visible detail.
That's pretty much what I do. I don't always apply a grain profile, but if I'm exporting back to film I have to. The ArriLaser shoots to an intermediate stock that essentially shows no grain at all. So if you want to match other actual film footage you have to bake something in grain-wise. For digital deliveries I usually don't add it though. If I'm mixing and matching with higher end digital cinema cameras there's another curve that gets applied usually and special attention is payed to the black and white levels.
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brandondull
Well-known member
Who the heck has money for this! http://tinyurl.com/6zmmzwz
gliderguynj
New member
I just made the jump into the DSLR world after using my SD1100IS for all of my "hobby" filming. At this point I only have the kit lens that comes with the T2i. Yesterday I wanted to film my daughter playing her guitar and focussed in on her fingers. The first thing I noticed was that I couldn't get the shot I wanted at the shutter speed I wanted to use, because there wasn't enough light! Something I usually didn't have to deal with on the SD. So for my two cents, I have to say that a faster more expensive lens would be very useful. I understand that I will now have to think about supplemental lighting when shooting indoors, but if you just want to shoot on the fly like I did, you need a faster lens. All the other points are fine, and I guess sharpness is just a personal preference with good arguments on both sides.