ydgmdlu
Veteran
As I said earlier in this thread, the GH1's sensor has an active image area in video mode that is only slightly smaller than the Academy frame size. I don't think that you understood what that meant.
1) Motion picture film is run vertically rather than horizontally (as it is in still photography). There is a motion picture format in which the film is run horizontally, and it's called VistaVision. VistaVision was used in a handful of studio productions a few decades ago and found a champion in Alfred Hitchcock, but it never got mainstream acceptance and soon went out of fashion completely. So you shouldn't think of full frame as a "standard" in cinema because it's almost never used.
2) Since the film is normally run vertically, the maximum frame width is 24.89mm, which is the width for the Super 35 format. However, for a number of reasons, Super 35 (or "S35") is not the dominant format. One reason is that in order to achieve that width, the small area of celluloid to left of the image frame that is normally reserved for the audio track is instead used for the image as well. (This has numerous implications on workflow, delivery, and exhibition.)
3) So because there's an area on the celluloid that's normally reserved for the audio track, the image area in most productions is not as wide as the full 24.89mm. It's actually 20.95mm wide (for 1.85 matted widescreen, which is the the most common format). This is what's known as the Academy film gate (or frame) size. The GH1's sensor in video mode is estimated to be 18.8mm wide. As a result, the field of view that you get from it is barely distinguishable from that of the most common motion picture film format.
If you go to a cinematography resource like American Cinematographer magazine (the trade publication of the American Society of Cinematographers, of which all professional American cinematographers working in Hollywood are members), you can read all about what lenses and apertures were used on high profile productions.
Most movies seem to be shot between T2.8 and T4.0, although T5.6 is not uncommon either. In case you don't know, there's a small technical difference between T-stops and F-stops, but for simplicity's sake, you can consider them the same. Most Hollywood cinematographers on most productions like to keep the aperture more or less constant on all shots. In fact, I read in an IMDb interview some years ago that choosing the aperture value is the first step that many/most cinematographers take in establishing the look for a movie.
Because the aperture is decided early in pre-production or production by a cinematographer, then focal lengths matter primarily for field of view and object proportion within the image. They don't matter so much for depth-of-field considerations. However, there are certain conventions for certain kinds of shots, like longer lenses for close-ups of people. You can read about what the conventions are from cinematography books that you can borrow from the public library.
But ultimately, the point is that you don't have to worry so much about what lenses to use on the GH1 to get a "film look." Because the image size is so similar to the Academy frame, you can just use the same focal lengths and apertures that Hollywood cinematographers use without any worries about crop factor. Even the kit lens is fine for getting a "filmic" DOF. I recommend paying close attention to the movies that you commonly find in theaters to get a good feel for the conventions. Really, these conventions are not all that different from the ones in the still photo world.
