Let's talk glass: Lenses for the AF100!

for run & gun i think of this 2 lenses:zuiko digital ed
12-60mm f2.8-4.0 which has no ois but is faster than
the lumix 14-140(f 4) with ois...really need some
low light function,is the 14-140 good enough for low light?...
 
I know it's expensive, but wouldn't the Zeiss LWZ.2 zoom be pretty much the perfect cine lens for the AF100? (for efficient indie run-and-gun filmmaking vs. swapping out the Zeiss primes?)

If I'm understanding things correctly, the crop factor / Focal Length Multiplier of 1.89 for the AF100 would give the LWZ.2 an equivalent range of 29mm to 85mm. Just about perfect for most shots you'd use a set of primes for.

Also given the crop factor, it seems you wouldn't be able to go very wide with even the widest of the Zeiss CP.2 primes on the AF100; Aren't they more suited / designed for FF sensors?
 
Steve R said:
I know it's expensive, but wouldn't the Zeiss LWZ.2 zoom be pretty much the perfect cine lens for the AF100? (for efficient indie run-and-gun filmmaking vs. swapping out the Zeiss primes?)

If I'm understanding things correctly, the crop factor / Focal Length Multiplier of 1.89 for the AF100 would give the LWZ.2 an equivalent range of 29mm to 85mm. Just about perfect for most shots you'd use a set of primes for.

Also given the crop factor, it seems you wouldn't be able to go very wide with even the widest of the Zeiss CP.2 primes on the AF100; Aren't they more suited / designed for FF sensors?
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Compared to what? Here's a news flash: Full-frame 35MM still camera area is NOT the standard and never was. The more appropriate standard is 35MM MOVIE film. The crop factor compared to a 35MM film camera is only 1.2, and compared to the Red One shooting at 16x9HD, which is most common for television, the crop factor is a mere 1.09.

Good shooting and best regards,

Leo
 
I tried one of those $5k Zeiss 50mm lenses on my 7D. You know, they make a great picture, but when I am running around with my stabilizer, forget it! :) I'm actually looking forward to trying out the pancake lens on the AF-100 since I bet it is SO light.

As a side note, one thing I find interesting. I read all these people talking about how you need a second person to pull focus, and how hard it is with non-cine lenses, and on and on. So the last four days I've been in the hospital with a leg infection (teaches me to go to the gym!) and I've been catching up on a bunch of recent movies and television shows, and I'll be honest, I see stuff out of focus ALL THE TIME that should be in focus. I look at my footage and I NEVER typically have this problem. Are they just hurrying through TV shows too much? People got me terrified about focus. Yet, we manually, with one person, pull focus on Sigma 30mm, a variety of Canon lenses (like 4) and a Bower 85mm and don't have a problem. At most we need to shot a scene twice if we miss one, but it's not that hard. (currently on a 7D). And I am looking at the footage 1:1.

What am I missing here?
 
Barry_Green said:
Isn't the LWZ like $48,000?

(or is that the Cooke?)
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Cooke only makes One zoom lens, so I doubt that is it, although it IS $48,000. The CXX zoom is like 15-40mm or something near there. Cooke really only makes good primes, with the exception of the CXX.

This fits the price range, almost exactly, but I'd really be surprised if you were talking about the CXX since it is pretty rare.
 
grimepoch said:
What am I missing here?
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Don't know what exactly you shoot. Having been focus puller for a short time I can only say that if you work with a - say - 50 mm at around f 2.0 or less, with a maybe moving camera and actors not hitting their marks or changing their movements spontaneously you are in hell in no time and sweat will run down from your hands to the elbows.

Especially if camera and/or actors move towards or away from the camera or - even worse - when the camera is running on tracks that have been laid angular to their movements. To pull focus with non-cine lenses is not such a problem if things/actors are a bit farer away at times in a "middle distance" (given you do not one of the spectacular "spaghetti-western" shots with extremely long lenses - another nightmare)..... but you get "soft" quickly when they move nearer to you. And: Focus in dramatic work is much more often used as a means for storytelling - where is the focus of a scene in more than one sense - so an audience may be much more inclined to realize when things are even slightly "off".

As today a lot of DoP seem to be in love with longer lenses, are frantic about shooting at 1.4 or so and a lot of actors do not realize any more that what they do is also a craft where you may need to have some control over where you are when and why and change their positions from take to take.... and you work digital which is much more unforgiving than film .... focus puller's lives have become even more hellish.

There are basically two groups of focus pullers: The ones who are okay and the ones who are really good. The latter are indeed a rare breed as their work means constant concentration in every single take and all of their errors are plain to see for everybody all the time and everybody, especially actors, start shouting at them .... especially when they have not hit their marks... so lousy focus pullers survive at best one day in a shoot.

Focus puller/assistant camera is from my experience probably one of the most underestimated jobs in film making. You realize their work only when they make a mistake..... I, btw, was not exactly lousy but also not really that good.... ;-)
 
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tipota said:
Don't know what exactly you shoot. Having been focus puller for a short time and having worked with some top DoP's in my country then, I can only say that if you work with a - say - 50 mm at around f 2.0 or less, with a maybe moving camera and actors not hitting their marks or changing their movements spontaneously you are in hell in no time and sweat will run down from your hands to the elbows.

Especially if camera and/or actors move towards or away from the camera or - even worse - when the camera is running on tracks that have been laid angular to their movements. To pull focus with non-cine lenses is not such a problem if things/actors are a bit farer away at times in a "middle distance" (given you do not one of the spectacular "spaghetti-western" shots with extremely long lenses - another nightmare)..... but you get "soft" quickly when they move nearer to you. And: Focus in dramatic work is much more often used as a means for storytelling - where is the focus of a scene in more than one sense - so an audience may be much more inclined to realize when things are even slightly "off".

As today a lot of DoP seem to be in love with longer lenses, are frantic about shooting at 1.4 or so and a lot of actors do not realize any more that what they do is also a craft where you may need to have some control over where you are when and why and change their positions from take to take.... and you work digital which is much more unforgiving than film .... focus puller's lives have become even more hellish.

There are basically two groups of focus pullers: The ones who are okay and the ones who are really good. The latter are indeed a rare breed as their work means constant concentration in every single take and all of their errors are plain to see for everybody all the time and everybody, especially actors, start shouting at them .... especially when they have not hit their marks... so lousy focus pullers survive at best one day in a shoot.

Focus puller/assistant camera is from my experience probably one of the most underestimated jobs in film making. You realize their work only when they make a mistake..... I, btw, was not exactly lousy but also not really that good.... so I changed the work field a bit.....
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Thanks for the insight from your experience. What I imagine is that we setup our shots to avoid those situations, which means, we just aren't shooting as dramatic of situations where that occurs. I'd imagine as we push our scenes to be more and more dynamic, we'll run into this more in the future.

I'm just shocked at how much of this I see in the cinema. When I saw the new predators movie recently, a few of the wide shots were MUCH softer than the close-ups. Maybe it was the film, or the lens and not the focus, but it was VERY noticeable to me. In addition, I was watching Jonah Hex and was amazed at some focus pulls I don't think looked right, but then again, maybe I just didn't get what they were doing there.

I'm gonna have to try some harder shots. Our actors so far have been good about hitting their marks on dolly shots, and also, some of the floater work we've done. Although, I've been pacing them as well. I shoot a LOT of 1.4 at 30mm, so when I start using my 50mm a little bit more, it might be more tricky.

Again, thanks for your thoughts.
 
Yes, things have not exactly become better these days which may be also due to the fact that actors and directors more often demand to work much more spontaneously - so strange and sometimes outright wrong focus pulls are the price for that.

And yes - it's a trend that befuddles me too at times that even in really big productions you see some of this mistakes. Work for the really big screen should be a bit better.
 
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It would be interesting to see how some of the vintage cine lenses like the old cooke panchro's and schneider primes do. 35mm versions in arri standard or bnc mount, I'm sure there will be adapters for these and are not in high demand for RED due to the larger s35 sensor area, many of these lenses only cover the standard academy gate and not the larger s35 area, but would be fine for m4/3
 
Currently I have a HPX170 that shoots weekly in a studio/live church venue. This camera commonly runs at almost full 13x zoom.

With an AF-100, what kind of lens would I need to shoot at approximately the same zoom?
 
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