LEX, PL mount, and Zeiss Superspeed Lenses

waefre

waefre

Well-known member
So I just took the LEX to Dallas for its first serious field trip. The production company wanted to use Zeiss Superspeed lenses so I picked up the PL mount for the LEX. Its a chunk of change but those lenses really make a huge difference. I'm going to have to check about posting any sort of screen grabs as everything is surrounded by all sorts of legal mumbo jumbo.
Anyway, it was a shoot for a community college and the LEX behaved beautifully. We'd done another spot for them about six months ago using the M2, and this time I think we used about half the wattage lighting everything. We even shot in a bowling alley and the background could clearly be seen without any additional lighting. Most of the time we kept the lenses at 5.6 Here's a pic of our setup using zacuto's system. It transitioned very easily to handheld for a little run and gun too.

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could you please tell me the main advantage of pl mount lenses over the regular nikon primes in terms of image quality,resolution,and filmic look?thanks.
 
For starters look at the beautiful focus marks on those lenses. My Nikons are going to be 1st AC killers.
 
Taormina hit one of the most important nails on the head. ACing on Nikon lenses ain't fun at ALL.

5.6 is dangerous if you've got no light. Anything above that is where the grain becomes apparent.

Disjecta's outdoors footages have lots of 5.6 and you can't see the grain.
 
I'm Dangerous with the LEX! Yeah I know 5.6 is right on the line. I did some tests before we started though and didn't think it would be a problem. From what I've seen Static grain usually occurs in the middle of a move. I assume this is because for a brief instant the vibrating motion is neutralized by the movement in the same direction and thus you get a clear shot of the grain. Most of our movement was either static interviews or smooth sweeping jib moves. We also lit everything well and the Shutter was defaulted to 1/60th which helps. I havn't gone over all the Broll yet but so far no problems.

As far as the lenses go, they are beautiful. For starters they're F1.2 which comes in handy. Taormina is right too, the marks are very accurate. They lenses are larger and the focus has a lot more rotation allowing it to be dialed in very easily. Basically they are lenses made to do exactly what we are doing. They're made with the end goal of having the final picture blown up on the big screen, not put in a scrap book. You can also get short Zoom lenses and the focus should remain consistent through the zoom. All in all they just work. Of course I usually use canon or nikons but whenever the opportunity presents itself I jump at it.
 
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