PL mount lenses on 7D - why?

[meauounji]

Best I can tell, PL mount lenses are extremely expensive, rare, or both. Half a set of Cooke or Zeiss PL lenses look to be more expensive than any canon fan boy's L-lens wet dream.

So I guess I just don't get it. If you can afford to buy cinema PL lenses, why not just shoot with a RED ONE? Why bother using it on a super35 proxy like the 7D?

 

[ydgmdlu]

7Ds are more expendable than REDs. The DSLR form factor also offers certain advantages. And perhaps 7D owners rent cinema lenses more often than own them.

But you can't assume that just because someone can afford X, he/she must also be able to afford Y. What you said is equivalent to saying that someone who can afford to buy a RED system should just shoot with expensive cinema lenses. And yet many RED owners/users use Nikon and other SLR lenses. (Kholi is an example.)

There are also many photographers and cinematographers who believe that lenses are a better investment than camera bodies. You can take those lenses to many different camera bodies, and they don't become obsolete so quickly. Thus, some shooters only own lenses but not cameras. You can buy a set of PL-mount lenses for $20,000-30,000. If that's all that you can afford, then you're not going to get a RED One. You'll have to rent one, but if you just want a small, personal camera to own, then a 7D is a good toy.

Many believe that lenses are more important for achieving spectacular images than sensors are. They feel that that there is a lot more variation of image quality in lenses of different grades than is the case with sensors. They make a good point. Good cinema lenses have better optics than all but a handful of SLR lenses. And they have much better mechanics. Thus, the lenses themselves would seem to offer more control over how you want an image to look than a sensor would.