C500: Prime lens with autofocus

S

seanadl

Active member
Hi there,

This is my first post on the forum and I apologize in advance if this is a bit of a newbie question.

I'm purchasing the C500 ii and looking at investing in lenses. I'm going to be using the camera for both run and gun work and also creative cinematic style promos done in a studio.
I want to use the autofocus capabilities of the camera. For the run and gun, i'll be getting a 24-70MM F2.8L II, 70-200MM F2.8L, maybe a CANON 16-35MM F2.8 III.

However, I do want a set of prime lenses too. I thought the Canon CN-E EF mounted lenses would be a good choise as they would give that nice bokeh and warm look while still maintaining the autofocus capabilities. However, after speaking to the company I'm buying from, they advised that the CN-E lenses don't offer much improvement in terms of optics compared to the L-series lenses. They also don't autofocus.

Does anybody know if this is true? If it is, that's a huge saving on my part. Are there any cine primes that do offer autofocus?
 
Good question. I'm not aware of dedicated cinema prime lenses with built-in auto focus motors (aside from some new Panavision lenses that none of us can buy). Usually cine lenses are focused either by hand or with the use of a wireless follow focus and external motors.

If you're planning on using the C500 II auto focus capabilities, then your best (only?) option is to use still photo lenses. Canon makes some superb fast primes in EF mount which should work great with AF. I would think you're better off using Canon brand lenses instead of other third-party lenses to ensure the best AF control.
 
Ah ok, so then Canon's L-series lenses should be a good option (even though they are still lenses and not cine).

I'm sure there is an appetite for cine lenses that have autofocus capabilities with this new camera. There must be filmmakers out there who want to use the cine glass but take advantage of the great AF options this camera has.
 
There are hundreds (maybe thousands) who'd like that, and it seems like Sony will be the first to finally embark on the journey on this level, but it's never been available before as these kind of cinema systems with usable AF have only existed for a couple of years (all from Canon). Sony released its first one late last year.

Photo lenses have always been what most people use on all of these cameras with the occasional bigger project, budget, experimentation asking for more. In Hollywood and the like, it's normally the complete opposite (but that may change a bit in the years ahead).
 
seanadl said:
Ah ok, so then Canon's L-series lenses should be a good option (even though they are still lenses and not cine).

I'm sure there is an appetite for cine lenses that have autofocus capabilities with this new camera. There must be filmmakers out there who want to use the cine glass but take advantage of the great AF options this camera has.
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Some of the CN-E primes are optically very similar to their L series brethren. Others are unique. The new sumire primes are of a new design. Canon makes a couple of cine zooms that have AF, but they are s35.

I’ve found that the AF algorithms on the c500ii work well to smooth out some of the ‘still af’ tendencies of the older ef lenses, and so if you are looking for lenses with canon characteristics their entire ef line works generally pretty well.

CN-E lenses are cine lenses, meaning they are built for manual focus pulling, and may be designed to control breathing, and not necessarily to have superior optics. If you need/want Af capabilities you are essentially asking for an electronic focus (EF) lens, not a cine lens. Combining AF and long throw dampened manual focusing in a lens is a trick, and While canon has made those few hybrid zoom lenses, I’m not sure we’ll see many more. More likely that we’ll continue to see advancements in af technology in both ef and rf mounts.
 
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has anyone tested the Sigma Art 24-70/2.8 in terms of AF? I was going to sell it but if it works with the C500II I might keep it.
 
NorBro said:
There are hundreds (maybe thousands) who'd like that, and it seems like Sony will be the first to finally embark on the journey on this level, but it's never been available before as these kind of cinema systems with usable AF have only existed for a couple of years (all from Canon). Sony released its first one late last year. ...
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Yup. Sony has AF cine lenses - based on their G-master, one assumes - but no 6K. Canon has 6K but no AF cine glass. Whudafuguredat?

And Canon does have some excellent RF-mount lenses already out ... but it ain't got 6K in RF. Yet. Some announcements should be just around the corner.

Barry G said:
... CN-E lenses are cine lenses, meaning they are built for manual focus pulling, and may be designed to control breathing, and not necessarily to have superior optics. If you need/want Af capabilities you are essentially asking for an electronic focus (EF) lens, not a cine lens. Combining AF and long throw dampened manual focusing in a lens is a trick, and While canon has made those few hybrid zoom lenses, I’m not sure we’ll see many more. More likely that we’ll continue to see advancements in af technology in both ef and rf mounts.
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Canon is on the record that it is not developing any new EF lenses. EF is at the end of its line, as the company is switching to the mirrorless in its consumer and pro product. The third party manufacturers are likely to follow suit.
 
DLD said:
Canon is on the record that it is not developing any new EF lenses. EF is at the end of its line, as the company is switching to the mirrorless in its consumer and pro product. The third party manufacturers are likely to follow suit.
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This has been a case where the headline story has never really matched the actual quote from the senior pro product manager that made it..

“As you know, last year we launched the RF mount and EOS R system, Shepherd tells Digital Camera World. “To date we’ve launched ten critically acclaimed lenses, and as it’s a new system we plan to continue this, launching more RF lenses while still fully supporting the EF lens system.

“And of course, should the market demand it, we are ready to create new EF lenses. But for now, our focus is on RF.”
 
Lots of things are open to interpretation but, looking at the market, there won't be any new EF cameras and there won't be any new EF lenses. C500 MKII and 1D X MKIII must have been in development for several years and their release made sense. The times have changed. The imaging divisions of several companies (Olympus, Nikon) are either under water or barely breaking even. Canon's imaging is likely to slide into red in 2020 also. For a struggling company, the R&D is one of the first things to go. In other words, the way I interpret the comment is, "We ain't got the money. The smartphones are killing us. We're lucky to even put out half a dozen mirrorless models and lenses to go with them. Welcome to the new era".
 
this is getting off topic..

Canon made horrible mistakes. Remember that in the first yrs the DSLR market was almost completely in their hands.

From this position they missed semi professional mirrorless video cameras completely and left this market to Sony's A7 series and Pana GH3/4/5. They where years too late with professional mirrorless cameras for advanced and professional photographers. And when they brought one out very very late the EOS R it had no IBIS and only 30MP. They did not get anyone to switch from another brand. The DSLR product line is still outdated. That's fatal in a shrinking market.
I am not sure where the market of a 1DX MIII at a price point of 7,300€ is? Press photographers? Do they need RAW video?

The Cinema series could have been a game changer but for the specs the cameras where always too expensive. The C300 was overpriced and so was the C300II. The price drop came too late when Sony was selling FS7 like crazy. Canon could have dominated the market with their unique DP AF but with the price tag of 16k they opened the door for the FS7. Imagine how many people swallowed the bitter pill of Sony's skin tones just because Canon was much more expensive.
Crippling the C200 to protect the C300II wasn't a good idea either. Instead of bringing a C300III with internal 10bit 60p and a C300R with the 10bit 60p plus RAW they left this market blank. Sony learned the lesson and improved the color science and added the AF from the A7 series. Canon is still sticking at high prices. Look at the result of the Full Frame Cine Camera Shootout. Does anyone think the C500II will show up at big productions? ARRI is still the landmark. RED is kinda established also. C700 was a flop. FX9 will sell a lot for the big market of corporate film. The FX9 is 5K cheaper than the C500II and Sony has closed the gap to Canon's unique territory AF and colors. Where's the market for a C500II except for C300II owners who do not want to leave the system? Do you think a Sony or RED owner will switch?
It's not the smartphones who killed them. That's a lame excuse. Smartphones harmed low price portrait photographers but not professional film makers. It's the disastrous combination of being slow and too expensive. my 2cts
 
Can't speak to how they react to the C500MKII's autofocus, but I can say without a doubt my Sigma Art 18-35 is slower in autofocus than any of my Canon lenses on my C200.
 
FWIW, the past few weeks, I've been shooting a series of interviews in Cinema RAW Light on our C200 with the Canon EF 28mm f/1.8, EF 50mm f/1.8 STM and the 85mm f/1.8, our low budget primes set and all three lenses have been great, the images are beautiful and basically indistinguishable from
the images we get when we rent the CN E Primes on occasion as well as the Sigma Cine Primes. IMHO, you, can buy better lenses for sure, but with low to mid range cine lenses, all you would be paying for is build quality, and ergonomics, that's about it.

Of course, the manual focusing on all three of the still lenses kind of sucks since they are focus by wire and have obnoxiously short focus throw, which is why I am still going to eventually pick up some SLR Magic APO Primes, for handheld shooting. But for interviews, we use AF-C or face detect with
these really inexpensive still lenses with great results. IMHO, for still lenses, the EF Primes look considerably better than the cheap to mid-range zooms. All three of these cheap primes blow the EF S 17-55, EF S 18-135 STM IS and the 24-105mm f/4.0 IS II out of the water as far as sharpness, microcontrast,
speed and cost so much less. I'm kind of back in love with my primes. My only zoom I am still in love with is the EF 70-200mm f/2.8 IS II, that is still a hell of an impressive image. But it's big and heavy, while the 85mm f/1.8 is light, small and cost a fraction as much and looks close to as good.
I don't think cine primes are going to look significantly different in quality over the still primes until you get into $25k Zeiss primes, etc.
 
Clermond said:
this is getting off topic..

Canon made horrible mistakes. Remember that in the first yrs the DSLR market was almost completely in their hands.

From this position they missed semi professional mirrorless video cameras completely and left this market to Sony's A7 series and Pana GH3/4/5. They where years too late with professional mirrorless cameras for advanced and professional photographers. And when they brought one out very very late the EOS R it had no IBIS and only 30MP. They did not get anyone to switch from another brand. The DSLR product line is still outdated. That's fatal in a shrinking market.
I am not sure where the market of a 1DX MIII at a price point of 7,300€ is? Press photographers? Do they need RAW video?

The Cinema series could have been a game changer but for the specs the cameras where always too expensive. The C300 was overpriced and so was the C300II. The price drop came too late when Sony was selling FS7 like crazy. Canon could have dominated the market with their unique DP AF but with the price tag of 16k they opened the door for the FS7. Imagine how many people swallowed the bitter pill of Sony's skin tones just because Canon was much more expensive.
Crippling the C200 to protect the C300II wasn't a good idea either. Instead of bringing a C300III with internal 10bit 60p and a C300R with the 10bit 60p plus RAW they left this market blank. Sony learned the lesson and improved the color science and added the AF from the A7 series. Canon is still sticking at high prices. Look at the result of the Full Frame Cine Camera Shootout. Does anyone think the C500II will show up at big productions? ARRI is still the landmark. RED is kinda established also. C700 was a flop. FX9 will sell a lot for the big market of corporate film. The FX9 is 5K cheaper than the C500II and Sony has closed the gap to Canon's unique territory AF and colors. Where's the market for a C500II except for C300II owners who do not want to leave the system? Do you think a Sony or RED owner will switch?
It's not the smartphones who killed them. That's a lame excuse. Smartphones harmed low price portrait photographers but not professional film makers. It's the disastrous combination of being slow and too expensive. my 2cts
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Lot to unpack in that. Most of it opinion masquerading as facts, but hey that’s what forums are for. Let me try to respond in kind.

Canon’s fortunes have generally declined along with the dslr market as a whole, which has been Impacted along with the compact market by the growth in the smartphone market. Canon’s bread and butter has always been in the consumer side of the business, and its runaway successes have been in the lower tier of the market...things like Rebels, and powershots, things that don’t get talked about any more because, well, smartphones. Cinema cameras are a tiny division at canon, and anyone who works there will tell you they make more money selling lenses for those cameras, than the bodies themselves. Smartphones haven’t killed their cinema business, a business they’ve never been close to dominating. (except one area for a very short period..the original c300 took Sony to the cleaners, and Sony responded with a product (fs7)that canibalized its f5/f55 cash cows to regain that market which they had dominated since its inception.)

On the still side, Canon and Nikon both were late to the mirrorless game because they had segment leading dslr businesses to protect. Sony had no such stake in the segment. Somehow, in its early days producing marginally functional mirrorless cameras, it managed to catch the eye of the photo press, who reported on these cameras as if they were magic, ignoring the glaring inadequacies they possessed. And things really did begin to change in the market place. Canon admits it was slow to move, and certainly has lost market share along the way, but let’s not forget, that even without a mature line of mirrorless cameras, that canon sells far more bodies and lenses than sony does, and as its poised to present a pretty formidable system over the next couple of years with some of the best lenses that can be had anywhere, I wouldn’t be counting them anywhere close to out.

Your narrative regarding the c500II and the fx9 may prove to be true in the end, although I think it’s often easy to ignore where these cameras serve different markets, have very different specs, and are priced accordingly. I could go into comparisons regarding where this camera sits, but let’s just say it’s a very reasonably priced, all rounder...easily handling broadcast, docs, features, commercials and corporate. It’s never going to show up on a large feature as an A cam, but thats not who it’s for. it’s for owner operators who want a raw workflow when they need one. 6k output for a variety of reasons. Several 4K workflows that allow for ff and s35 lensing. modular design. Canon build and reliability. Are these cameras perfect? Hardly. But neither is that superstar fx9. I’ve seen lots to complain about in the tests I’ve seen, but as usual, folks seem to ignore the flaws of the camera with the big S on its chest. FWIW, I don’t think we’ve seen canon’s competitor to the fx9, but what do I know.
 
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Check out the Tamron SP 35mm f1.8 or 45mm f1.8 primes. Very good quality and both have image stabilization (that they call VC). Autofocus is a little slower than Canon lenses, but it's very accurate, and I think it's fine for video.
 
Barry G said:
Canon’s fortunes have generally declined along with the dslr market as a whole, which has been Impacted along with the compact market by the growth in the smartphone market.
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And what is more, Canon's share has dwindled less than their competitors, which means they have increased their market share. I also wonder, if Canon has any plans to cater to the smartphone world. An iPhone with Canon optics and colors would be an instant buy.
 
I always like to say that the best photographs ever taken have all used still lenses. There's nothing optically wrong with still lenses for video, it's the focus mechanics that are different. If you're going to use auto focus, the advantages of cinema lenses (long barrel throw, repeatable focus marks, smooth dampening, etc.) all become irrelevant. If all you're doing is comparing the actual image quality and not the mechanics, a good still lens will match a good cinema lens no problem.
 
Clermond said:
The Cinema series could have been a game changer but for the specs the cameras where always too expensive. The C300 was overpriced...

... my 2cts
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The C series were game changers. When the C300 came out it was an absolute steal, unless you were only shooting on a 5D level camera. I know guys that were buying multiple copies, because they were less than half the cost of a lot of what we were used to buying then. Now people expect to get an Arri LF for $15K, but in 2012 what you got in the C300 for that was a bargain.
 
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