Questions about the 18mm focal length

DavidBeier

DavidBeier

Veteran
I love the 18mm focal length for full wide shots when working on a crop-sensor camera. It's about the same FoV that I got used to on the HVX200 and EX1 when they were zoomed all the way out.

So why exactly is a fast 18mm prime so hard to find? I understand why they're rare for vintage lenses as, on a full frame camera, 18mm is wider than most people need. But for APSC sized sensors, why are there so few options? The only one I've seen is the Zeiss 18mm and it's only f3.5. I was always under the impression that zoom lenses tended to cost you light and weren't as fast as primes. Why is it that Canon, Sigma, and Tokina can all make a zoom with an 18mm focal length at an F2.8 but Zeiss can't make a prime 18mm faster than f3.5?

For that matter, I'm curious about all the films that are shot on Super 35 (or Red/Genisis/Alexa/ect). The format size on all of those is roughly the same as APSC and I've been told that a standard kit of Primes usually starts with an 18mm (then 24mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 85mm). Are the 18mm lenses in those kits also 3.5 or slower? What do major productions do when they've been shooting a scene on an f2 or f2.8 and suddenly they have to switch to the 18mm for a really wide shot and are limited to f3.5? Seems like a pain for night shoots or indoor scenes with natural light.

Sorry if this is a dumb question as I'm still very new to photography and lens choice.
 
There is a Nikon 18mm, but it is considered one of Nikon's worst lenses ever, although I have no experience with it personally. I own a Nikon 20mm 3.5.

The Arri Master Primes have an 18mm lens, which is T1.3, like all the other Master Primes. The Ultra Primes, however, don't have an 18mm in their line, but almost all of those lenses are T1.9. Both the Ultra and Master series have a 16mm lens.

A "standard cinema lens package" is kind of a misnomer, since you rent the lenses you need for a shoot and not every rental house will have a full stock of every lens in a line (there are 16 Master Primes). A "standard" set may or may not begin with 18mm, but it's usually evenly spaced in terms of spatial imaging.

For example, one "set" might be a 16mm, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, and 75mm, while another might be an 18mm, 28mm, 35mm, 50mm, 85mm, 105mm.

Just depends. What's not standard are really anything past 135mm into super-telephoto or past 16mm into the super-wides (like the new Ultra 8R in the Ultra Primes line above).
 
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Short answer, they don't sell well. Zooms out sell primes by a huge margin.

Oddly enough, the mirrorless systems like the Sony NEX and Panasonic GF series come with a wide prime as an option, 16mm & 14mm respectively.
 
I think a big part of the reason is that everybody makes zooms for APS-C sensors, but only ultra-expensive cine lens makers make primes for that sensor size; canon only has the 60mm macro, IIRC, everything else is for fullframe; the zeiss 18mm you talk about works on full frame; in any case, the tokina 11-16 f/2.8 will beat most primes in that range in many respects, and it can work as a 16mm prime on fullframe too
 
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