Sony 18-270 Zoom for the F3

petermullett

petermullett

Well-known member
Ok, I know a number of people have said that this lens is "rubbish", a lot of which was said very soon after the lens was released. I am well aware of it's shortcomings, the ramping T stop and so on....Also for me I'd much rather that they made a 18-150, maybe even saving the T stop ramping in the process, going to 270 isn't very handy at all......But it is what it is. What I'd really like to know now is from the users that have bought this lens and have been shooting with it for a couple of months or so, what's the verdict at this point?
Coming from years of film, ( still have that gear and still use it ), I'm a prime lens person...but there's many a shoot where a lens like the 18-270 could be extremely useful, so once more I'm considering it quite seriously and would love to have some more "real use" opinions.
Many thanks,
Peter
 
I got this lens late January when it first arrived in the UK, and I must say it's proved much better and more useful than I'd hoped. My other zoom is a RED 18-50mm and I contemplated buying the RED 18-85mm until I tried to lift it! Not something you would want to use hand held on your own. Clearly, the speed and ramping of the Sony 18-252mm could be an issue if it was your only lens, but these factors are obviously design compromises which allow for exceptional range, light weight, and ease of use. This lens allows me to 'run & gun' with the F3 on fluid documentary type shoots where I might not have the time or ability to swap and carry a selection of lenses. As you can probably tell, I like this lens a lot because it allows me to contemplate using the F3 for jobs where I might previously have disregarded it as not suitable. There were two big surprises when I started to get used to it: first, it's exceptionally sharp right across the picture and particularly below 150mm. Secondly, I haven't really noticed the ramping because the vast majority of it happens above about 120mm. I commonly use this lens in the 18-100mm range and down here the ramping is not a visible issue for me.

Having said what I like, there are some points I don't: The powered zoom is not great and totally useless if you're hand held. The zoom rocker is way too far back to be useful and the lack of servo adjustments means slow powered creeps are next to impossible. The back focus adjustment is electronic and I'm not totally confident of it's accuracy or stability over time. It also seems to drift out of adjustment more than I'd like. If Sony had managed to put a proper zoom rocker and hand grip on the lens motor housing, the whole package would be so much more usable.

Taking all the above into account, I rarely use this lens to zoom on shot - it's more of a variable prime the way I use it. I don't have the need for auto focus or auto iris and for the most part, the zoom servo is set to manual as I prefer to operate the zoom by hand. The steadyshot function works well and I have found that very useful hand held... but do remember to turn it off when putting it back on the tripod - very strange motion if you forget!

This lens doesn't replace any of my primes, (I bought the F3K) nor does it magically turn the F3 into an ENG type of rig, but what it does do is provide a portable range of focal lengths which no other lens can currently do for anywhere near the price or weight. The best alternative to this lens is to buy a second camera, but that doesn't always work either when shooting fast evolving documentaries on low budgets!

Oh - and the image quality... really surprisingly good.
 
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Thank you Paul, this pretty much what I needed to know. I too wouldn't use the powered zoom very much, if at all because if it was that kind of a shoot I'd rig the camera with my Cooke 18-100 and use one of my Heden zoom motor rigs / zoom controllers from my film kit..

The lens interests me for the same reasons it seems to have scored well with you, documentary / quick interview / travelling light and so on. Anything beyond 100 mm or so I'd probably choose to mount a PL prime, ( I have some PL converted "long" Nikkors remounted and re-housed 8-9 years ago by Chris Edwards of Optical Support in London who you most likely know of ).

I too have the Red short zoom, tried the longer ones, but didn't like mechanics or the look of them too much.....also dealing with Red is a pain, more of a seance actually.
The rest of the kit comprises a set of CP Primes and other Nikon mount Nikkors that I use with the MTF adapter.

I did try the two camera option by the way, I had an EX1-R prior to getting the F3 from Abel CineTech in NYC last summer.....But traveling with two cameras is a pain, better to hire the second one at the location if that's what would enhance the shoot. So, I sold the EX1-R. A nice little doc' camera though.

So, I think I will order the 18-270 soon and have a friend bring it over from Abel's to me in France in early June. It will have a use in the work I'm doing here this year.

Many thanks for the input. It gels with what my friends at Abel tell me, but it's always good to get feedback from actual owners / shooters.

Best,

Peter
 
Paul. can you in fact fit / use an external, ( probably third party ), zoom control with this lens?......ie: mount the zoom control on the tripod handle for instance like my Preston Micro Force, ( I know I can't use the Preston because of the lemo connexions ), ?
Ordered the lens by the way, thank you again for your response.....
Peter
 
I thought about doing the same thing in order to move the zoom control down to some front handles... unfortunately I haven't managed to figure out a way of doing it yet. You can program the zoom onto assign buttons and there are two zoom buttons on the i/r remote (W)(T) but these are purely switched and have no speed control. The thinking is this must be possible using control through the wired remote lemo on the camera, but this is a command digital signal and I don't know of anyone who's successfully got this working yet?

There are some people who've tried to make remote start/stop cables using the wired remote and discovered that you lose control of the gain/colour balance switches on the camera! Thinking about it, the 3D link cable can actually control two lenses through the one camera so there must be a way a just controlling one lens! Maybe the market isn't big enough for anyone to bother putting in the time to get this working?
 
Peter
Let me know how you get on with this lens? I am seriously looking into it as well. I could use my prime CP2 lenses as interview lenses and use the 18-270 (which is a great range) as the cutaway lens. 18mm is nicely on the wide end as well, and if you are running around a city for the day shooting scenics, having one light lens would be ideal saving you swapping in and out prime lenses. Be interested to see if Sony UK will give me a rebate on it after my S-LOG purchase...
 
Hello Paul and Sparky,

try to answer both posts in one here....
Yes that would be good to be able to control the zoom with a remote controller and as you say there must be a way of doing this seeing that with the 3D link cable setup the two zooms are paired....Not that I will EVER use that of course, 3D I mean, who does?
Something we all should keep asking Sony and the F3 team to make happen, because as pretty much everyone says operating the zoom rocker where it is now is just way too awkward. To be able to use a tripod head handle mounted controller would be great, especially at the long end of that lens and any other zoom they may come out with.

And Sparky I would love to be able to give you feedback on the lens, really! I bought it last week out of AbelCine in NYC and it was going to come over to Barcelona with my client to take part in a multi camera shoot this week in that city, then yesterday evening the job was postponed or maybe even cancelled, moving to another venue / city / country, who knows!
So the lens is still sitting in an office over in the USA and maybe there for another month before I get my hands on it.
But that said, I still believe this will prove to be a good move for the kit.
I'll let you all know as and when I have it here, ( SW France right now ).

Peter
 
Thanks Peter, sorry to hear the shoot was postponed. The more I think about the zoom lens, the more I like the idea of it. Having this lens to shoot all your cutaways, and then having a nice fast prime like my CP2 50mm for you interview lens, would make a great combination. I am shooting all my interviews now on the 50mm with S-LOG and they just look gorgeous. Often I have a day to spend running around Hong Kong to other locations, and the zoom lens would be an ideal choice. Good luck getting yours. Keep in touch, Sparky
 
Hello Sparky, this lens has drawn a lot of vitriol and adverse comments, and that initially put me off buying it....But then of course I decided to get one a couple of weeks after the USA Sony discount for 2011 F3 purchasers expired.
I have had a long long history of dealing with Abel Cine in NYC and generally listen to them when it comes to assessment of almost anything to do with gear, from Aaton to Zaguto and everything in between. The shortcomings they pointed out were the ones that we are all familiar with, it's bulk, the ramping of the iris, the way the lens protrudes at long focal length etc etc, but for me it ideally fills a slot in the lens kits I use with the F3.
I have a CP Prime set, some PL mount Nikkors, Zeiss SS's, plus a Cooke 18-100, ( a really nice piece of glass but it's a lump for doc' and interview stuff by the time it's all dressed up and ready to go to work ).
For quick doc' or interview work there's no other choice except for the new Fuji servo zoom that's coming out at a price in the mid 30K USD....That's bound to be an excellent piece of kit, but at that price it's ridiculous for me to even consider buying one, it's a rental item if and when needed.
At 270mm at the far end the Sony is way too long for me, I'd rather it was 18-180 or something like that....But it is what it is, and at the price I know it'll pay it's way on my work pretty quickly.
I just wish it came over this weekend!
I'll post my opinion after it gets in my hands........
Cheers,
Peter
 
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Hello Sparky, well I am happy to report that the lens made it over to me in France a few days ago and yesterday I had a chance to use it for the first time on a quick interview shoot at Lourdes for a documentary film I am working here.
First impressions were that this is quite a "beast" on the camera, but that quickly went away. It really isn't that bad.
I didn't have a chance to play with the lens at all before the shoot so there were a few moments of confusion, ( like discovering that you have to turn on the lens recognition otherwise nothing functions at all ), but all in all I am happy with the first outing; I did take my RED 18-50 with me as a back up just in case, but never used it.
I will be grading the shots in the next couple of days and checking them out on a larger monitor, so I'll post further impressions then......But for now, I'm impressed. I think it works for me. I do like the fact that I could fit the camera into my Portabrace bag, with the 18-252 lens mounted, a mic' and radio receiver on board, everything ready to be pulled out and shoot......
So, so far so good. More later after some further real life testing.
 
Hey Peter, great to hear from you and delighted you hear you eventually received it. Looking forward to hearing how you got on. I just bought a RED 17-55mm and tested it the other night for the first time. I have so say I was really impressed with it, and the range (17-55) is really useful. After looking back at the footage (shot on S-LOG) I was impressed by the results, nice and sharp all over. It's also small and light and really saves me all the hassle of switching over primes. The only snag is that its too wide for my chrosziel matte box..
Let me know how you get on..
 
Thanks Peter, I too would be interested to know what you think of this lens.

Sony have just replaced mine after the zoom on the original went 'stiff' at the wide end?
Prime Support were brilliant and I'm pleased to say the new lens is just as 'tack' sharp as the first one.
Still happy.:D
 
Hello Paul and Sparky....well I have to say that having just loaded the footage I am so far quite impressed with the 18-252, ( not the 18-270 that I originally named it on the thread title ! ).
The interview footage shot yesterday seems to be about 1 stop under, but this could well be "operator error", I need to play with this lens and it's "auto" functions more to determine if that's the case.
I am impressed with the "look" of the lens, and within the focal length range I was using yesterday, 25-100mm, the auto focus worked fine and the lens is sharp. I also like the out of focus "bokeh" of this lens. I didn't use any zooming on this shoot, just chose the focal length and stayed there.

I like the colour rendition, though I doubt if it will colour match with my CP Primes without colour correction, but that's ok. I think it's closer to RED lenses and my PL mounted Nikkors. It cuts very well with my 11-16mm Tokina.

I did another rough test this morning panning and zooming the lens from 18mm to 252mm with the lens on full auto, focus and iris. I'm surprised at how good the 252mm end looks, sharp......Though when I'd use that end of the lens I don't know. The subject matter went through areas of brighter and darker, ( landscape ), not radical differences but enough to make the iris adjust through the pan. I could see that iris "working" on playback of the footage in FCP at full screen, ( 27" Apple monitor ), but in fact it was very subtle and of course I was looking for it. In normal circumstances if would barely be noticed and anyway I am sure I'd likely see the same if an AC was pulling iris on a non auto lens.

I didn't use S-Log on this test, will do another series soon with that, though I can't see that will make any difference either way.

The Steady Shot seems pretty good, useful at the long end of the lens. I shot with and without and from 180mm to 252mm I could see the difference even with the camera tripod mounted.

The zoom rocker is a nasty piece of work, what were Sony thinking?.....Quite useless for anything other than finding a focal length and locking off. I wish Sony or a third party would come up with a remote zoom control that can be mounted on the pan handle like my Micro Force I use on the Aaton kit.

More in a few days......
 
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petermullett said:
The shortcomings they pointed out were the ones that we are all familiar with, it's bulk, the ramping of the iris,....
Click to expand...

Too bad people giving advice like that don't actually use the camera day to day to know of its many features buried within the menu that were meant for automatically controlling exposure levels and can be used to address lens ramping, amongst a series of other shooting conditions....

I wrote in this thread how it is possible to use the TLCS feature within the menu of the F3 to automatically control your exposure.

Check it out!
 
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Wow....I suppose this is another indication that it's a good idea to actually try to read the manual when you get a new piece of gear. I had no idea this facility existed. I will experiment with this later in the week. THANKS "Starcentral".
 
Well I won't fool anyone into thinking i actually read the manual. Early one morning I had been shooting time-lapse on the F3 and started messing around with the sub-menus under TLCS. I was amazed when I found out what this feature did. I immediately tried some pans from the bright sky over a lake to the shoreline darkened with rocks, grass and trees. What a great feature, really good for run and gun shooting too!
 
For those with the coin, the Fuji 19-90 is the bomb--they've merged the best of both worlds into a viable option. I'm on the list! (curses to Angenieux for not shipping my DP Rouge's!!!) :angry:
 
Of course, and at the price for the Fuji 19-90 so it should be "the bomb".

Angenieux and Cooke have consistently made some of my favourite lenses, and if I was still investing in my film gear I'd have no hesitation to find a reason to add any of their glass that I needed to my kits, but those days are gone, ( even though I still shoot with my Aaton Xtera and A-Minima whenever I can ). I still have a great 10-40 Fujinon S16 zoom that I've used for years on the A-Minima.

The F3 is a $12K camera and I for one cannot see justification for adding a $35K+ lens to that kit. Maybe if I owned an Alexa, but even then I'd have to find the return value in such a purchase, and that's hard to do with present production budgets.
For me it's better to rent high value glass for the projects that have a need for such, and of course that way you can match the lens to the shoot without having to buy long zoom, short zoom, SS Primes, Master Primes, S4i Cookes and so on.

Been there and done that with the film kits, and I'm still hoping sometime down the road I can find a good "digital use" for my equipment safe load of fine S16 lenses.

Not downplaying the Fuji 19-90 in anyway, I'm sure it's going to be a terrific piece of glass, ( and servo! ), but owning such gear is probably for those with deeper pockets than most of now in this game.
 
I purchased the lens a couple of months ago and have used it on a couple of shoots (filming plays for montages for the actors and staff). It needs sharpening in post (unlike my primes or Nikon 24-70), but with that it's quite sharp, particularly up to about 150mm -- but even OK all the way out to 252mm. The best thing, of course, is its versatility. And, unlike my other (35mm film) zooms, it's parfocal and has very little breathing. I did a few quick tests when I first got it, and was surprised that it maintains its focus through the zoom range remarkably well. Also, compared to a Zeiss CP.2, it breathes less (in fact, it breathes very minimally).

So, except for the slowness of the lens (f-stop-wise) and it's ramping (which I found little problem since I tend to not zoom over a huge range, and can use the TLCS if I need to (thanks to starcentral for the tip!), I find it to be a great lens for what I do.
 
Skimmel....I agree, it's certainly not a lens for everyone, and it's not one that I would buy as the only lens that I would use on the F3. It's probably too big to heft around all the time mounted on the F3 anyway, hardly a "compact" set-up.
I bought my CP2 Primes first, then a MTF adapter that allowed me to utilise the many old and new Nikkors I've gathered over the years. Also from my film kits I still had, have, there's a number of PL mount "cine" lenses that I use too. It was only when I felt the need to be able to use the F3 in a documentary filming situation where I didn't know going in what lenses to bring to the day that I started to consider the 18-252, and I felt I needed at times to have full or partial "auto" capability on the F3.
It took a long time to plumb for it, but having done so I am happy that I did. It fits the role I needed the lens for, but I am also very happy that I have the primes and other glass in the kit for other occasions.
The ridiculous zoom rocker placement on the F3 is the one huge downside, but for me not too much of an issue as I rarely tend to zoom in a shot....however as mentioned in an earlier post I'd love for Sony or someone else to come up with a way to use an external zoom control.
I am still testing the lens out, and I agree with you about the sharpening in post in some circumstances. In fact in the recent interview shoot I have to say that I liked the lack of "edge" of the image. It's not "unsharp", but it has a look that compares in some ways to the Cookes I use on my Aaton film cameras, really nice in my view for portrait / interview work. The iris ramping hasn't bothered me at all, nor surpassingly has the lack of speed in terms of f-stop. Auto focus isn't very quick, but it works well. Steady shot works and is useful to have I guess. The TLCS tip posted by starcentral is great with this lens and others, tested that out yesterday, thanks again for that!
Otherwise I fully agree with all of Skimmel's findings about this lens. It's not for everyone, probably should not be the only lens you have with the F3, ( but then if you don't own other glass there's plenty of wonderful PL choice out there to rent for shoots, plus of course Nikkor glass with an adapter ). It's been unfairly brushed off in my opinion in this and other forums by many who I suspect haven't used or owned it. For me it works for what I bought it for, and in many ways I've been pleasantly surprised.
 
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