FS7: The Sony 18-110mm cine zoom

morgan_moore said:
I would certainly want to try it side to side with the 18-105.
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Fully & completely. When I ordered my camera almost 2 years ago, I tried to order the kit lens with it. Thankfully, my dealer did not have in stock & couldn't get. I've rented & used the kit lens exactly once in two years. And while I know the Sony wins in pricing... the $ I saved in not buying that kits lens has definitely gone into better things. I'm thinking same may be true for this better focal range one. I try to take the long view now in glass buying decisions. Can I use on multiple cam systems? Will it hopefully retain most of it's value over years of use?
 
Lenilenapi said:
Good point. The 70-200 can actually go slightly out of focus the moment you change the direction of the focus ring. In fact I've noticed this with all zooms that have AF including I'm afraid the Nikon 80-200. Unfortunately I can't afford the alternatives.
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Im sure you can afford an old manual telephoto zoom, 50-300, 70-200 whatever? I have a 100-300 manual nikkor (in my collection) I got for $100, it is F4 with a speedbooster :)



S
 
markfpv said:
Fully & completely. When I ordered my camera almost 2 years ago, I tried to order the kit lens with it. Thankfully, my dealer did not have in stock & couldn't get. I've rented & used the kit lens exactly once in two years. And while I know the Sony wins in pricing... the $ I saved in not buying that kits lens has definitely gone into better things. I'm thinking same may be true for this better focal range one. I try to take the long view now in glass buying decisions. Can I use on multiple cam systems? Will it hopefully retain most of it's value over years of use?
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For myself, having a par focal zoom in my arsenal is a must. Just too many occasions where I need par focal. And also the servo. Gotta have the servo if you are doing any type of live standups or news. News news, sports news, or entertainment news. The standard is the slow push and you need servo to do that right. The red carpet interview that starts with a two-shot and then pushes to a single. Or the post-game interview with the game MVP...you start with a two-shot of reporter and subject....you push to a single as the subject answers the first question...you remain on the single until midway through the last response...you pull back out to a two-shot for when the reporter thanks the subject and throws back to the studio. Stills glass that isn't par-focal and isn't servo zoom just doesn't cut it for that format. Trying to do it with stills glass makes you the guy with the wrong equipment for the job. And I never want to be that guy.

With the 18-110mm it is also nice to be rid of the stepped exposure compensation. There aren't many manual iris, par focal, servo zooms under $10k. In total there are...how many? Two?

imo your camera package should be versatile and not narrowly capable. And same for your skills as an Operator / DP. You should be able to skillfully perform any type of shooting. And pride yourself on the ability to skillfully perform any type of shooting.

You shouldn't fall into thinking yourself "above" any type of shooting. Okay, you can think yourself above shooting weddings, legal depositions, or porn. But that's it. :D
 
JPNola said:
You shouldn't fall into thinking yourself "above" any type of shooting. Okay, you can think yourself above shooting weddings, legal depositions, or porn. But that's it. :D
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Hell, there's 100x the production value put into producing porn than "sports news", today.
 
There's plenty of stuff I don't want to shoot and plenty of stuff I'll say no to if I have the mortgage covered for that month :)

I'm not above it. Just not interested in it. I'd rather drink bleach than shoot a wedding but some people do amazing work in that arena.
 
Just got the metabones booster cine for ef, the sigma 24-105 and 50 1.4 art. The 24-105 is a bit shi**y but the image is nice and smooth, the IS works great and the range/speed is perfect. I dont need parfocal as much as I need a nice image. Even when shooting an event doing 20+ interviews handheld mixed with "getting shots" the important thing was to make all those interviews look nice. Im not convinced the Sony 18-110 would make that happen, though I could be wrong. Don't have the budget for it either way :)
 
JPNola said:
imo your camera package should be versatile and not narrowly capable. And same for your skills as an Operator / DP. You should be able to skillfully perform any type of shooting. And pride yourself on the ability to skillfully perform any type of shooting.

You shouldn't fall into thinking yourself "above" any type of shooting. Okay, you can think yourself above shooting weddings, legal depositions, or porn. But that's it. :D
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JP - I'm not sure that post was directed at me - but I concur with both of these statements above. Every shooter should strive for versatility with skills & gear. And I frankly don't have much time for those who fall into thinking about themselves "above" any kind of shooting. I personally don't want to shoot weddings or screaming car commercials - it's not that I think I'm "above" that realm - I just would rather pursue other ventures at this juncture in my "career".
As for the Sony lens - I think it comes down to how much of any style you will be shooting. I don't shoot much news / sports stuff anymore - so my need for the soft feathery servo is small. And on those rare occasions I do need, I can rent. While price point is great, dropping $2500 or $3500 on one of the two "kit" lenses is still high for lots of people. And if you are going e- mount, then the question for me becomes, do you spend another $300 for the Fuji 18 -55, to gain another stop, most likely better better IQ and lose range and servo?
 
stokstad said:
Just got the metabones booster cine for ef, the sigma 24-105 and 50 1.4 art. The 24-105 is a bit shi**y but the image is nice and smooth, the IS works great and the range/speed is perfect. I dont need parfocal as much as I need a nice image.
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Would love to hear more.... what about that lens is crappy (assume zoom is opposite the "normal" direction)? Would also love to see or read a direct comparison of the sigma to the II version of the Canon....
 
Interesting issue that hasn't been raised before about using Sony lens correction with the 18-110. No one else reviewing this ( including me) has notice a great deal of distortion and chromatic aberration but this reviewer did and was happy that enabling Sony lens correction fixed it completely and indeed you can see a big difference when he turns it on in the video. However we all know that it enabling it on an FS7 is a big problem. I don't even recall all the issues but if memory serves me , you can't use LUT's or get waveform and maybe not use it at all in UHD .
 
I noticed the distortion at wide wide end (see the other thread) It's worse than at the small 16-70z but significant less than at the new Fujinon 18-55. The CA is very low. I would say less than at my CP.2 lenses. But that's real pixel peeping. I had no issue with distortion or CA in my shots. (I have the idea that that the shown sample wit corretion on/off is a still shot..)
 
Thanks , that's exactly what I was wondering about. So unlike the 18-200 you're not really missing anything important with lens correction.
Actually the CA on the Zeiss ZF 35mm was pretty bad ( especially the f1.4) and I imagine it might have been the same on the CP.2.
 
jc01108 said:
FYI, On a separate insert in the user's manual that comes with the lens, Sony specifically states in various languages that " To use this lens, select [Off] for [Distortion Comp.] on your camera."

This info is also available here: https://docs.sony.com/release//Flyer_4695209011.pdf
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For most productions, lens distortion isn't a big deal. I mean, c'mon, GoPro footage and OSMO footage is often cut into productions these days.

Were I shooting a narrative film it might be something I would make effort to eliminate / avoid. But the Sony 18-110mm isn't likely to be used to shoot narrative films and that isn't its target market. It is a utilitarian / do-all servo zoom attempting to replicate the role that B4-mount ENG zooms fulfilled. I think it misguided to hold a lens like this to standards that one holds cinema primes and cinema zooms.

And yes, having lens distortion correction engaged got me when I was on a shoot. I couldn't turn on the VF LUT or histogram and was baffled as to why the VF LUT option was greyed-out in the menu. A google search on my smartphone found the reason why and saved me just before we had to roll-record on an interview.
 
I have one of these lenses. Bought it in December 2016... it arrived about 4 months later!

Overall, it's great. It just does things well. It zooms in, focuses, then zooms out and stays in focus. You can get a close up, then a wide shot without opening a camera bag.
F4 is fine, you can get nice shallow DOF if you want to. FS7 plenty fast enough to cope.

18mm is wide enough for most things. I have a 10mm in the bag if I need wider, but then I'd have to walk to the bag and really, I hate walking.

110mm is long for the money. The 17-128 is five times the price. This is also longer than the canon 18-80. On most jobs, if I want longer I just use the centre crop function. Seems to go great.

There are a few things that annoy me.

That tripod plate is dumb for 15mm rail systems. And when you remove it, there is a hole but no thread in there. So I took the plate off and made a new plate with a thread that works really well with my Tilta shoulder mount and plate.

Then I took the ineffective front thread off to allow a matte box to fully engage with the front of the lens.

Also the iris takes a little getting used to. It's electronic and there is a fractional delay. But in actual shooting situations it's fine.

Image quality, can't fault it. There's no softness, no nasty distortion or CA.

So, I didn't think I would but I just leave this thing on the front of the FS7.

Its so great to have a lens that does so much.

I
 
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