Why We Need Cinema Lenses

Oh boy... I am looking forward to it Ryan. That ought to be a lively thread!!
 
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I specifically mentioned it because the FS100 kit lens has a non-constant aperture. I use nikons on mine, all with constant f-stops. IMO, the kit lens cripples the potential image capable with the camera.
 
Hmmmmm k. I posted the article.

It is what it is. For those who know a thing or two about lenses, it's business as usual with maybe a few fun facts. If you are new to cine-lenses, this may be rather helpful.

Either way, enjoy.
 
David W. Jones said:
The growing trend by lens manufactors as of late is to brand still lenses as cine lenses.

Take a CCTV lens, rehouse it in a body with a popular mount, paint a sexy racing stripe around the barrel to get attention, and puff, you gotta cine lens.... Not! But people are like cattle and once someone posts how bitchen the lens is with a low res video everyone wants one.

Sorry I digress.
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Yup. Recently I had viewed an advertisement for a 'cine' lens... which wasn't a cine lens. Hence this rant.
Clearly they don't know what a real cine lens is.

Moseph said:
More iris blades
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Not necessarily. Despite many thinking "polygonal bokeh = lens fail", that has historically not been the case. I'm not sure where this theology came from, but historically most cine lenses are semi-polygonal when stopped down, and although roundish, not what we see with these new 14 or 18 bladed apertures. RPP's have 7 blades, all cookes have 8 (5/i's might have 9), superspeeds and standard speeds at one point had 6 and 9, then 9 and 6. Ultra Primes have 9, as do MP's I think. The CP.2's, and a few others go the extra mile and have large numbers, like 14 or higher. I personally like Cooke's strangely shaped 8 blades.

To me, it's not about what is cinema and what isn't. It's about personal taste.

It seems many like round and a select group love octagonal. I don't think any iris design can be labled cinema

TheDingo said:
...Should budget and crew size be a factor in this discussion ? ( Cine lenses are not usually compact or light weight )
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Yes. It should. The bigger the production, the more these lenses are worth it. Not only because of uncompromising image quality and consistency, but because big productions spend massive amounts of money every minute. Thus the time saved by having cinema lenses on set translates to time saved in a day. Cinema lenses make lens changes very quick, and helps the AC with focus by being more accurate and informative.

David W. Jones said:
How does the old joke go... Something like, how many ACs does it take to put on a cine lens.
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Two. That is the perfect number. :)

morgan_moore said:
On the fora I like to push the other argument !

Now I know sometimes in business you have to just buy the right tool

Over the years I have bought some tools, a 4002.8 when I was photographing football as a 'kid', a Sound Devices recorder when doing a series of interviews with a DSLR, a hasselblad H and lenses for my photographic studio, what about a proper cine zoom ??

With my FS100 I have been ripping myself apart with still lenses

Bad focus travel , growing zooms that hit the filters in your matte box, pinging nuns knickers.. it all sucks

I can see and feel every little thing that makes cine glass wonderful

Now its to me an economic decision.

You and your crew have X hours in the day and Y dollars in the bag

Every move of a follow focus, readjustment of the matte box, bum focus pull - it all costs you in your day

Reduces the productive footage shot - cine lenses save money

Now I really thought about this, but it seems that 98% of shoots have other things that they could spend their money on

Better art, more time, a better location, more lights and grip

Honestly I think cine lenses just don't add up on a lot of shoots.. of course they do on some

A well selected set of old still glass really is, however, a very good choice in many circumstances

S
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You have good points. I would never tell anyone to rent cine lenses over properly feeding a crew or paying for something the production really needs. The larger the budget, the more they are spending per minute. Thus, the larger the production, the more they can afford your lenses, and the more the lenses, in return helps save money. It is really a strange graph of benefit. The bigger you are, the bigger the gain in savings.

I think you're post is a great one and you fully understand the point I try to make. These lenses help save time and money, but that time and money saved grows in importance as the production size grows. It's tough when you are just on the fence and struggle to weigh the justification.
 
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Brilliantly done, Ryan. Thanks for taking the effort and the time to explain it all so thoroughly. In a day and age when so many people are embracing "workarounds" and claiming that the "shortcut" method is "just as good," your article clearly illustrates exactly what the differences are, it educates the reader, and it empowers them to now make an informed choice and to understand the compromises. Well done.
 
It is unlikely I will ever get my hands on cine lenses, rented or otherwise but I learnt a lot about lenses in general here. You crystallised a couple of things I've been half understanding from books and cleared up some things I've been noticing as I experiment. Great article. Thanks.
 
Thanks for the write-up Ryan, the part about vignetting was new to me. Very informative all around.
 
While a great post and very informative and the end of the day these are all only tools. If you sat home and waited to buy a $20k lens then your project would never get made. Work with what you have, learn, grow and understand. In my honest opinion I have seen excellent movies shot on very basic equipment and it shined. No one can question the quality of cine lenses and gear, but if all you have is a basic kit lens then do your best to make it work. Don't let the "gear" stop your vision.
 
Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
My computer crashed when I was writing it and now I've got to re-write half of it. This will be posted hopefully by this time tomorrow. I gotta walk away because I might throw my MBP through my window.
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Maybe your next article should be called Why We Need To Save Frequently When Creating Computer Documents.

Just kidding. Good job, Ryan.
 
vision_filmz said:
While a great post and very informative and the end of the day these are all only tools. If you sat home and waited to buy a $20k lens then your project would never get made. Work with what you have, learn, grow and understand. In my honest opinion I have seen excellent movies shot on very basic equipment and it shined. No one can question the quality of cine lenses and gear, but if all you have is a basic kit lens then do your best to make it work. Don't let the "gear" stop your vision.
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i think there's a corollary which is the bigger the budget the more likely to rent a package, that includes a 'cine' camera, and a set of 'cine' lenses... I don't know that buying the package is the typical for 'large productions'...

However, things may change where because of the 'cheapness' of digital cameras, a production will 'buy' a number, use them, then sell the used cameras and it will come out cheaper than rental... but that's an accounting activity, and I was kicked out of highschool accounting...
 
They have everything I'm looking for and I've only been shooting again this time for 5 years. I have been seeing differences of color and contrast with different lenses from the same manufacturer (Canon). I rented a set of Canon Photo lenses for my last short.

My partner and I are shooting with a pair of 7Ds now and are considering sharing a set of CP2s during our next production. Thanks for taking the time to write it down (twice).
 
A couple of months ago I switched from a set of Nikkor AIs to Lomo OCT-19 lenses. What a difference! While there is some minor barrel extension and the lenses having different front size diameter, the rest is a huge difference! The witness marks all line up (and are marked on the SIDE, big feature) all with a constant T2.4 aperature. And they're all color-matched, have almost circular bokeh and little breathing. I couldn't be happier! (Allright, a set of Panavision Primos would be the dream, but one has to be realistic!)
 
That was really well written and came at the subject from a GREAT perspective. I think this will help a lot of people to really understand lens differences in general, and I think even for still lens selection it points out things people might want to understand better. New shooters don't understand a lot of this because they just haven't come across it. My first lens I shot on didn't have constant F-stop through the zoom and I didn't realize that I could get a lens that did until later on. :)
 
For the sake of supporting all that well written ideas with actual numbers lets play with money and time...

Because of the need for extra adjustments with regard to photo lenses differing in size etc one can make easy assumption that one looses at least 1min/lens change. Considering that an average shoot has at least 30 lens changes once assume that cine lenses save at least 30 min/day. Now, those 30 min translate to $. On a small $5000/day production those 30 min ends up costing about $250/day or $500/day on $10k/day production.

Lets explore it further.

With cine lenses you will need 2 ACs. Assuming that you already have an AC working with photo lenses 1 AC is already in the budget but with the need for qualified 2nd the savings of the $250 on $5k production get eaten up by the need for the 2nd's salary (about $250/day). Which in turn means that small productions might or might not benefit from cine lenses but larger $10k+ definitely will.
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
For the sake of supporting all that well written ideas with actual numbers lets play with money and time...

Because of the need for extra adjustments with regard to photo lenses differing in size etc one can make easy assumption that one looses at least 1min/lens change. Considering that an average shoot has at least 30 lens changes once assume that cine lenses save at least 30 min/day. Now, those 30 min translate to $. On a small $5000/day production those 30 min ends up costing about $250/day or $500/day on $10k/day production.

Lets explore it further.

With cine lenses you will need 2 ACs. Assuming that you already have an AC working with photo lenses 1 AC is already in the budget but with the need for qualified 2nd the savings of the $250 on $5k production get eaten up by the need for the 2nd's salary (about $250/day). Which in turn means that small productions might or might not benefit from cine lenses but larger $10k+ definitely will.
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While not quite the same, film film has the same property that on a big budget, the cost of film becomes a 'small' portion. On a small budget, it may be the only cost, since people don't give film out for free, or deferred payment... (even if someone can wrangle free processing, and free transfer...).

In the case of cine lenses, the rental, most likely would become a 'fixed' cost, unless of course one has a friend in rental places...

I do think it is good for people understand the trade off between the cine lens, what is a 'cine' lens, and what limitations there may be for using something else, if one can not afford such a lens.

My first 4x5 camera was 'old' when I bought it, the lens was 'old'... then I read about Spielberg/Kaminski removing the 'coating' of his lenses to simulate a 'vintage'... coatings being something my 'old' lens totally lacked... but I digress...

So, for example, 'cheap' still zoom lenses 'change' aperture during zoom... along with focus... so... guess what... don't do that... none of those late 60's/70's/kungfu movie power zooms... Use the 'zoom' as a set of different length 'primes'... fix the focal length for the shot, use it 'stopped down from wide open'... and light accordingly...
 
Patryk_Rebisz said:
For the sake of supporting all that well written ideas with actual numbers lets play with money and time...

Because of the need for extra adjustments with regard to photo lenses differing in size etc one can make easy assumption that one looses at least 1min/lens change. Considering that an average shoot has at least 30 lens changes once assume that cine lenses save at least 30 min/day. Now, those 30 min translate to $. On a small $5000/day production those 30 min ends up costing about $250/day or $500/day on $10k/day production.

Lets explore it further.

With cine lenses you will need 2 ACs. Assuming that you already have an AC working with photo lenses 1 AC is already in the budget but with the need for qualified 2nd the savings of the $250 on $5k production get eaten up by the need for the 2nd's salary (about $250/day). Which in turn means that small productions might or might not benefit from cine lenses but larger $10k+ definitely will.
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I get what you are saying and I agree that there are cost considerations to smaller films.

I don't agree with the example. I always think productions benefit from two AC's but sometimes budgets are low and they can only hire one and I understand that, despite it being very difficult on the AC.

However, I do not understand the logic of your example. Can you tell me why cinema lenses need more AC's than non-cinema lenses?

Considering the 2nd AC does the following list of jobs, the type of lenses don't dictate the number of AC's needed. Just because a lens is heavier by a couple pounds and much more expensive in price doesn't change much in regards to logistics.

2nd AC:
  • Assists 1st AC with building the camera (saves time in morning)
  • Assists 1st in carrying equipment around and moves tripod/head during camera reposition or camera moves (1st AC carries camera)
  • Marks the slate (saves time by 1st AC not slating and then having to run back to camera and pull)
  • Maintains camera report (helps editorial, VFX, and the DP during future reshoots or turn arounds)
  • Moves video village, runs video cable to camera (saves time)
  • Runs lenses, batteries, and accessories from base/cart/runbag to camera (saves time)
I've 1st AC'd on cinema lenses by myself many times and the type of lenses we were using was never the burden... it was having to do all of the above and expected to do so in the same amount of time.

Can you explain?
 
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Ryan, i'm not sure what the question is... If it's if a $5k/day production can afford a 2nd then most likely the answer is "no."
 
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