Wide angle reality check

This is a great thread! The 5D moire ii has made things all confusing and almost as it that standard is the defactor and I've always thought that the DOF is just too narrow and just didn't look very cinematic... almost a trick in how it comes off. Cheers all.
 
Julienmassie said:
Yea but i have several client that LOVES WIDE ANGLES
Like i said before, im supposed to

- Shoot a music video this summer ( hip-hop ) and the performer ABSOLUTELY want to see himself rap downtown during night and in some club whit a pretty huge wide angle effect. And its a serious projet, the wide lens will easely pay itself right here.
- A snowboard film next winter ( i want the option to go pretty wide if i need it, and not look stupid like ... you know in my short film and corporative work i dont use this type of lens so now ... i dont have it sorry ... )
- Some people who talk in the car during a road trip ( i dont have big rig to set-up the car outside de car, its a doc, not a commercial ).

So thats my anwser the the main thread discussion.
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Hello Julien,

if you sit in France, get in contact with Kinoptik

http://www.kinoptik.com/optik_obje_cine.htm

They have the 9.8 mm Tégéa with a PL mount. It has fixed focus (from nearly front lens to eternity) and is de facto f 1.8. And it has this aparture only: You bring it "down" with transparency ND foil you put into the lens by a slot. Don't know what it costs (probably a fortune) as Kinoptik have not answered my mails yet maybe because I wrote in English (ah, the French... ;-))

In France you should also be able to get a used one. If you find two of them, drop me a note, I jump on a TGV and buy it. The Tégéa is one of the strangest creatures in lens-construction that is around and it was used for films like "A Clockwork Orange" and some films of polish director Andrzej Wajda and others. For what you described it should be ideal. Everything you see through a 10 mm Tégéa looks extremely weird.... believe me, I've used this one and the 5.7 mm version for 16 mm film about a hundred years ago.... ;-).
 
http://markus-rave.de/Markus_Rave_Deutsch/Sales.html

Selling my Kinoptik Tegea 9.8mm superwide lens for 35mm film. Has an almost highspeed starting T2.3 stop. Good from T4 I would say. The lens is in very good shape. The glass is as new. I used a Denz high precision and non rotating mount converter to PL. The lens has a rear slot for 2" filters. I have six of them ready with the lens. More details and pictures on my website:


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Thats seem way too complicated for my needs, but look at what they also made for 16mm sensor size......
Since it seem to cost more than 3-4 AF100 you can also have a look at the
Super Tégéa 1,9mm with 1,9F .... LOL

But the one your talking about looks pretty nice, even if the price seem really out of my range
And its made for 35mm sensor size .... Crop factor hello !

But its out of my price range by far. By the way im from Montreal, Canada.
Studio mels !

I will not contact them since its kinda useless considering there price range ( they dont event show them on the website .... $ ) Bu it looks like a really solid option for someone who have some money to spend !

Dont know why they dont come back to you if you looked like a serious buyer. They seem to be a verry big compagnie that makes lens for medical and indutrial hi tech equipements since 1932 ... Im pretty sure they have a couple of english clients ...

Ok their website is so crappy look at the garfield
http://www.kinoptik.com/recrute.htm
Its a joke ?
 
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Oooops... so they do have not fixed aperture (I remember to have shot with one that hadn't but maybe my recollection is wrong).

Did not find the the TÉgèa on this guys website but he sells a Cooke Varotal 20 - 100, a lens that drove me mad as an assistant cameraman years ago as my DoP loved to shoot at 80 to 100 with aperture wide open on a dolly without rehearsals at times with the actors heads filling the frame..... maddening.

Okay, this was just to show that there are solutions to find .... but that can be a bit costly though.....

Montreal rocks. Great city.
 
Hi Julien,

the 4.5 mm is a real fish-eye so you get a circular picture on 35mm photo - maybe the cropping woud help a bit, but I think you still would have vignetting on a MFT sensor and the geometry of any picture you will get will be grossly, grossly distorted (okay for a hip-hop video though). Sigma do have a 8mm but that is f 3.5. Catch 22 again.

postscriptum:

Maybe this alternative works - try to get hold of some lenses build for 16 mm (check, for instance, if you find some old Kern Switar lenses for 16 mm Bolex Cameras - they should be rather not so expensive and are very fast - 10mm switar is 1.6!) shoot 1080 and crop to lose the vignetting. You lose a bit, you gain a bit, maybe.... but that's purely speculative on my side..... maybe it's zero-sum in the end...

postpostscritum:

Maybe this helps.....
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p9kkgjwEQQQ-HJwvNDobeEw
 
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For budget users, the Sigma (8-16) is a real good alternative I think, despite its small maximum aperture (f/4.5). In general I tend to not really understand why wide lenses need to have such a large maximum apeture. For film or PAL video you'd use 1/50 or less shutter time as standard which is already quite long compared to photography. Now if you'd apply the shuttertime*cropfactor = shuttertime rule, you could go as low as the framerate for film/video: 1/24 or even 1/25 a second. Quite a long shutter time that can compensate for a smaller maximum aperture. Now I hear you saying things about motion blur etc: but the wider you go, the less you have since the ratio of movement of the lens compared to the movement of the recorderd picture is smaller.

Also: why spending all the money on lenses with a large aperture instead of spending it on lighting?
 
tipota said:
Hi Julien,

the 4.5 mm is a real fish-eye so you get a circular picture on 35mm photo - maybe the cropping woud help a bit, but I think you still would have vignetting on a MFT sensor and the geometry of any picture you will get will be grossly, grossly distorted (okay for a hip-hop video though). Sigma do have a 8mm but that is f 3.5. Catch 22 again.

postscriptum:

Maybe this alternative works - try to get hold of some lenses build for 16 mm (check, for instance, if you find some old Kern Switar lenses for 16 mm Bolex Cameras - they should be rather not so expensive and are very fast - 10mm switar is 1.6!) shoot 1080 and crop to lose the vignetting. You lose a bit, you gain a bit, maybe.... but that's purely speculative on my side..... maybe it's zero-sum in the end...

postpostscritum:

Maybe this helps.....
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p9kkgjwEQQQ-HJwvNDobeEw
Click to expand...

great chart thanks.. the 10mm kern switar vignettes a lot on 4/3rds and cropping would be a big chunk off as the chart shows.
I am for not using the stand alone phrase "full frame" here.. I have no idea if you are talking 70mm or super16..all formats have full frame
and to think folks here first think of 35mm still camera when "full frame" is used is not the case.
 
hjrt said:
Also: why spending all the money on lenses with a large aperture instead of spending it on lighting?
Click to expand...

I think Julien searches for a lens for a very special kind of shoot and a rather tight budget. I personally am quite content with the 7-14 mm - it's so extreme on the "wide side" that one needs to really decide when and where to use it. Extreme wide angles have been used especially in some films from the East-bloc in the 60's and 70's. I like the look at times but it easy to destroy what story you want to tell by overdoing it with such short lenses.
 
Julienmassie said:
I personally need wider than 20mm for

- Videoclip
- Documentary
- Verry small place run and gun, when you cant just frame everything you need whit a 35mm
- Special shot
- Inside cars
- Extreme sports

So i need to have this option right in my bag. Now i just dont know what to pick up.

- Panasonic Lumix G Vario 7-14mm f/4.0 ( dam its slow but dam its wide ! )

Since i want to shoot street shot at night in busy city street ( Spoiler, like in japan ) you think that whit the the correct AF100 iso set-up whit this f4 lens i can put something up ?

Because we can see how it perfrom in day in this philip bloom test http://vimeo.com/16129196
But what about night ? at f4 .... :(
Maybe the elevator at 0.26 ?
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I don't think you will find a camera that does all that and does it good. So you have to mix and match. When I shoot docs I have several cameras available in my arsanel. You can put dashboard cameras, helmet cams, along with this camera.
This is not a camera that will solve all your production problems. It is a camera that brings a whole bunch of tools to your tool box. But you still need some of your old tools to deal with your production problems.
I like the interchangable lens idea for artistic look.
I will invest my money in to this camera.
 
pms said:
"full frame" is used is not the case.
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Sorry, I definitely need to de-dust my cinematic English a bit more (English is not my mother tongue)... what I meant was that my DoP then had a tendency of shooting close ups of actors without rehearsals with very long lenses at open aperture and drove me - the focus puller - mad.....

I am not such a wide-angle aficionado myself, am currently very much in love with my 50 mm Voigtlander Nokton. Yet: Wide angle applied in the right dosis at the right time can be the "Icing on the cake" for certain scenes. It's a bit like very distinctive tasting herbs - too much destroys the meal but applied carefully it can make things great.....
 
TheReverend said:
The tokina 11-16mm at f2.8 is the ticket me thinks! I mean 11mm on the Af100 is quite close to 20mm on Full Frame. 2.8 is pretty good speed, a zoom, no fisheye, and it's affordable!

This video shows 5D at 20mm. That's freaking wide for film.
http://m.youtube.com/#/watch?v=d4aZ-2cOB2s&bmb=1
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That Tokina is a DX lens which means on the AF100 will be a 13-19mm. It's got mild-to-strong barrel distortion so careful with brick walls.
 
Bitmap Frogs said:
That Tokina is a DX lens which means on the AF100 will be a 13-19mm. It's got mild-to-strong barrel distortion so careful with brick walls.
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DX lens? Didnt know that... So not as good, but still. And I updated the youtube link on the 5D 20mm FoV. Apparently the one from my phone wasn't good. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d4aZ-2cOB2s

http://www.photozone.de/canon-eos/379-tokina_1116_28_canon?start=1
If you look at the distortion it isn't that prevalent in the inside area of the lens. This should generally be cropped out by the crop to 4/3s.
 
Bitmap Frogs said:
That Tokina is a DX lens which means on the AF100 will be a 13-19mm. It's got mild-to-strong barrel distortion so careful with brick walls.
Click to expand...

No, on the AF100 it is still an 11-16mm lens. The focal length does not change! Just the crop of the image the sensor sees.

And I don't believe that spreadsheet is correct the sensor in the AF100 is wider than the actual 4/3 sensor in 16:9 as it has extra pixels on the left and right side to keep the diagonal distance consistent between both aspect ratios. So ignore the 16:9 box, and just use the 4/3 box as the diagonal is correct length for both aspects on the AF100.
 
I don't consider myself an extremist but I can use all the wide angle I can get. Try shooting in the cockpit of a Cessna 206, or a verite' interview of someone in your typical 21st century office cubicle? I do this kind of thing on pretty regular basis, 14mm almost does it in 4/3 format, 11 or 12mm is almost ideal (2mm does make a significant difference). I have heard rumors on the photo side of a m4/3 12-60mm or possibly 12-75mm with a reasonably fast aperture sometime early next year from either Panasonic or Olympus.
 
aguia said:
I don't consider myself an extremist but I can use all the wide angle I can get. Try shooting in the cockpit of a Cessna 206, or a verite' interview of someone in your typical 21st century office cubicle? I do this kind of thing on pretty regular basis, 14mm almost does it in 4/3 format, 11 or 12mm is almost ideal (2mm does make a significant difference). I have heard rumors on the photo side of a m4/3 12-60mm or possibly 12-75mm with a reasonably fast aperture sometime early next year from either Panasonic or Olympus.
Click to expand...

I use my 11-16mm all the time, but the problem I see with it in tight spaces is that if you don't have the camera locked down, the perspective distortion (not sure what to call it) that you get looks so unnatural and can subtract from the shot if you don't want that to be the focus. Look at the South video by Bloom, when he pans the camera on top of the building, you get that push pull effect as things come in and out of the center of the FoV. At 11mm I definitely get this, and for visual effects work it is a NIGHTMARE. I have to lock almost every shot down as the perspective changes make certain compositions a nightmare.

I've often felt that this is why you don't see super wide often on cinema shots, or if you do, the subject matter is very far from the camera UNLESS you are going for that distorted look (ie Gilliam's Fear and Loathing).

Granted, not all use is for narrative, and with that, I think there is a distinct difference in need that people need to consider. For people shooting documentaries or other sorts of projects, where there is no set, or ability to change the environment (like a cave or something), then these desires have real considerable application. A lot of advice or example tends to focus on one aspect of 'filming' when in reality, there are many applications.
 
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