My Gear: Lens Section Updated

Vincent Laforet Reply:
March 10th, 2012 at 2:04 pm

1. We only used the 16-35 for aerials- i.e. no need for focus pulling on dramatic performances… You will in general find yourself more comfortable w/ Zeiss ZE / Nikkor / or of course Zeiss CP.2 and cine lenses for “narrative use.” The mechanical nature of the lenses is hard to ignore – as is the cine build and clear distance marking with 300 degree rotation on the cine lenses… there’s simply no comparison. NOW: on Mobius we had a 3 day shoot and 50 shots a day. THERE WAS LITTLE ROOM FOR ERROR let alone focus issues… so Cine lenses were CRITICAL. HOWEVER: if your are working on smaller (see: cheaper) productions- you CAN AFFORD MORE TAKES! AND TIME! So not everyone needs to have the luxury of cine lenses. The older manual lenses are simply easier to handle on a physical level – they also don’t “slip.” The Canon EF glass uses magnets to connect the focus ring to the internal movement of elements – so marks can and will move during normal use – and of course is you pass infinity or Macro… Your 24mm and 50 and 100mm should server you very well w/ the C300. The 135mm may be a bit of an odd duck…

2. I have not had a chance to use the Samyang. My honest guess is (and this is an uneducated one) you probably won’t notice the optical difference on a 5DMKII/5DMKIII highly compressed video between most optics unless you are looking to go to a large (theater/cinema) screen. In other words – on Vimeo and the web it’s going to be hard to tell. However – when you use different lenses on high quality cameras w/ great sensors such as the C300 and Red EPIC – you will see a noticeable difference in optical performance….

3. How often do you shoot wide open? I seldom shoot the 24mm 1.4 or 50mm 1.2 wide open… I’m almost always between f/2.8 – f5.6 for drama/cinema – and it’s hard to tell the difference between many optics at that aperture… you are really paying for the performance when the lens is wide open.

4. Lastly – try to RENT/BORROW these lenses first before making any significant investment whenever possible. It’s obviously more difficult to do w/ still lenses (but possible – see borrowedlenses.com) but it’s commonplace if not expected that you would rent cine lenses for productions (as opposed to buying them.)