35mm Equivalent to EX3 Lens
 

I frequently shoot both video and stills while shooting. I've noticed that the EX3 we use has a very powerful lens. Even when I mounted a 100-400mm lens on our Canon 5D Mark II, then EX3 lens was still more powerful.

Does anyone know what lens I'd have to buy (rent) for our Canon 5D Mark II to equal the same power as the EX3 lens? In other words, the subject would fill the frame the same as when viewed using the EX3.

Thanks in advance.

It's because of the sensor size, the smaller the chip the greater the magnification. The EX3 with its 1/2" chip has about 5x the magnification of the full frame 5D. So if you have a 50mm lens on the EX3 you'll need a 250mm lens for the same shot size.
Steve

Hmmmm......okay. I think I now understand the magnification thing. But if I'm zoomed all the way in on our EX3 what lens would we need for our Canon 5DM2 to have the same magnification? I'm guessing that it's something like 600mm. But that's just a guess.

The EX3 lens goes up to about 80mm so you'd need around a 400mm to match it.
Steve

It's easy to find out in the EX1/3 specs, that the lens is roughly 30-420 mm in 35mm terms (not sure of the exact numbers at the moment).

Thanks Steve. But in my side-by-side experience, a 100-400 Canon lens wasn't enough. Maybe the magnification is actually more than what you're thinking?

Appreciate the help.

Could be to do with the aspect ratio. The EX will be 16:9 while the 5D is 3:2? Therefore even though you'd have a 5x ratio on one side the other side and the diagonal might be more?
Steve

You may already know this, but you might consider getting a Canon 7D for your 400mm lens. With the crop factor (the 7D is an APS-C sensor as opposed to the full-frame sensor of the 5D) your 400mm will be the equivalent of 640mm or so. The image quality of the 7D is stellar. The cost of a 7D body will be much cheaper than any super telephoto of quality you can find to mount to your 5D. (MUCH cheaper!)

If you're looking for maximum telephoto, of course you can get a Nikon or Canon mount for your EX3, and achieve some astonishing magnification. At over 5X crop factor, you will never find any 35mm equivalent to match the kind of tele possible on an EX with that combination on your 5D (or 7D) though.

The 35m "equivalent" focal range is 31.4 to 439mm. I wonder if you need to match the FOV because the 5D records (in stills) a 21Mp image, which will stand some cropping while still matching the EX3 resolution. In fact the stock lens suffers some aberrations at max focal length, so the 5D image can be greatly cropped and still give you matching resolution. If you want to match video and still DOF, cropping has advantages there also.

The 5D doesn't record 21MP in video mode though, it's downscaled to 1920x1080 so 2MP.
Steve

True, but as I read the post the need was for 5D stills FOV to match EX3 video FOV.

Right, sorry Serena I missed that.
Steve