Has anyone shot a short with more than one lens?
 

I would love to see the breakdown of a short film that utilizies a few different lenses and a 35 SLR adapter as well - something like a 50, 85 and 100mm or 28 lensesthrown in. I am in the market to expand my range of lenses and want to see some of work with these 'other' lenses.

What purpose do the different lenses serve?

Hi Mandy!

I know exactly what you are talking about. I think maybe why we generally see the standard 50mm lens used is because of its speed. I have a couple of F1.8 lenses and others here use F1.4. These are well suited for 35mm adapters because you want as bright an image as possible to reduce grain appearance.

That said, I myself have played around with a couple of old telephoto lenses (Bell & Howell and Sears brand ), BUT they are around F3 and higher, so they are really only practical for outdoor / sunny-day use.

I just received my Letus35 Monday and am quite impressed with it. Since it is ground GLASS (as opposed to plastic or wax), it doesn't lose a lot of light. I am going to shoot some test footage for Quyen, and I will make a point to include some with the telephoto lens.

Thanks Frank, it would be great to see the differences! I am looking for the 85mm and the 100mm around ebay now to see what I can come up with (but it seems alot of people are doing the same!)

hi mandy. we are going to be shooting a music video in the next couple of weeks using the letus35 and the following lenses: 20mm (still being shipped to me), 28mm, 50mm, 28-105mm.

from our practice shoot, the 28-105mm zoom lens lost a lot of light compared to the 28mm and the 50mm, so we will be lighting the set, and will have to brighten it up to compensate depending on the lens we are using. the lighting guy is used to shooting film and this is the first time he will light for video, so he doesn't even know how he is going to set up his light meter (what asa setting?).

i've been looking at photography for reference in choosing lenses. GIS and flickr is a good source (just do a search for the focal length). that said, it would be nice to see video reference.

on a sidenote, has anyone here used a fisheye yet?

Is it a HD camera by any chance?

Mandy,

I shot a short with the Redrock M2 with different lenses.
There's 20 mm, 35 mm, 50 mm and 100 mm in there ;)

http://www.wbe.fi/?aid=36&mid=8

letus 35 zoom lens
 

I've got a nikon 80-200mm zoom.

I've very carefully (holding on to it) tested a little. Haven't been able to do anything with the footage yet.

But my question is this? Anyone using the letus 35 with a heavy lens like this?

I'm afraid to let it rest on the adapter and the threads that hold it. It's a beast.

I'm trying to design a mount for it (like rails) but I don't know if I can be precise enough.

Daniel

Different lenses change the perspective in a shot, and thus change the spatial and apparent emotional relationship between objects and people in the shot.

50mm is considered to have the closest perspective to the human eye, and gives a very normal and realistic look. Distances between people seem normal. For example you'd use this if you were trying to get across that the scene was normal and pedestrian. An over the shoulder shot will give a perspective that seems "normal".

A wide angle lens (say 28mm or lower) makes everything look larger, bigger, and more exaggerated than in real life. Spaces and distances between people/objects look larger than normal. You might use this to make people look larger than life, or to exaggerate the relationship between two people or objects. In an over the shoulder shot, the person closest to the lens will look unnaturally large and imposing, and the distance between the two will look larger than normal.

A telephoto lens (say 200mm) compresses the apparent space between objects/people, they will seem to be closer than normal. You might use a telephoto if you want to show intimacy between people. It's also good for isolating people in a busy/crowded area where the back and foreground are moving. In an over the shoulder shot, the two people will be more similar in terms of stature, and the distance between them will seem closer than normal.

I also did a little experiment with some actors, based on the theory that different facial features would be "look" better for one or another set of lenses (totally un-scientific of course). The results seemed to show that actors with rounder chubby faces preferred the pictures I took with the telephoto lenses, while the actors with sharper features preferred the shots taken with a wide angle lens.

On the other hand, no one really appreciated the close ups I did using the wide angle lens.

I used to be in broadcast, for a long long time - in fact, too long, and one of the odd things was they would give semi wide lenses to the photog's who would invariably get 12" from the subject of an on the spot interview in the widest angle possible. Lots of un-naturally rounded faces there.

The feeling is sometimes that if they get closer it will feel closer. Distortion of an overly wide image is unsetteling at best when interviewing people.

Sean

Daniel, use rails...they're not hard to make.

Yes. You have to make sure the lens can give you a bright enough image, and that you can run it as wide open as possible while still maintaining focus. Not all fisheyes have this problem. If you do encounter it, I guess you could get around it if you can add lots of light.

rail alternative
 

Hi Daniel,

There is an cheap alternative to building your own rails in the shape of
a Manfrotto 293 lens support for long telephotos.

Example of 4 different focal length Nikon primes.

http://www.holyzoo.com/content/mpic/...ideo_Test7.mov

Those lenses breathe so much, I'm almost out of breath myself.

But we've already been over that ;)

Thanks for the demo Steev, that was really helpful for me as well.

Yeah, the breathing is an old topic. I plan on dealing with breathing by not overdoing *the* rack focus shot. If you have moving shots, the breathing isn't very noticeable. And last night I was watching Bruce Almighty with Jim Carrey, and rack focuses were breathing there as well. ;) Last note - Look at the 105mm - the breathing is very minimal per square inch/foot of distance focused. Me done. :)

Walk in the Woods was shot with 50mm, 35mm, and 28mm lenses.

quick question:
what exactly is a rack focus setup? and what is the "breathing"?

sorry about the offtopic

Steev,
I'm just curious as to what adapter you are using with you lenses. Footage looks pretty good. Thanks.

Rack focus is the simply the technique of focusing one distance (subject) and "racking" the focus to another distance (different subject). Breathing is when you focus and see the field of view change in size, from smaller to larger or larger to smaller. Still camera lenses aren't designed to reduce breathing because they were meant to be used the way we're using them. Cinema lenses on the other hand, apparently have less breathing, although I've seen plenty of breathing on major motion pictures.

I'm using the MPIC from Dan Diaconu.

Non Breathing Lenses
 

Ben, which lenses have little or no breathing ? I use original Canon FD lenses and they seem quite OK.

Cine lenses.

SLR lenses with little breathing
 

OK, Michael. Thanks. Cine lenses ARRI, COOKE have no breathing, because they are specifically designed to compensate for that. However, they are not particularly cheap. (And what about cheap Russian 35mm prime lenses for Konvas cameras in term of breathing ?).
But some SLR lenses are (I heard) notoriously worse than other. I would appreciate if anyone could share his/her experience on the breathing issues. Strong breathing may ruin otherwise well executed rack focus.

thanks a lot, steev!
i didn't know this was called breathing, but i have noticed it before

Cine lenses do have breathing, unless the big guys in Hollywood don't use cine lenses--it's noticable on a lot of films. But I would be interested in knowing what types/kinds/makes/models of 35mm SLRs breathe less than others.

If it bothers you a lot, then just scale the clip in post to compensate. I've made it part of my routine just like flipping the image after capturing or reducing grain, etc. Maybe it's just another thing we, as adapter users, must compensate for.

Ben,
I never thought the big guys were the Hollywood guys. They are just the rich guys.

on a sidenote, has anyone here used a fisheye yet?[/QUOTE]

I haven't used a fisheye but something which goes reasonably close, a Nikon 12mm - 24mm zoom for digital cameras. You have to be really really precise in setting up the backfocus and centres as the sharpness goes off really cruel if you dont. If you are offcentre, there is a stretchy distortion to one side. If it is crooked then you will only be able to focus sharp in only part of the frame.

You get some cool accentuated pacing effects if you travel the cam forwards or backward with the thing on or if somebody walks by really close.

The are no shortcuts. No hoseclips or pieces of rubber pipe here. The centre axes have to be exact, the mounting of the lens dead centre and the backfocus exact. With these things right, the lnes will resolve equally as well as the Nikon 50mm f1.8, the Sigma for Nikon 28mm f1.8 ad the Nikon 85mm f1.8.

You won't get the lens for monkey money and it whilst it was sold to me as an f1.4, I think the salesman misread the detail as did I. I think it is f4.

In bad light I expect it will fall off on the corners but none of this shows on a well lit test pattern. It works on the PD150 and HDRFX1 on 18mm high frames on a groundglass.

I can't vouch for the 16:9 image from the lens as I still get a bit of fall-off down the left side due to the small prism I am using.

Detail is NIKON AF-S NIKKOR 12-24MM 1:4 G ED. On the other side it has DX SWM ED IF Aspherical small "o" with a stroke through it 77.

The aperture lever in back of the lens has to be secured open with a little home-made clip as it is normally closed.

wide zoom apsherical with adapter
 

anyone using an aspherical lens with an adapter?
a letus?
18-80mm?

Sure! Lots of the aforementioned lenses in this thread have aspheric elements. For example, the Canon 55mm F1.2 and the Sigma 28-105mm f2.8-4.

sorry, bill, don't know much about lenses.
Are pretty much all wide lenses aspheric?

Only because they are shooting with someone else's money, and being paid to do so!

The real guys
 

Charles, I'm thinking og "guys" such as Eric Rohmer who's past 80, has been shooting one or two movies a year on tight budgets...what a lesson in dedication to movie making! And think Rohmer has always limited himself to 35mm-50mm and very seldom used 80 or 95mm lenses. No telephoto, no zooms (except a couple of time), no fish eye, no steadycam, no trendy rack focus (I feel sick of all these rack focuses for the sake of rack-focusing), alot of imperfection in sound (he says he is insisting on no frills intelligibility), and simple choices of dominant colours. It does not matter if some of his movies are sometimes as soft as a Letus35 smeared with vaseline. It's still great art. And look, Rohmer's movies are selling like pain au chocolat on DVD.
Conclusion: too many lenses (too many tools) might kill artistic expressive power. A few well chosen good lenses used carefully could make the difference.

Chocolate covered bread sells well?

Bill, not bread covered with chocolate, but chocolate covered with bread.

or as babelfish translator would say: "bread with the chocolate"
but up here in french canada we know it to be a French bakery favorite, chocolate wrapped in pastry.

Weighing in a bit late here on the multiple lenses, but...

The scene I shot from "the letter" used canon fl 50mm, 85mm, 35mm, 28mm, and a macro attachment which was great for the real close-ups. Works with all lenses above as an attachment. The overhead shot is the 35mm lens.

http://www.redrockmicro.com/samples.html

There are also some production notes on lighting, lensese, etc. here

http://redrockmicro.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=1116

Dude that music is some of the most melancholy shit ever composed. I can't watch the Elephant Man without balling like a baby when that music kicks in at the end as he lays down....I hate you Brian...you've given me the weepys!

Greg - put it on mute - just think about the lenses, man, the lenses! :)