Hey everyone,

I'm looking for affordable lens options for the F350, and I was wondering what you guys and gals are using. What do you recommend?

Thanks,

Heath

Seems to be very little info on this, and indeed on any of the "budget" hd lenses. I guess the only safe way to know for sure is to find a friendly dealer who'll let you put some lenses side-by-side, ideally against some know "benchmark" lens. What I think everyone would like to avoid is bypassing a really cheap lens and then finding that the higer grade ones are hardly any different performance-wise.
Steve

Thanks, Steve. I'm editing something shot on the F350 in HD (1440 x 1080), and when the shooter told me it was shot with a standard definition lens (2/3", I believe), I was shocked.

I'm looking at the footage now, in HD, on a high-end 32" HDTV, and I don't see any problems with it. I've seen HD footage shot with SD lenses and you could actually see the glass, but not in this case.

Heath

There've been a few threads here on SD lenses for HD cameras, and I've done some tests and often there is very little in it - if I was feeling devilish I'd say that they're as bad as each other!
Again, what you obviously don't want to do is shell out lots of cash on an HD lens and then find that it's only as good as an SD lens that you could pick up for £1000. Or worse, you might spend £5000 or so on one the "budget" HD lenses and find that it's actually worse than a £500 SD one.
I hope to be getting a few lenses together some time, but especially with the "cheaper" (sorry I have to keep putting the quote marks!), HD lenses are hard to get hold of on demo - don't they want us to try them out or something?!

Steve

We were quoted $6400 on a nice Fujinon HD lens with adaptor (I'm guessing it's 2/3"), but that drives the price up quite a bit. If you have any SD lens recommendations for 1/2" or 2/3" lenses, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks,

Heath

My cousin took delivery from an F335 about two weeks ago. He got the Fujinon XS17x5.5BRM lens to put on his new XDCAM HD! My first impression was that this low budget lens was very good.

That's not too low budget, it's almost $8000 USD. The Fujinon XA hi def lens model, similar to the one your cousin owns, is about $5700.

heath

I think you'll have to try some SD lenses to decide. Search this forum and others, I've posted some comparisons with a Fuji and Canon SD lens vs HD. My SD Fujinon 8.5x5.5 looks sharper than the HD lens (Fuji HA 22x7.8). But it suffers from flare (needs servicing maybe).
Steve

I noticed some flare issues with the footage shot on F350 and SD lens that I'm cutting right now.

heath

That's not too low budget, it's almost $8000 USD. The Fujinon XA hi def lens model, similar to the one your cousin owns, is about $5700.

heath

That's a 2/3" lens (XA17X7.6BERM), and it is an exclusive OEM product only available through Panasonic, for it's P2 models. The Fujinon XS17x5.5BRM is the cheapest 1/2" HD lens there is at the moment. Take a look at the prices of the HS16x4.6BERM and HS18x5.5 BERM from Fujinon and compare that with the one I mentioned.

i have the xs17x5.5 lens on my ex3. although it is not low budget on its own, costing my AUD$10,000.00, it is a true hd lens, but in comparison to the other half inch hd lenses with x2 extenders, it is about half the price, but certainly not half the quality. the extenders add to the cost tremendously.

if you can afford it, the xs17x lens will bring the most out of your 350 camera.

best wishes