Zoom Lenses for the T2
 

For many of us, this camera will be their first DSLR. The choices of good lenses can be pretty tricky for beginners and if the Canon L lenses is probably a sure bet, they are very expensive and pretty heavy to carry around.
What about the Sigma or Tamron lenses?
What lenses would be great for travel and journalism work?
Considering zoom lenses that are best bang for the buck from a video/photo perspective.
Any advices?

I have not yet bought a DSLR and am still stuck between 7D/T2i.

One definite decision is the Tokina 11-16 f/2.8 . They are back-ordered at the moment and I have not heard any ETA.

or ANY lenses for that matter... if anything, because of the telephoto factor, I would want the WIDEST possible lens just to get a decent semi-wide angle for a nice, up close, composition... not being familiar with what options are out there, I wonder if anyone has come up with the best bang-for-the-buck... for HD video, we don't need the fanciest lens, so what are the good lenses for a good price? Wide, zoom, telephoto, etc...

David, I disagree that we don't need the fanciest lenses for HD. I've read this several times here on DVinfo, and I have a different viewpoint.

I guess the argument is that since we are only dealing with 1080 lines and not the full res 18 megapixel image, many flaws of cheaper lenses will be hidden by the downsampling of the image. However, chromatic aberration, vignetting, flaring, diffraction etc. do not go away when only 1080 lines are being used. Especially since the downsampling is done via line-skipping.

If anything, a DSLR video shooter needs even better lenses than a stills shooter due to the line-skipping, which degrades the images as it shrinks it.

Also, cheaper lenses tend to be are slower, thus canceling one of the big advantages these cameras have: low light sensitivity.

So yes, great lenses are expensive, but they quickly pay for themselves. And they also inspire you to do great work, rather than bury you with optical limitations. Every time I've bought a non-L lens I've regretted it, and eventually replaced it with the real deal.

Eric, this is certainly true, but the L lenses are very heavy and if you carrying your euipment on your back for long trip it matter a lot.
So, between the cheap lenses (noboby wants that, unless money restriction let you no choices) and the L lenses, is there any lenses even if they come from other manufacturers?

Well, of course you get what you pay for, technically speaking. A nice set of prime lenses is going to give a nicer image than a zoom lens, etc. I'm not unaware of what the better lenses give you- but there is a law of diminishing returns. Everything you say is true- but when it comes down to it, how many people will notice all these details? We've reached a point where the image quality with an $800 camera is amazing. You could shoot well-exposed shots, cut a film and project them in a theater with NO color correction and still make a great film. I'm not advocating for this, I'm just saying it's possible. Hell, great dramatic films have been made with lousy consumer DV cameras, so it's really not about the equipment, but the person using it. That's why, for me, the biggest drawback to these cameras is an inability to get sharp focus on the run- that DOES limit my creative possibilities. All the other debates about pros and cons, to me, are academic or more for the real techy-types, which is fine, I enjoy those conversations too, but they're side issues to me.

Here's my reason for coming to the Canon DSLR world- I want to make a film stripping out as much of the overhead that comes with movie-making as possible- cost, crew, gear- and still make a quality film. A small, light camera that works great in low-light allows me to do that. 800 bucks plus the cost of media, batteries, accessories and a lens is still not pennies, but it's pennies compared to what it used to be. Point being, yesterday's scratch on the negative is today's chromatic aberration. It's going to happen, it's part of the medium you're working with, and in the end, it's okay. Everyone has a line between the acceptable and unacceptable, so until I win the lottery and buy myself a complete set of Zeiss primes, I'm interested in the cheapest lens that isn't going to look cheap. It doesn't have to be a cheap Vivitar or a $3k lens; there's got to be some decent, inexpensive lenses out there, I just haven't looked into this part of the world in a while, and things change fast.

Don't mean to sabotage the thread. I'm definitely open to all suggestions!

I guess I could characterize myself as having gotten into wedding videography to fund my work as an independent filmmaker. I understood from the get-go that there was nothing cheap in this industry. Then a $800 camera that shoots stunning 1080p24 comes out and we still want to cut corners? Hmm.

It's all about the lens. Someone somewhere wrote that the camera of the future is just a sensor with a lens in front of it. Optics are optics, and can't be skipped or virtualized. Top shelf glass will always be "expensive." Expensive in quotes because, even for the no-budget independent filmmaker, the competition is shooting with lenses costing tens of thousands of dollars. Lenses that make L-series lenses look like loupes.

Your analogy with scratches and CA is great, except that today's audience is expecting something that looks exactly like or better than what they see with their eyes. Because that's what they see in their favorite films.

You're right that it's the creative individual(s), not the gear, that makes the movie. But the latter are much easier to obtain - despite the expense - than the former. And you need both. Don't hamstring yourself by saying, "Oh, no one's going to notice all the technical flaws." To even reach an audience, you'll have to convince a LOT of people to take your film seriously. People that notice everything.

Try Adorama.com I think they have it.
ATX1116PRODXC Tokina 11mm - 16mm F/2.8 ATX Pro DX Autofocus Zoom Lens for Canon EOS Digital SLR Cameras.

Agreed, don't cut corners unless you absolutely have to. Lenses are expensive and they are an investment and should be looked at in that way. Stillmotion's videos are great and they are highly talented in their creation skills, however they have a list of lenses that they use on their education blog and they are primarily fast canon L primes. In my opinion this adds a quality to their films that is measurable and a result of the quality of the glass they use.

I think it depends on how wide or long you normally shoot. My preference on a crop body like the T2i is the Canon 17-55mm f/2.8 IS, but a 24-105mm f/4.0L IS is another great choice. Most of my DSLR video work is either handheld or on a monopod, so I need the IS.

I'm really glad I held-off on getting a 7D. The T2i/17-55 combo cost me less than what a 7D body alone is going for.

What about the Canon EF-S 10-22mm? Compared to that Tokina? It seems like a better lens, no?

Also- dumb question but does the stabilization in the IS lenses work (and work well) in video mode? I'm a pretty steady shot, but this is a light camera. Does the IS feature really make a difference in hand-held filming?

This is purely conjecture. You don't have any evidence to support it. On the contrary, Barry Green did a test a few months ago in which he demonstrated that a cheap, old manual lens manages to produce results as good as a top-class lens like a new Zeiss ZE (which is even better than a Canon L) while actually reducing the appearance of aliasing. I'll link to it in the next day or two.

Not true at all. Zoom lenses max-out at f/2.8, whether they're Canon-brand or third party. Off-brand prime lenses can get pretty close to Canon's maximum apertures. And let's not forget that there are Canon L lenses that only do up to f/4.0: the 17-40mm, 24-105mm, and 70-200mm.

What aspect does the inspiring? The price tag? The brand? The build quality? Or the actual optics? Tamron, Sigma, and Tokina offer optics that are close enough to Canon's such that they cannot be considered "limited." With Canon, and the higher price tag, you get better build quality, better mechanics, better features, better resale value, and slightly better optics. If optics is the primary consideration, then Canon doesn't offer a better value proposition than third parties.

Optically, its not better. The Tokina 11-16mm is the best SLR lens in the world in that focal length range.

Not conjecture at all. Aliasing is everywhere in all Canon DSLR footage, unless it's an out of focus area. You notice it most where there are straight lines. But you can see it everywhere - as if the screen is "sizzling" as the camera moves. Shallow focus alleviates this.

I didn't mention this before, but as opposed to stills, we have a video codec to contend with. Compression artifacts further degrade the image.

I can't believe I forgot to mention lens sharpness. I've read the argument that you don't need a really sharp lens (read: pricey fast prime lens) because only a subsamples image is being used. I think the logic stems from resizing images in Photoshop. A slightly blurred image looks awesome reduced to 25% size and sharpened.

But the image is resized using a very bad method in Canon DSLRs. There's a lot of info on this here on DVinfo.

Due to the above, only with the fastest, sharpest lenses can you get the most out of cameras like the T2i. It doesn't hurt to have only static shots or perfectly smooth moving shots.

Of course, a cheap, old manual lens can still be an amazing piece of glass, and worth looking into. Probably wasn't cheap when it was manufactured, though ;)

Sorry for hijacking the thread, I'll be quiet now!

The canon 10-22 is a fantastic lens, it would be considered L if it wasn't for the fact that it's an EFS-S lens and has a plastic body. The elements inside are right up there.

However the lens that stays on my canon by default (not the 550D) is the sigma 30mm f1.4 which is a great, fast workhorse of a lens with a 'normal' field of view on a crop camera.

If you're going to be shooting video mostly then i really don't think you have to be that picky about lens sharpness. The real world resolution of this batch of cameras is really very poor as numerous tests have shown. In fact the less sharp then lens the better it's going to be. Having a sharper lens is just going to make the artefacts worse. So in some ways it's a great way to experiment - get a load of cheap EFS adaptors and scour ebay for the cheapest lenses and go for character rather than sharpness. The anamorphic nikon lenses have produced some stunningly characterful results.

I find the character of the canon footage to be more like grainless 16mm film (in terms of DOF and resolution) and there's nothing wrong about that. I've been through loads of average 16mm film lenses and they're all pretty poor performers but they all have warmth and character.

Of course if you want to invest in something long term the new Zeiss compact primes with interchangable mounts sound ideal.

cheers
paul

As fasr as inspiration goes, it depends on the look that you want. If sharpness and clarity are the goal, then top, accurate glass will inspire. On the other hand, there are some old lenses that have a soft, high-character look. If you like that character, those lenses can inspire too.

Back in the pre-manual days of the 5D2, we shot a festival film with three old lenses that cost under $200 combined. It's a stylized film noir sendup, so those lenses - plus careful, low-saturation grading and lots of glow made for a very interesting look. For closeups, we used some cheap Hoya closeup lenses screwed onto an AI 50/1.8. It was far from sharp, and really added to the b-movie feel.

I'm not saying that crummy lenses are the goal, but the sharpest possible lenses aren't always the right answer. In fact, most recently I've been shooting with Glimmerglass filters to help knock down the highlights and add a slight glow. I need to add back a bit of contrast in the camera, but I like the look.

But if your goal is a super crisp look, get a super crisp lens and don't use diffusion. It all depends on your target look.

I would also add that in real terms, beyond a certain point, it's difficult to quantify sharpness in real images, especially moving (which introduces subtle motion blur into the mix). For example is the performance of a canon L 24mm lens going to be apparent compared to a cheap 24mm at video resolutions? Sure the look will be different, different bokeh and colour and better performance (less aberrations) but in terms of sharpness i think you'd be hard pushed to see a real world difference.

The L glass is lovely for stills, so if you're shooting both it's worth it, but for video only it seems overkill right now.

cheers
paul

Paul, do you have a 24 1.4? I do and it is breathtaking. Even compared to other L-series lenses. Tack sharp with gorgeous bokeh. It's so odd that L-lenses are routinely bashed and yet professional canon shooters uniformly use them.

The more unsharp the lens the better? Don't know what to say. If you start with an unsharp image, you can never put back the sharpness. But you can always blur a sharp image. In relation to aliasing, an approach suggested on another thread is to mask areas of the image that show aliasing artifacts and retain the sharpness elsewhere.

If the camera resolution is so terrible - it's true it's bad compared to, say, the EX3 - why would people be hacking the 5D2 and 7D to mount PL lenses on them? That's "overkill" for sure, but these are people that probably know what they're doing.

Modified 7D-PL mount camera | Philip Bloom

Yes, the 24mm is breathtaking, i've rented before but couldn't justify buying it as i have the 10-22 and i don't spend much time at 22/24mm.

Let me elaborate because i never intended implying a blank statement that unsharp lenses are better. I'm saying that the line skipping in these cameras create a void between pixels that results in big aliasing problems. Normally a sensor would have a filter in front of it to cut out the detail that would result in these artefacts. The 550D has one, but it's designed for full res stills, not 1080. Therefore this camera has effectively no low pass filter which means high details are going to be aliased. The line skipping makes it even worse because the gap between lines is so great hence mostly horizontal problems - you would need a filter that blurred more vertically than horizontally anyway. There are some great charts and videos around that show this.

For video work the lens needs to take on the role of this filter that is missing (or more accurately not high enough in the vertical direction). It needs to stop high detail getting to the sensor. It's a trade off, images will look softer (because they are) but remember that half the time the perceived resolution is fake, and when that is moving it looks terrible because this fake resolution changes from frame to frame hence the shimmer. Be it something with horizontal lines moving through the frame or fine detailing of brickwork in the distance. There are the caprock filters that do just that - blur the image.

My point is, stick a caprock on a 24L then you may as well stick a nice old lens on there.

The cameras are being modded with PL mounts for the simple reason that it enables cinematographers to use the same physical lenses they use to take stills with for grading and production purposes and perhaps some crash cam style shots. Sure, these cameras are being used in some cases theatrically, usually (hopefully) when there is a compelling reason for that form factor. Certainly not because of quality.

The issue is that there is a finite amount of detail any sensor can resolve. If you push too much detail to the sensor then you will create artefacts. The whole camera pipeline is carefully balanced bearing in mind the performance across all components. These cameras are primarily designed for stills. Somethings got to give and that is video resolution.

I hope that makes my statements a bit clearer?

cheers
paul

Thanks Paul. Are you able to point me to some videos that show the approach you've described? I've never tried it and as you can tell I'm skeptical! There's definitely a limit to how much the image processor and the codec can handle. But to my eyes sharp = good.

As to the PL mount, I've mostly heard of Arri and Panavision lenses being used. Not a crash cam in that case! Seems like the 7D is sometimes a good choice as a B or C cam to a much better A cam.

Then of course there are the mods enabling uncompressed out.

Erik,

There is a very good analysis and demonstration by barry green on the other video forum, i wouldn't want to link from here. Also Stuart at the prolost blog has some good background.

In terms of video:

YouTube - Moire test 5D MKII

Is great example of how noise is created. The netting on the curtain will cause different false detail at different zoom stages.

Even the new footage from the 550D posted by James Miller shows the typical type of artefacts in the daylight examples (brickwork, roof tiles and horizontal lines).

There are some tests with the caprock filters on vimeo too, although i don't have the links here. In fact i think it's dvinfo that they came from in the first place.

The long and the short of it is that there is no way to fix this without substantially blurring the image coming in.

It like looking through a window with venetian blinds and where the blind is you cannot see what is behind that so you can miss details smaller than a blind height.

You can be careful what you point at. You can stick to shallow DOF to blur detail and you can attempt to minimise in post. Sometimes you don't know you've got problems until you see footage, it's not always visible on the LCD.

I would say that for wide deep focus shots the cameras are next to useless but then there are plenty of cameras that are great at this. For 100mm shallow DOF MCU then they can look great but so can an EX1 at those kind of focal lengths. The sweet spot is really something like f1.4 at 24mm (for example) or 30mm where you can get a cinematic field of view with shallow DOF. In my opinion that's what the cameras are most useful for.

Also on the compression, the compression likes areas that are blurred. If you shoot someone in front of trees with deep DOF then the compression would fall apart. If you reduced the DOF then the high frequency detail of those tress would become blurred and compress easily, giving more 'room' to compress the person better.

Also i've had limited success on full res source hiding the moireing by simply adding film grain, which is more acceptable and can hide the underlying shimmering.

hope this is useful in some way
paul

The science is very clear. To eliminate aliasing, you need to cut out the high frequencies before they hit the sensor. And to keep things sharp, you want to preserve all the detail the sensor can handle, but not one line more.

For instance, at 1080p, one can show 540 black lines separated by 540 white lines at the absolute maximum. Ideally, we would use an optical filter that would show 539 lines cleanly, but would blur 541 lines to gray. Unfortunately, no optical filter has that sharp a cutoff.

RED really has it right. By shooting at 3K (wide), the filter can kill everything above 3K and pass everything at 2K (or 2.4K or whatever). Downsample digitally, and they should be able to deliver stunningly sharp 1080p with no visible aliasing.

Back to DvSLR lenses, everything that the lens throws away over 1080p is a good thing. Everything the lens throws away below 1080p is a bad thing.

But that's just resolution. Flare, bokeh, falloff, color rendition, focus distance, and focus accuracy/smoothness and CA are also important. To me those are the reasons to pay more for a good lens for DvSLR video. You don't need the most expensive lens to resolve 540 alternating lines.

This is very true, except with these canons the problem is compounded by the line skipping. It means that the effective sensor 'pixels' have large horizontal gaps between them, most sensors the pixels would butt up next to each other. The effective resolution would probably be lower than 540 vertically.

Does that make sense or am i thinking incorrectly?

The aliasing isn't anywhere near as bad horizontally, so i guess entire lines would be read out and scaled correctly. Any aliasing visible would be down just to the OLPF in that case.

cheers
paul

I'm sorry to nitpick, but I gotta say that this is not quite right. In 35mm cinematography, 24mm to 35mm are considered wide angle. And f/1.4 is almost never used. The sweet spot is f/2.8 or f/3.5.

Barry Green proved that the sharpness actually just an illusion due to aliasing. There is no more real detail/resolution with a super-sharp lens than with a softer lens.

The truth (and some people here might not like to hear/read this) is that if you want to achieve the sharpness of a super-sharp lens like a Canon L or Zeiss ZE, then just use a cheaper, softer lens and apply sharpening in post.

Sharpness and resolution are not the only reasons to use a top-class lens like a PL. PL lenses are designed specifically for cinematography. Not only do they offer superior contrast and color reproduction, but they also offer superior build quality and mechanics, optimized for cinematography. For example, the focus throws are very long, and the aperture rings don't have click-stops.

In my experience, aside from aliasing (which in most shallow DOF shots is minimal), it's a pretty good illusion if it is just an illusion. Could you post a link to the "proof"?

It's possible that a soft lens will not just lose resolution in the aliasing region (that's good), but also lose it in the visible region (that's bad). Also, if the visible region has problems in the visible band that vary by bandwidth (color), that could show up in the video.

I still come back to the target look. If you want a dreamy feel, super sharpness might not matter. Corner sharpness matters little if you shoot shallow DOF with a centered subject. On the other hand, if you're doing travel promotion videos, corner to corner sharpness could be important.

Aliasing plagues all video images from all DSLRs, even when it doesn't look like aliasing. And that's the most disconcerting part.

Start reading a third of the way down the page here: "Aliasing" by Barry Green

To clarify, when I said "softer lens," I didn't mean a soft lens. I only meant a lens that was not super-sharp.

One important about corner-to-corner sharpness that must be said is that it doesn't matter very much if you're using lenses intended for full-frame or 35mm cameras on a crop-sensor camera. The cropped sensor only uses the sharpest region of the lens, which is the center.

Here's a good example:

That's breathtaking, especially at 200mm.

But on much shorter lenses, IS is not very important. Even though this thread is about zoom lenses, I must mention that very few prime lenses have IS, and all of the ones that I've seen have been long lenses.

Unless you have an unlimited budget a good tripod can be a less expensive route if you don't need hand held.

I went to a real old fashioned camera store today, Kenmore Camera. They not only had the T2i kit they also had the body only. Way more rare they had a brand new in the box with US warranty Tokina 11-16mm f2.8 at the list price. There is a fleabay dealer (that is Ok) that has the Tokina but they are adding a $100 scalping premium to list.

My lens collection for my 30D is the el cheapo non IS 18-55mm Kit, the only reason I got it was as a $50 Macro, 50mm f1.8 (Mk1 metal bayonet), 17-40mm and 70-200 both f4.0 L. and a canon 1.4x extender. As the 17-40 is my go to lens for stills I added the 11-16 Tokina today and a T2i body. More than I was planning on spending but I'm happy and way less than a HMC40. The 12 minute limit is a non issue for me.

Being a real Camera store I could shoot and try different lenses. The Tokina 11-16 is to me on a par with an L, it's a quality bit of kit. The Canon 10-22 is slower and is the usual inferior non L plastic fantastic fit, finish and feel. The focus and zoom on the 11-16 has very pro feel to it. The Tokina has a legion of good reviews or I would have not bought it as my first non Canon lens for a Canon.

One thing I would like to add is a good set of lenses will be with you as long as your working in the field. A camera will become obsolete after a few years at the least. I'm hesitant to jump into a new body when I can buy the lenses and rent the bodies. At least until a full fledged dedicated video camera with a large sensor comes out at which point I will have attained a nice set of lenses. $800 is not bad for a T2i, much easier to swallow than an 5d/7d.

On the other hand, you can rent an L lens for something like 30/day, while a pro body will cost closer to $150.

That said, if you buy used and keep your gear in good condition, keeping the lens for a few years and selling later in order to upgrade is like a free rental. :)