In the Canon line of lenses there are the "Magic" Lenses.... those will make this camera earn its money....

Some of the magic...

35mm
50mm
85mm
100mm
200mm 1.8 ( if you can find one )
300mm

I can't wait to put a tilt/shift on this cam... :-)

just remember, if you get a fast lens... 2.8 or faster you can always dial in a slower number... (greater f stop) but you can't get a slow lens to go faster....

A lens faster than 2.8 will have to have some form of filter ( polarizer, ND filter ) on the front if you plan on using it full open in bright light...

Ray's post above came from another thread, but I thought the subject of best available glass for the 5D Mk. II was worthy of its own discussion. The EF 200mm f/1.8L USM he mentions above has been discontinued and can only be found used. Meanwhile, I would add two more lenses to his list:

The brand new EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM is the fastest wide available. A couple of days ago I briefly played with a production model 5D Mk. II mounted with this lens (thanks Mike) and it is beautiful, no other way to describe it. This lens doesn't have IS, but at that short 24mm focal length, I don't think it's really needed.

And the EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM telephoto zoom. This L-series lens has the greatest zoom ratio of the entire EF line (at nearly 11x) and it has IS. At the wide end, it almost has the focal length of a Canon XH with WA adapter. At full telephoto, it's just about at the half-way point of the 20x reach of the Canon XH... just add a 2x Extender to make up that difference. Because of its high zoom ratio, it is the one EF zoom lens that would best lend itself to being mechanically converted for video use, by adding a geared ring and motor drive for zooming. The only big negative about it is that it's not a constant aperture zoom. And I have no idea how bad this lens breathes when changing focus... but the numbers are right at least.

See my reply to this thread here http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/photo-hd-...-november.html for my take.

I really believe this is going to be the answer for video, which is bit annoying as I have a Canon 35mm f1.4L, 24mm f1.4L, 24-70 f2.8L and 135mm f2L gathering dust.

Dan

Dan, I think you might try out using your Canon Lenses and see how they work....

One difference between a Nikon Lens and the Canon Lens is that the Nikon Lens
allows adjustment of the iris without power applied to the lens... its a mechanical interface.

When power is applied to the Canon Lens, all you have to do is set the lens to manual...

It will then act just like the Nikon Lens.... you can also set the camera up to manual
for the exposure and iris control.

This is why most folks choose the Nikon over the Canon when using a 35mm adaptor because Canon didn't want to release the specifications for controlling their lenses to
the public...

But we are now talking about Canon Lenses on a Canon Body (5DMKII) and there are
huge advantages for using Canon Lenses on this body...

Ray,

I think you misunderstood what I am saying. I understand fully the way a manual lens functions on a Canon body. I have been using adapted lenses alongside my EF lenses on Canon bodies for a few years now.

The issue is that with the 5DmkII video mode no matter what you set the aperture on a Canon EF lens prior to shooting a video the camera overrides it and chooses an aperture of its own liking. There is no way to manually override this. There are numerous reports from people who have tested the 5dmkII video mode who claim that the camera behaves this way. That is why the adapted Nikon lenses will be better in my view.

If Canon get round to changing the way this works then they will have a much better camera. All the technology to do this is out there but not in one camera body yet.

Dan

Laforet made it very clear that there is a "work around" for aperture control. All the pre-release movies seem to been done with intentional apertures. He used all canon lenses.

Perhaps someone saved the link to Laforet's explanation?

I believe Ray is referring to all "L" lenses. For the budget minded, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the 35/2, 50 1.4 and 85 1.8. While its nice to have 1.2 and 1.4 lenses, the price is much higher. It's also difficult to focus at the very wide apertures of the wider L's.

I don't know of a way to get faster than f2 below 50mm inexpensively on Canon.

You can set the aperture, remove the lens, tape the contacts, and replace the lens. It will remain at the previously set set aperture.

But as I said Laforet found a work-around. Clearly people using the camera had aperture control without the pain of taping contacts.

I expect Canon's next one series camera to have all the video controls we want (including 24p)

I'm pretty sure that Vincent's solution was to shoot in low light with light sources he could control, forcing the camera to maximum aperture. The taping this should work but will be completely impractical for most users, certainly for my run and gun use. The advantage of adapted manual lenses is that they can control exposure more precisely coupled with an AE lock in video mode. This is all subject to testing though.

The alternative method for EF lenses would probably be to force the camera to expose for a dark subject (ie open up the lens), lock exposure, recompose for your normally lit subject, then dial in some ND to compensate for the resulting overexposure. To this end a vari-ND filter would be good.

Dan

Laforet says there's Av mode:


"For those asking for the ability to manually set exposure - I understand why. But you’re not really thinking very creatively. Set the camera to aperture priority… aperture is now locked down… then the shutter speed is either 1/60th or 1/125th… ISO is set as a result of the meter… so point the camera to a dark area or to a light area and once you’ve got your desired final setting - and hit the (*) button - boom you’ve locked down both the shutter speed and the ISO forcefully… until you press (*) the exposure won’t change - even if you stop and then record again (that is my current understanding of things) make sense? So the camera as is can be “tricked” into full manual already… you can always point a small flashlight into the lens to force it to stop down or hold you hand over the lens to force it to open up… may not look good to clients - but a lot of the little tricks we do are our little secrets after all eh? "


Could Canon be stupid enough to take out Av mode to cripple the camera? Yes! But probably not.

Or just press the Exposure Lock button (the star or "*" button), that's all it takes.

...as Laforet describes in the quoted post above.

Just doing my part to slow Dan down. He doesn't seem willing to accept that there's Av mode with video.

Well all I can say is that everyone I've spoken to seems to suggest this is true only within a certain brightness range. Think about it, even if the camera has a base sensitivity of say 50asa there are very few daylight conditions where this is going to give you f1.2, 1.4 or even f2.8 at 1/30th to 1/125th. And there are no handy ND filters to dial in as you would on a regular pro video camera. This leads me to conclude that av mode can't work in those situations, Canon has for a long time had a function called safety shift that automatically adjusts the aperture when the camera thinks it is out of range. In stills this can be disabled, but I'm guessing they do something like this with video. Alternatively it may just overexpose and white out but I've had no-one report that.

I'm sure Vincent's technique works for low to medium lighting situations, but it simply can't work without ND's in bright light. That's why using ND's with a manual lens is going to be an easier option for serious work.

Dan

I know of a store here in South Africa that has an old 200mm F1.8 in stock, they can't get it sold, I had it on loan for a week to decide if I would buy it. The DOF is so narrow that it's virtually impossible to use the lens at 200mm F1.8. I opted not to buy because of this. Prime lenses are your best bet however the 70-200mm F2.8 IS L is crystal. One of the best lenses I've ever owned.

Just got off the phone with my Canon contacts who confirmed that there is no aperture control in video mode (they likened it to green square mode in stills), look again at this Canon usa page Canon Digital Learning Center - EOS 5D Mark II: Movie Mode Basics

It clearly states:

In addition to the adjustable settings listed above, the following settings are made automatically by the camera and cannot be adjusted by the user:
ISO speed
Shutter speed (from 1/30 to 1/125)
Aperture (varies according to lens; no arbitrary restrictions)
Color space (sRGB)
Exposure metering pattern (Evaluative)

Dan

So it's

- ND filters
- set and tape EF lens
- alt lens with aperture control
- some trick

I hope the camera allows video with non EF lenses. I could see the firmware generating an error with a non-EF lens rather than adjust ISO and shutter speed. I'm sure the video capability of the camera is intentionally crippled. I just hope they haven't taken the downgrades too far.

Don,

Forgot to mention my Canon contact also said he thought that manual lenses should work in the way I anticipated. The camera still automatically alters the ISO and shutter speed with a non EF lens and you can still lock the exposure.

Dan

I think most people will simply press the Exposure Lock button instead.

Chris,

I don't think you are fully understanding this. You CANNOT force the camera to use a SPECIFIC aperture using the exposure lock button. This has been confirmed by various sources. When you engage video mode the 5dmkII disregards its previous aperture setting from the stills mode, basically AV does not work in video with and EF lens. I know this is contrary to what seems logical and what many people think the camera does, but it is what Canon are saying to me at least.

What happens is this, when you lock the exposure in video mode it stays where the camera has determined it to be correct, which in bright light will be result in the aperture closing down because the shutter speed can no longer be increased from 1/125th and the ISO cannot be decreased beyond 100asa. You can unlock and re-lock the exposure as much as you want but you can't guarantee to be using the aperture as you want. You should be able to get away with tricking the camera using ND filters and pointing it at different intensity lights.

Tricking the camera into using maximum aperture should not be too hard, however if you wanted to use the lovely 35 f1.4L at say f2.8 it is going to be hard. Trust me focussing an 35mm f1.4 lens on a slightly moving subject on a full frame 35mm sensor is far harder than you might think, there is so much less depth of field than with the same angle of view and aperture on a 1/3 of 2/3rd inch CCD. For that reason I regularly close down ultra fast lenses a little while still aiming to keep a nicely defocussed background.

With a manual lens you should at least get to shoot at your chosen aperture at base sensitivity (100asa) and when the image whites out from overexposure you can then add in ND, much as on a pro video camera. This is exactly the same technique that you can apply to the Nikon D90 with manual or contact taped lenses.

Dan

Ray,

Back to your original point, I complied a list of my own lenses that I hope will give great quality with the 5DmkII. I have used most of the extensively and I can testify they are all top class.

The EF ones are:
24mm f1.4L
35mm f1.4L
50mm f1.2L
135mm f2L
24-70 f2.8L

The Nikon ones are:
AF 14-24 f2.8 with 16-9.net adapter
AF 16mm f2.8
AF 17-35 f2.8
AF 24-70 f2.8 with 16-9.net adapter
AF 28mm f1.4
AF 80-200 f2.8
AF 85mm f1.4
85mm f2.8 shift lens
AF 300mm f4
AFS-II 400mm f2.8
AFS-II 500mm f4
MF 55mm f2.8 micro Nikkor
MF 85mm f2
MF 180mm f2.8

The Leica ones are:
50mm f2 R lens
35mm f2.8 R lens

Others are the Sigma 8mm f3.5, Zeiss/Contax 85mm f1.4 and Voigtlander 58mm f1.4

Dan

I may be on crack but I'm pretty sure I read that Zeiss was making a couple of prime EF lenses that would have external iris control, this seems like it would be an ideal lens for this camera.

Nick,

The new ZE lenses from Zeiss do not have aperture rings.

Dan

See, thats why you should say no to crack...

This seems like the camera might be really good for film students who want to make sure they know how to use a light meter correctly, expose for the meter and then see if the camera mimics your results.

But that's not what I'm saying. You CAN indeed force the camera to use a SPECIFIC aperture, via other workarounds (which won't involve taping over the contacts on a lens). The procedure will be very similar to what the Canon HV series camcorder folks have been doing for quite some time; they've been using cel phones, light-up lens caps, bounce cards and other means to force the camera into a specific desired aperture value. Then you make the camera keep that setting so that it won't be changing through AE by simply pressing the exposure lock button.

Chris,

I know exactly what you mean as I own both a HV20 and 30. However unlike the HV20 a light cap of the type users have designed for the HV is pretty impractical if you have a large number of lenses with different filter sizes, especially the super telephotos. A bounce card might work if you could properly callibrate it for a given light source, but again it isn't going to be a quick way of working especially with the variety of lenses again. At the very least you are going to need ND's to use super fast lenses. I am confident you CAN get very CLOSE to the aperture and look you want from a 5DmkII in a controlled lighting environment, but that is not my primary concern, I NEED run and gun in changing light. I want to know that I can set f1.4 or f2.8 and then move around quickly between different scenes using the ae lock to adjust ISO and shutter speed.

Also, I might be wrong on this one, but I was told previously that in video mode the camera doesn't even tell you what aperture you are shooting (unlike the HV20 with a SD card and the photo button technique) so you really can't set a SPECIFIC aperture very easily, if at all. Max aperture should be easy enough to achieve, but I'm more worries about setting say f2.8 on a f1.4 lens.

If you could explain the technique you would use to set an aperture of say f5.6 on a normal sunny day it would be really, really helpful. I would love to use my Canon lenses on the 5DmkII but after speaking to Canon people at length (hours) I'm convinced it is not going to be possible to do what you suggest in a run and gun scenario, especially with changing lighting conditions. Manual lenses will simply be easier to handle.

Hope I'm wrong.

Dan

(If you want to contact me by email I can give you some details of Canon Inc people who really know this stuff, you may be more convinced after mailing them)

Won't work in most cases as there's +- 2 EV adjustment after lock.

I do own a HV20, so I do get how it can work on canon single cmos vcams.

A note on the 16-9 adapter. The site says 35 days to delivery. I ordered one August 1 and have not received it. The longest people have waited is 9-10 months. Just a warning.

As of this date, I've been hands-on with the 5D Mk. II for all of about ten minutes or so. Obviously I don't have a technique. But -- considering what I've seen other people do to manually control cameras that have no manual control, I'm convinced that someone smarter and more experienced than me will develop such a technique. There's usually a way to work around full auto. I certainly don't have the specific procedure for the 5D Mk. II, but I'm confident that somebody somewhere will be able to suss it out and post the technique.

One user said shooting a still in video mode will make the camera stay in the (user controllable) still setting. So I do hope there is some quirky way to use EF lens and choose the aperture. We'll see. Canon is pretty bizarre sometimes.

OK Chris, lets hope.

I think the difficulty to overcome is that the 5DmkII varies not just aperture and ISO but also shutter speed, unlike the HV and other auto video cams where you can lock down the shutter speed. Figuring out how the camera alters the 3 variables in different light scenarios is the challenge. Canon's exposure algorithm may also change depending on which lens you attach and its maximum aperture so you may need to have a slightly different technique for each differing lens.

All that taping the contacts of an EF lens or using manual aperture lenses does is restrict the number of variables back down to 2, hence making it easier to trick the camera into giving you the values you want.

Dan

I think it will completely switch how we work. Usually we want to get as much light on the subject as possible. With the 5D MII we'll be trying to get "just enough" light. That should keep the shutter speed down. I'm guessing that the camera will automatically TRY to stay at 1/30th if it can and only go above that in very bright situations. Have those ND filters ready!

Tyler,

That's EXACTLY along the lines I was thinking, and why I am more pessimistic than Chris about how easy tricking the auto will be. The question is in what order the 5dmkII will try and and compensate for exposure in. If it always goes aperture, shutter speed then ISO then we may be in luck with EF lenses, but I think it will tempted to alter shutter speed instead after it gets hits some point in the middle of the aperture range like f5.6 or f8. This is generally how program or green square modes work on an SLR.

With a manual lens you could find a exposure surface that you know should give you 1/30th at low ISO with the lens stopped down to the middle of its range, then lock it. After that just recompose , open up the aperture and then use ND to get you back to the right exposure.

Does that make sense?

Dan

Thinking some more. The other main scenario where there could be problems getting your chosen aperture are when it is dark. Say the exposure was 1/30th at f1.4 and 800ASA, but you wanted a little more depth of field to allow for subject movement during a take and wanted to shoot at 1/30th at f2.8 and 3200ASA, without manual aperture control how could us persuade the camera to let you do it?

Dan

One solution here is use a slower lens. This is why I plan on not only having the 50mm f/1.4 in my bag, but also the 24-70mm f/2.8 L series. Everyone always wants faster lenses, but again, here you actually may want a slower one. In fact, the kit lens that only goes to f/4 may become rather useful.

If you are considering a zoom lens it should be parfocal. Parfocal means that it will retain its focus throughout the zoom range, this is not a problem with stills photographers as they are not zooming while taking a picture but for video it is critical

Current & Discontinued models are

EF 16-35mm f/2.8L USM
EF 17-40mm f/4L USM
EF 24-70mm f/2.8L USM
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L USM
EF 70-200mm f/2.8L IS USM
EF 70-200mm f/4L USM
EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 IS USM
EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III USM
EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 III
EF 90-300mm f/4.5-5.6 USM
EF 90-300mm f/4.5-5.6
EF 17-35mm f/2.8L USM
EF 20-35mm f/2.8L
EF 28-70mm f/2.8L USM
EF 28-80mm f/2.8-4L USM
EF 50-200mm f/3.5-4.5 USM
EF 50-200mm f/3.5-4.5
EF 70-210mm f/4
EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 II USM
EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 II
EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6 USM
EF 75-300mm f/4-5.6
EF 80-200mm f/2.8L
EF 100-300mm f/5.6L
EF 100-300mm f/5.6
EF zoom lenses with Super Inner Cam focusing, which include most of the non-L zooms introduced from 1990 onwards as well as the EF 35-350mm f/3.5-5.6L USM and the EF 100-400mm f/4.5-5.6L IS USM, are not parfocal.

For reference going forward if you need information about specific lenses from Canon....

Canon Camera Museum | Camera Hall - Film Cameras

and if you want real user feedback about still camera lenses this site has them all...

FM Reviews - Main Index

Thank You Very Useful

Dan Chung, if I recall your recent posts on this correctly, you shoot a lot of run-&-gun stuff? So your logic is bent mainly on anticipating how to use auto-aperture lenses on the 5D2?

I ask 'cause I shoot only dramatic (fiction) content, where we have time to set exposures manually—& prefer to. Your thinking is useful, but if I understand the current speculation about the 5D2 (I've looked at the manual online), using a manual-aperture-only lens on the body will remove one of three variables (the other two being ISO & shutter speed).

Does that sound right?

John,

That sounds about right to me. I think once you can control the aperture by using a manual lens it will be much easier to force the camera to lock the ISO and shutter speed at a value at or close to what you want. Then if you want a specific aperture after you have AE locked you would simply add enough ND and open up the lens aperture.

Dan

The documentation varies on shutter speed. Is there 1/30th? That's pretty good with the camera doing 30fps. It means that the sensor can cycle very quickly, including the on chip noise calculation.