Your lens package

[Rob Belics]

35 and 16 but particularly interested in 35mm:

 

Do you have a standard set of lenses you automatically grab when you go into production and what is it? Or do you select all your lenses in prepro based on script/storyboard?

 

Do you typically only need this standard set, barring, of course, unusual shots?

[Mitch Gross]

My lens set is usually a SET, meaning the complete line in a particular series from a given manufacturer. This means the Cooke S4s (I think there's 14 in the set) or the Zeiss Ultra Primes (around 12). There are times when I know that I simply will have no use for an extreme wide or telephoto then I might eliminate this from the set to save some money, but in general I'll order the set. Of course this becomes a good bargaining tool when the UPM calls wanting to trim down the camera order.

 

Zooms are another issue. Some directors will absolutely never want to use them, others want nothing but. So during preproduction I'll work with the director to determine the style and order the zooms appropriately. For about half the work I do in S-16 it's nothing but my primes and about half it's just my zoom. It all depends on the nature of the job, but I find it fairly rare that I'll use both on a given shoot.

[Max Jacoby]

35 and 16 but particularly interested in 35mm:

 

Do you have a standard set of lenses you automatically grab when you go into production and what is it?  Or do you select all your lenses in prepro based on script/storyboard?

Depends on the budget really, but on most feature films I work on, we usually take a full set:

 

Ultra Primes: 10mm (or 12mm) to 180mm

Cooke S4 : 14mm to 135mm (sometimes combined with an Nikon 200mm)

 

There is always a zoom (the most popular being the Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm), which comes in very handy if the second camera has to go off to shoot something else.

 

But usually during the course of a production, some lenses, mostly wide angles, will get send back. On the last film that I did, 'The Merchant of Venice', we exchanged the UP 14mm for a second UP65mm after the 3rd week.

[Olivier Egli]

As for 16mm I heavily depend on my Zeiss 10-100mm. It is great at all the focal lenghts and shows minimal distortion and good color rendition.

I remember shooting a music video with heavy heavy backlight of the actors (2 9K dinos through a silk) and even tough it is tricky and risky to shoot scenes like that with a zoom because of the many optical elements giving potential risk of flares, it held details and resolution very well. No flares or glare at all.

As for shorter lenghts I add a 9mm Zeiss to it. This works perfectly for me. Of course there are the ultra primes as well, but I hardly ever use it on small budget shoots. When there is more dough around, then these are the ones I would go for.

But still, if not artistically motivated, zoom moves are a big no no for me...

[Tony Brown]

Standard list is

 

10mm Zeiss

14 / 18 / 21 / 25 / 32 / 40 / 50 / 65 / 75 / 100 / 135 Cooke S4's

Moy Leitz 100mm Macro

200 Canon

300 Canon

Mount to mount doubler

Hawk 150 - 450mm

 

Covers most things.

[David Mullen ASC]

Tony, what about a regular zoom like a 20-100mm?

[Rob Belics]

David, what's your list?

 

Ah, never mind. They just about covered it.

[David Mullen ASC]

I don't shoot film often enough to have a standard list! My last 35mm feature used the "Z" series (Zeiss Super-Speeds) at Panavision; the one I'm about to shoot hopefully will be Primo anamorphics from Panavision.

 

In general, my list is similar to Tony's except an 18mm is normally my widest angle and I carry a basic zoom (usually a 20-100mm Cooke) and I don't usually take a telephoto zoom (150mm-450mm) unless I know I'll be outside in daylight doing a lot of telephoto shots. But it just depends on the style of film.

 

If possible, I also like to carry the 45mm tilt-focus lens but it's usually the first thing to be dropped from my list when the budget gets tight.

[Max Jacoby]

David,

 

What was your lenspackage for 'Northfolk'?

[David Mullen ASC]

Primo anamorphic: 40mm, 50mm, 75mm, 100mm

E-Series: 135mm, 180mm (Primos stop at 100mm)

200mm Macro anamorphic Panatar

40-200mm Cooke anamorphic zoom

600mm Canon anamorphic

 

I believe I had an extra 40mm Primo because I figured 2nd Unit might want to take it along with the zoom.

 

I also had the Panaflasher and ProMist and Soft-FX filters.

[Max Jacoby]

I saw 'Northfolk' the other day here in London. I thought the scene towards the end where the men are the graveyard (with Nick Nolte in the 'shed' with the cross) looked amazing! Really heavy, overcast skies and gorgous blacks.

 

What were your workhorse lenses on this film?

 

Did you use the 40mm much? I shot with the Hawks recently and although we had a 40mm, we didn't use it at all, too much distortion. I like the 75mm best, it gives you a good wide angle with minimal distortion. The 50mm is okay, but we only used it if the 75mm wasn't wide enough.

 

Ps: Did you ever take a sip of Nick Nolte's 'Red poop'?

[Tony Brown]

Tony, what about a regular zoom like a 20-100mm?

I own a 20 - 100 Cooke but rarely use it. I like the S4's too much. I'll sometimes use a zoom on a remote head if pushed for time - a 25-250 for Helicopter work, other than that I avoid them for my style of work. I like the option of extremely shallow depth and dislike the way most zooms breath when you pull focus, the the new Ang Optimo is pretty good for this.

 

I also often order lenses that are generally regarded as bad if I can take advatage of the characteristics that deter most others from using them.

[David Mullen ASC]

I've heard the wide-angle Hawk C-Series suffer from a lot of barrel distortion. I didn't find the 40mm Primo anamorphic to be that bad in that regard.

 

Since I was outdoors a lot in "Northfork" I used wide-angle lenses when I wanted to emphasize the depth of the plains and the overhead sky and longer lenses when I wanted to make the mountain range more prominent. For example, the shot of the kid on the swing set against the mountain range - the wider shot was on a 75mm and the longer shot was the 180mm I think. But for crane shots, I usually used the 40mm. I think indoors I used the 50mm a lot for masters.

 

I also used an ND.60 grad a lot to make the sky darker along the top edge.

[Mitch Gross]

The Elites are a little better than the Hawks in regards to distortion and much better with flaring. I tested the 32mm Elite and found that it did show some barrelling when used in close indoor situations, but then again how much would one use that lens indoors? And amazingly the "stupid-wide" 24.5 Elite is not supposed to distort any more and is also supposed to be incredibly sharp. I didn't get to play with the 24.5 but this comes to me from the manufacturer.

[Max Jacoby]

I like the option of extremely shallow depth and dislike the way most zooms breath when you pull focus, the new Ang Optimo is pretty good for this.

The Optimo is a Dop's dream lens and a focus-puller's nightmare. It has less dof than primes...

 

But Arri have an LDS version of the Optimo as well, at least the focus-puller can see exactely how little dof he has.

[Max Jacoby]

The Elites are a little better than the Hawks in regards to distortion and much better with flaring.

I'd love to try them. Hopefully Arri Munich will have them available next time I go there.

 

If only there was a proper Elite zoom lens as well to go along with the primes, an equivalent to the Hawk 46-230mm T4 would be nice. Otherwise it'll probably have to be a converted Optimo.

[David Mullen ASC]

Perhaps the V-Series Hawks are better for barrel distortion. I also don't recall (from how they look in movies) the JDC anamorphics being all that bad for barrel distortion (to some degree, all wide-angle anamorphics have some barrel distortion.)

[Mitch Gross]

From my limited testing experience, the JDCs had very little barrel distortion. There was a slight bit of astigmatism on one lens (focusing verticals sharply by horizontals on a slightly different plane) but I was told the lens simply needed a bit of adjustment. But they were definitely sentive to flaring and they didn't color match even to eye. I put them on a sheet of milkglass illuminated from behind and could see the differences in color just by looking at one next to the other. But that hasn't stopped dozens of features from getting lovely results with them.

 

The Hawks and the Elites color matched fine but the Hawks seemed a little less contrasty, but I didn't fully test this to be sure.