Decision making & creativity in your lens choice

[Matt Golding]

Hi All,

I'm currently DOP for a social realism graduation film, a bit naive and a bit nervous because my approach is to experiment and shoot with the Sony F55 and 16mm Zeiss Distagon prime lenses throughout the whole of the short film. This means I have to operate with 2x crop, which isn't much of an issue because I have all the necessary primes and zoom lens to cover the shots needed, but from the camera test footage the lenses appear a bit too soft. I was intending to get a soft look, but I didn't realise how soft they would actually be. I'm not too sure if the lenses need calibrating in anyway, but I won't jump to conclusions because my knowledge doesn't go that far, however they do seem to perform slightly better in low light. My film is being filmed out on the majority of Day Exteriors, so I'm just wondering if it's worth sticking to my guns, or whether it might be best to resort to other lenses.

I also have the option of using the Zeiss CP.2 prime lenses, and I'm now thinking this could be my best choice. I'm a fan of the work by Stuart Bentley on This is England 90' and I've read up and come to understand that he operated with the Arri Amira, Arri Alura zoom lenses and the vintage Canon K35 primes. I'm just wondering if anyone has any useful advice on how I could achieve a similar look to this work.

I'm looking a visual references such as:

• Tyrannosaur (2011) Dop: Erik Wilson
• This is England 90' (2015) Dop: Stuart Bentley
• Fish Tank (2009) Dop: Robbie Ryan

(The images shown in this post currently don't have a colour grade applied, this is my next move as of tomorrow)

If the images don't seem to appear, check out this shareable link to a google drive file of the test: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B67phC0DGkQYUmJEY1FtN3RHOFk

Fire away at any questions if I've missed anything, or if it doesn't quite make sense. Any help would be massively appreciated!

Thanks,

Matt

[Stuart Brereton]

These look like low contrast LOG images, which makes it difficult to judge if they are soft or not. Can you post more with REC709 applied?

 

Also, you appear to be be rating the F55 at 2000ISO, which is 2/3 stop over its native ISO. As it's quite a noisy camera anyway, rating it higher will increase the noise, which may also contribute to a softer look.

[Christopher Santucci]

That lens should not produce soft images like this. Something is wrong with the lens or with your eyes :rolleyes:

 

Also, that lens should be pretty even with CP.2 in terms of optical quality.