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Long Zoom with Red Dragon


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Hi, I am curious what is the best way to accomplish a shot with a Red Dragon. For location purposes, the camera will be approximately 25 meters away from the subject. I would like to start the shot on an ECU of the subject then slowly zoom out (no dolly movement) a long way until the frame consists of a wide shot of a room approximately 25 meters in width and 25 feet high. Is this possible and, if so, what lens would you recommend for this?

Inspiration comes from the great zoom outs in Barry Lyndon as well as that one particular shot in Ti West's 'X' where he zooms out from the girl on the dock at the lake.

 

Appreciate any insight. Thank you.

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Why are you mixing meters and feet? You said you wanted a view that was 25 meters wide and 25 feet high? And the subject is 25 meters away? But where the the subject in the room?  It would be somewhat helpful if you actually gave the dimensions of the room and were specific as to where the subject was in that room (and I assume the camera would be against one wall?) Maybe a drawing would help.

At 25 FEET away, a 1000mm lens would give you a field of view of 8" wide on Super-35 more or less, which is an ECU of a face.  So for 25 METERS away, that's like 3X farther, so you'd be talking about a 3000mm lens???

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Thank you, David. Apologies for the inconsistency in distance units. 

Essentially, the shot takes place in a room that is 80 feet long, 80 feet wide, and ~30 feet high. 

The subject is sitting upright on the floor on the opposite end of the room to the camera. Camera is against the wall on the other side of the room. We start on a CU of the subject (as close as possible given the difficulty of the shot; the image you showed in your last message is close enough if that's the best it can be) then slowly zoom out. I would like the final frame to show the entire room in focus.

I'm assuming having the camera pan up slightly at some point during the shot might help get the final frame I'm looking for, so long as the initial subject on the floor is never cut out of frame. 

 

Thank you very much!

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That was a 1200mm prime lens I put into the calculator.

I think you're going to have to work backwards from what is the largest ratio zoom you can find that ends up wide-angle enough and then decide where to compromise, do you want to get tighter at the start but see less of the room at the end or the opposite.

Canon makes a 20:1 zoom that goes from 50mm to 1000mm:

https://thecinelens.com/2014/10/16/canon-announces-worlds-longest-cinema-zoom-50-1000mm/

But you'd have to live with the 50mm view at the wide end, which won't see the whole room, and the 1000mm view at the long end, which would probably be waist-up.

There maybe a 20X ratio zoom out there that is more like 25-500mm. Or maybe a broadcast 2/3" HD zoom that could be adapted.

Today if a director suggested such a shot, I'd probably use a 10X or 11X lens like a 24mm-290mm and lay dolly track and combine a dolly back with a zoom out, and then erase the track in post, because it will be seen in the middle of the floor when you get to 24mm at the end of the shot. I'd also plan on post stabilization, so I'd lose some of the view at 24mm. Or use a Libra head on the dolly.

Or shoot with an 8K camera so one could turn a 10X zoom shot into a 20X zoom shot at 4K.

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there is some 50x zooms made for broadcast use which could be useful (probably would need to use the built in extender and then crop the sensor if still getting vignetting)

chromatic aberration may be an issue with broadcast zooms used for cine applications but you can certainly have enough range with a broadcast zoom

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Let's say you use something near a 30-300mm 10X zoom and your camera has enough resolution to crop in half at the start to create 600mm out of the 300mm end of the zoom. Then you feather a digital zoom out throughout the optical zoom out to get to 30mm.

You'd have to be about 7 meters from the subject to get an ECU at 600mm.  So you'd have to live with the wide shot of the room being at 30mm at 7 meters, not 25 meters as you'd like.  Otherwise you'd have to lay 18 meters of track (54 feet) to keep pulling back to 25 meters and somehow feather the dolly move during the zoom out. At this point, if you didn't want to erase the track, you could use a Technocrane like a 45' one, with a Libra head, if you could even get something that big into the room. And you won't get back 18 meters / 54 feet to that 25 meter end goal but you'd get close.

You could try a B4 super-zoom made for 2/3" ENG cameras, just keep in mind that it's very hard to keep the lens steady when you get super telephoto, so you'd need a geared head, or a Libra head, if you couldn't lock-off the head.

I'd also say that if you had to dolly back anyway, you don't need a big zoom, you could use a short one like a 15-40mm and start tight at 40mm very close to the face and pull back and zoom out, so most of the pullback is a camera move and not a zoom. But of course that's almost 24 meters (72 feet) of dolly track! But maybe on a stabilized head and a short zoom, you could dolly on the floor itself if it is smooth enough.

If you can mount into the wall, you could also try a Cable Cam rig and the short zoom.

Screenshot 2023-01-13 at 10.02.12 PM.png

Screenshot 2023-01-13 at 10.03.08 PM.png

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11 hours ago, David Mullen ASC said:

Looks like the lens you need, the new 40x 25-1000mm Fujinon!

Let's take a moment to raise a glass to all of the broadcast camera operators who're going to be asked to produce sharp images with that thing, potentially using things like Venice in live broadcast situations. Yikes.

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