Combining Arri Ultra Primes with Cooke S4 Primes?

[Wai Choy]

So I'm shooting my Super 35mm film this weekend starting on Saturday and I just found out today that the two of the four S4 Primes I reserved were stolen.

 

I had reserved a 25mm, 32mm, 50mm, and 100mm.

 

The 25 and 50 got stolen.

 

The only other S4s that the rental house has are the 14mm (not appropriate at all for my film) and the 40mm (which leaves a huge gap between 32mm and 100mm).

 

They do have some Arri Ultra Primes available though that would fill those gaps.

 

Is it possible to shoot with both Arri Ultra Primes and S4 Primes or would that be visual suicide?

 

What are the differences in terms of "look" between the two types of lenses?

 

I may have to make do with less than ideal selections from either the Arri or Cooke sets.

 

Please let me know ASAP.

 

Thanks a lot!

 

Wai

Edited April 29, 2008 by Wai Choy

[Max Jacoby]

I don't think it would be visual suicide, your average viewer most likely won't notice. I Robot for instance used Ultra Primes for the wide shots and Cooke S4s for closer shots.

 

But some things to keep in mind are that the Cookes are a bit warmer than the Ultra Primes, so you will need to take care of that in grading. The bokeh of the lenses feels different also and close-ups on the S4s feel more three dimensional than the Zeiss (whose focus-fall of is much sharper), so if there is a difference it will be most noticeable on close-ups (both from the way the lenses render faces and out-of-focus background). So best avoid crosscutting close-ups shot with the 2 different brands.