Pocket Cinema Camera 4k lens advice

Voigtländer has a lot of experience in making quality lenses. Pictured is a 360mm lens on a Hasselblad. Both of them are from 1949.

Voigtländer was a company from my city (Braunschweig) at that time and it started as early as 1840. They made many innovations in photography, like the first zoom lens for 35mm still cameras in 1959. The production in Braunschweig was closed down in 1971, the last part integrated with Rollei and ended in 1982.

Since 1999 the brand name is owned by Cosina from Japan, who have nothing else to do with the former Voigtländer from here, their optical formulas are all new. They make very fine lenses, though.

Or like Sony and Zeiss, even if they bought all the rights to Minolta's formulas.
Minolta had a close co-operation with Leica in their time…

Hi,
I just pre-ordered the Pocket Cinema Camera 4K, along with (on the vendor's recommendation) a Panasonic Lumix G Vario 7-14mm f/4 lens. I'm fairly new to this, so I'm not confident in my own ability to choose the best lens for my needs. I'm planning on shooting short documentaries, but also have a screenplay for a short scripted film in the works.

For the time being at least, my budget is not going to have room for more than one lens, so I want to make sure I'm getting something that will serve most purposes. Does that lens sound like it would be suitable, or would I be better off with something like the Panasonic Lumix G X Vario 12-35mm f/2.8? Or something else in that price range?

Thanks!

I would recommend not getting that lens at all. 7-14 is pretty pointless.

If you only want one lens I'd seriously look at the Olympus M.Zuiko ED 12-100mm f/4 IS PRO Lens. I have too many lenses mostly F1.4 and last year I bought a 24-105 F4. Have to say it was liberating having a big enough range in one lens. F4 is not the end of the world and that 12-100 would be roughly equivalent to 24-200 (perfect for doc work) and it has excellent image stabilisation.

But if you want a second lens I really really recommend the Laowa 7.5mm F2 Rectilinear. Its beautiful and I think the brightest and widest lens available on M43.

I shot this with it the other day. I really love this lens.
https://player.vimeo.com/video/331523363

Donald, I am with you, and would much prefer the Voightlander Nocktons to a Sigma Zoom, on the Pocket 4K, no contest!
Cheers

@Colourberry
Lovely time-lapse. The Laowa 9mm also looks to be an excellent value when 12mm isn’t quite enough.


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I hope to get soon my BMPCC 4K and I have a question regarding stabilized lens.

What is the best one LUMIX 12/35 or OLYMPUS 12/100 in regard with stabilisation point of view?

Regards

Jean-Claude

Here is an attempt at shallow DOF on the BMPCC 4K with a Rokinon 12mm T/2.2 (=F/2.0) Cine NCS CS, a more modern, sharper lens design, shot wide open.

In this shot the grieving remains of a family is given near equal emphasis to the authority of the California State Library / Courthouse. It was shot at the Peace Officers Memorial, "In the line of duty", part of the California State Capitol Museum in Sacramento. The sculpture is at the end of a bench so a family sitting there can feel that they are not alone.

Here is a shallow DOF shot from the same camera location with a Voigtländer Nokton 17.5mm F/0.95, no ND filter, ISO 100 with a wide open aperture.

The tighter frame of a 33mm equivalent portrait lens combined with the background bokeh brings out more of the emotional impact of the scene.

In spite of a little higher cost, there are shots that tell a story that can best be done with a very fast, quality lens.

Here is a close crop of the Rokinon 12mm photo showing very slight purple fringing.

You can almost read the sign attached to the streetlight that says: "State Library".

Here is a close crop of the 17.5mm Voigtländer photo showing that the purple fringing that has been reported for this lens wide open under certain lighting is practically nonexistent.

The subject and the background are in shadows at 2:30 PM on a sunny day.

Nice test examples. This also shows the difference in a lens designed for its format (Voigtlander/MFT vs using a S35/FF lens on a smaller MFT sensor. I think for most well controlled shots, using a lens designed for its format is always going to yield better results, all else being equal. Of course, the difference in focal lengths used, also is contributing to the DoF (or lack of) along with the max f/stop available. Sometimes wider is not always better.
Cheers

Denny,
Both the Rokinon 12mm and the Voigtlander 17.512mm lenses are MFT format.

While they both have MFT mounts, only the Voigtlander is MFT Format designed lens. The Rok is a APS/C Format lens, designed for the larger sensor, remounted on a MFT mount, as per Rokinon, ”The Rokinon 12 mm T2.2 Cine Lens is a wide‑angle lens optimized for digital cinematography. The lens produces an image circle that will cover APS‑C sized”. It is available in several camera mount versions, but all are the same optics. Tha advantage of the Rok, with its larger projected image circle is, it will not have as much edge distortion as it would on a S35 size sensor.
Cheers.

Hi everybody, I heard a lot about the Meike 25mm T2.2 so I tried putting it against the Rokinon CineDS 24mm T1.5, a lens many people are familiar with.

If anybody is interested here are the links to the results..

DAYTIME TEST:

NIGHTIME TEST:

If anybody is interested I'd be happy to make more tests on the Meike or Rokinon, just let me know what you would like.

@ youlikeny
Which do you prefer? I prefer the Meike for the wider apertures. Rokinon 24 T1.5 is not for general use, better stopped down.


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I keep going back and forth but I think I'll settle for the Rokinons...

I can't stop noticing CA on the Meike, even in the less contrasty images.. I know it's an easy fix in post but it's bothering me.
Plus the Rokinon has a less contrast/old-school look that is more in line with my style.

The Meike in terms of look reminds me of modern Canon L series still lenses, like a 24-70mm 2.8 or the 50mm 1.4. They are really sharp, good micro-contrast but too clean and "standard" for my taste.
You can notice it in the bokeh as well, Rokinon is a little softer, Meike's bokeh has very hard/sharp edges.

That being said, flares are much more controlled on the Meike and it's really built like a tank compared to the Rokinon. Focus gear feels much more solid on the Meike but its long throw is a little bit of a pain when using it without a follow focus.

I know the Rokinons have their defects (never use them at T1.5, T2 at minimum but T2.8 to be safe), and the differences with the Meike are minimal, but somehow I'd still choose them over the clean-cut Meikes, especially considering that the 24mm Rokinon is the weakest of their line up (I have their 16mm T2.6 and 35mm T1.5 which are very similar but slightly sharper wide open and very consistent in terms of look, contrast and color).

A decision is better than no decision! Lenses seem to be the hardest decision one has to make. I had intended to put Rokinon on a URSA Mini 4.6K, but settled with SLR Magic APO PL for their performance and flexibility.

You know their strengths and weaknesses, particularly the 24mm which you illustrated. So I believe they’ll serve your needs well.


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I use both the Pannasonic Leica Primes, 15, 25, and 45mm are good prices, while,the 12mm and excellent 42.5 tend to be pricey, but are outstanding lenses.

My problem with 15mm (on the non 4K BMPCC) is the barrel distortion. Really pronounced with a horizon.

Here is a close crop of the 17.5mm Voigtländer photo showing that the purple fringing that has been reported for this lens wide open under certain lighting is practically nonexistent.

The subject and the background are in shadows at 2:30 PM on a sunny day.

To be honest, I find the green CAs of the Voigtländer quite ugly, especially in the Bokeh.

I hope to get soon my BMPCC 4K and I have a question regarding stabilized lens.

What is the best one LUMIX 12/35 or OLYMPUS 12/100 in regard with stabilisation point of view?

Might be a little late, my answer.
The Olympus is far superior regarding stabilization. I have both lenses and the LUMIX is sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

I hope to get soon my BMPCC 4K and I have a question regarding stabilized lens.

What is the best one LUMIX 12/35 or OLYMPUS 12/100 in regard with stabilisation point of view?

Might be a little late, my answer.
The Olympus is far superior regarding stabilization. I have both lenses and the LUMIX is sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

Is it v1 or v2 version of the Lumix?

Might be a little late, my answer.
The Olympus is far superior regarding stabilization. I have both lenses and the LUMIX is sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

Is it v1 or v2 version of the Lumix?

It is v2.

The V2 is better than the original V1 12-35 Zoom, it is a,so shorter so less prone to some movement and easy to hand hold. From what I have read (no personal experience with the Oly 12/100) the 12/100 has a a better OIS that is apparent in some situations, but this lens is longer and heavier, and will be harder to hold, but balances well on the new Pocket 4K. I have used the 12/35 ver 1, it was better than no OIS, and had artifact issues in some situations. The PL 12-60 OIS (which I have and use) is very niceI think the new 12-35 has a similar OIS system to the 12/60. Hope this helps.
Cheers

This is the lens in the BMPCC4K at CineGear 2019 at the Blackmagic Booth. It's an older 12-35mm F2.8 Lumix G X Vario Aspherical Power O.I.S.

1235HD.jpg (886.78 KiB) Viewed 13811 times

And this is the newer LUMIX 12-35mm F2.8 ASPH, with Power O.I.S. at the Panasonic booth at the same show.

IMG_4725.jpg (974.7 KiB) Viewed 13811 times

Robert the V2 is better than the original V1 12-35 Zoom, it is a,so shorter so less prone to some movement and easy to hand hold. From what I have read (no personal experience with the Oly 12/100) the 12/100 has a a better OIS that is apparent in some situations, but this lens is longer and heavier, and will be harder to hold, but balances well on the new Pocket 4K. I have used the 12/35 ver 1, it was better than no OIS, and had artifact issues in some situations. The PL 12-60 OIS (which I have and use) is very niceI think the new 12-35 has a similar OIS system to the 12/60. Hope this helps.
Cheers

Thanks Denny, but you are confusing me with another poster. I have both lenses, the 12-35 II and the Olympus 12-100, so I know exactly what they are capable of and on the PCC4K the LUMIX' OIS is far worse than the Olympus OIS.

Robert Niessner said
To be honest, I find the green CAs of the Voigtländer quite ugly, especially in the Bokeh.

Robert,
That close-up of the Peace Officers Memorial shot wide open at f/0.95 with the 17.5mm Voigtländer that I posted on Apr 30 with all of the Chromatic Aberration was mostly due to my lack of experience in using Adobe Lightroom. I shot it at UHD Prores 422 with a B + W XS-Pro Kaesemann Circular Polarizer, 1/60 sec., ISO 100, F/0.95 on a BMPCC 4K about 5 feet away and was overexposed.
Here is a corrected version.
Although I clicked on the remove Chromatic Aberration box for the Voigtländer 17.5mm Lens Profile, it had no effect on the image.
You have a good eye for details.
I'll be taking a Lightroom course next week at City College of San Francisco. Maybe I can get better at this once I know what to look for.

I took my BMPCC 4K to a Street Fair in Berkeley and I shot this with a new Voigtländer 42.5mm F/0.95 lens at UHD Prores 422 with a B+W XS-Pro Kaesemann Circular Polarizer, ISO 250, 1/1000 Sec. at F/16.

Dang, nice!! You're not coloring that in any way?

I'm sure its been mentioned here before, but I learned the hard way. I had a micro cinema cam and the sensor crop factor was absolutely horrific with native micro four thirds lenses. The issues are mostly resolved with the BMPCC4k but now I was looking at getting some higher end glass. But now that looks like a bad idea.

Looking at the FOV numbers between the different Xeen and ZEISS lenses, reveals some really horrific numbers.
For example the ZEISS compact prime CP3 15mm has a field of view of 100 degrees with the PL mount, and that drops down to 60 degrees with the micro four thirds mount.
The Xeen 15mm has a field of view of 115 degrees that drops down to 76 degrees with a micro four thirds mount.

I would recommend getting something like voightlander lenses that were designed just for a micro four thirds sized image circle, but they arent super film maker add on friendly (follow focus/lens breathing).

Maybe the speed boosters partially address this?

Phong,
I used a radial filter on the lady to adjust the color temperature by 11, contrast by 13, bumped the saturation up slightly by 17 of 100, increased the shadows and blacks plus moved the exposure slightly by +.09.

10 bit Prores 422 would not look right without color correction since this is a Cinema Camera.

Here it is as shot without correction:

Here is another shot with a Voigtländer 42.5mm F/0.95 lens at UHD Prores 422 with a B+W XS-Pro Kaesemann Circular Polarizer, ISO 1250, 1/1000 Sec. taken in mid afternoon.
Don't remember the F-stop, it might have been f4.
Focus is a compromise due to the high ISO and moving image.

Here is a shot from the California State Railroad Museum taken with a Voigtländer 17.5mm F/0.95 at C4K Prores 422, 1/200 sec. at ISO 1000.

Although an 8.3 MP sensor on the BMPCC 4K and a classic lens design is a compromise, I find the sharpness to be acceptable for a video camera.

This was part of a doc project on the Transcontinental Railroad:

Ken Rockwell (kenrockwell.com) said:
..."digital (and video) recordings tend to record medium details more strongly than film, but have no response to the extremely fine details which film can record. Often the finest medium details are sharpened to fool the eyes with a boosted contrast."

The BMPCC4K has been criticized for not being as cinematic and film-like as the old BMPCC in spite of the film setting it offers for the widest dynamic range.

In the eoshd.com forum (https://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/26 ... /#comments) osmanovic said,

"I didn't mean the sharpness (the old pocket and micro, is also surprisingly good in the sharpness) but the colours, the highlights, the contrast. This seems to be more organic or more natural with the old sensor. So the internal process, the conversion from analog to digital, is fantastic. ...The digital look, doesn't change after color grading, it remains there because the internal process in the camera (the conversion from analog to digital) can no longer be manipulated afterwards, because it comes from the sensor as it comes."

This is why a lens with character is a better fit to compensate for this.

Here is an example of that old BMPCC "Romantic" look. 90% of the film was shot on the SLR Magic 12mm and Voigtlander Nokton 42.5mm, with a Kowa 8mm, Angenieux 12-120, Pentacon 300, and a Nokton 17.5mm accounting for the rest.

In the BM forum (Re: Advice on lenses), Dune00z said: "Modern lenses tend to have far less chromatic aberration, less flaring, sharper at wider apertures, and are a bit more neutral in their rendering than older lenses."

They are designed for high resolution sensors like the 42 MP Sony A7R III and possibly the 8K cameras. I suspect that the ones that don't measure up when 8K becomes more popular, could lose their resale value if they don't have anything else going for them.

As a contrast, the BMPCC4K has a 8.3 MP sensor since it is designed as a low light camera and is more forgiving of a lens or aperture openings that would look soft on other modern cameras. That extra money that you pay for a sharper modern lens design gives you less for your money than in other cameras. Even cheap, old lenses from the 70s with character that were coveted on film 35mm cameras in their day can be useful for a cinematic effect if the story calls for it since the old 100 ISO 35mm equivalent resolution was closer to 10 MP.

... I'm fairly new to this, so ... my budget is not going to have room for more than one lens ...

Wild Card recommendation.
You should consider a MFT SLR Magic 26mm f1.4. (Toy lens?)

Im being serious. It's a relatively inexpensive lens; good on the budget.
Its sharp; it will give you very artistic visual fidelity when shooting 4K DCI.
But; it strength shall come into play for HD Window.
Which helps reduce the cost of film capture & storage.

Breaking it down:
A generic MFT sensor at 17.3 x 13 mm has an image diameter (Circle IC) of 21.64000924 mm

BMPCC 4K (HD Window) at 8.8896 x 5.0004 mm has an IC of 10.1994602 mm

The ratio between the two being : 2.121681817

The SLR Magic 26mm f1.4 when shooting within the HD window effectively becomes
SLR Magic (HD Window) 55.16mm at f1.4.

You will be in the sweet spot of the lens. Which is sharp.

Because its inexpensive; I can imagine that you could get it + plus a lens of your choice. But it is very artistic - Please read reviews.

If you would like to fully utilize the HD function of the BMPCC 4K, it may be a good idea to look into C mount lens. A 1" lens as an IC of 16mm & 1/2" as is 8mm. But a 2/3" C mount has an IC of 11mm.
So any lens greater than 2/3" will provide you full sensor coverage HD window.

Alternatively,
You should consider getting an MFT lens that will work well with 4K and in HD.
Or a lens that is wide for 4K to HD scaling, and long in HD window.

So the above SLR lens can function as a 26mm f1.4 fast (Artistic) lens for low light 4K scaling down to HD.
And a longer (narrow FOV) 55.16mm f1.4 in HD.

Good luck

PS. I use it on the BMPCC which has an IC of 14.31 mm for HD. At that crop I do not get any artistic artifacts that the full MFT gets. Its cheap and OK.


EDIT:
Updated a mistake in my earlier port; need to fix.

Another positive I failed to mention about this lens is that it is 85g.
Possible future drone lens, or a lightweight glidecam; like the iGlide II (max weight 1.36Kg).

Its cheap; lightweight; sharp and a fast lens.

Thanks for this, Robert.
Very useful info you put together.

I'm also looking for lenses for P4K. Actually Zoom lenses.
I've seen a Zeiss 10-100, got tempted, but it will work only in windowed (HD), not 4k as it will vignette, says the vendor.

As I have a set of Zeiss 35mm Primes (not cine), I'm looking for a Zeiss Zoom that would cover the FOV of the P4K.

The 16mm Zeiss Zoom would be perfect it it covered in 4K.
Do you have any other suggestions of Zeiss Zoom, or any other amazing zoom lens that would have a similar look for the P4K?

I'm struggling with this.

Thanks,
F