Lenses! Lenses! Lenses!

Dear Blackmagic community

I'm relativity new to the cinematography world. I got my lovely BMCC mid last year and love it. Now that I'm starting to get more into the cinematography side of things I'm now looking to expand on my lens collection, and from what I've researched and experienced myself, 'prime lenses' are the way to go.

The thing is, and I'm sure everyone with any camera agrees, glass is just way to expensive. So the question(s) I ask upon you guys: Are there any nice, fast lenses that won't cost an arm and a leg?

Looking more at older lenses. I've come across Canon FD lenses, though from what I've read they're pretty much impossible to use on your traditional Canon today. Does anyone know if these lenses are usable on the Blackmagic?
I've also heard the 'Nikon E-Series' lenses are pretty good and also very affordable.

I'm interested to know what you guys think. If anyone can recommend some good quality prime glass that's more then affordable I'd be very interested to hear, or am I wasting my time with old lenses? And If I did get these lenses would I have any problems if I upgraded to the 'Production Camera'?

I own the Blackmagic Cinema Camera – EF Mount
Current lenses owned: Canon 18-135, Canon 50m, Sigma 10-20

Thanks in advance!

If you do a search of the forum you will find a lot of lens discussion and many "affordable" options.

As you have the EF mount you won't be able to adapt the FD lenses as the flange focal distance is greater so the adaptor would need a lens element to correct the FFD so the lens can achieve infinity focus. This would affect the image quality and so would probably not be a good investment.

With the EF mount you have a limited selections of lenses you can adapt. You could look at old Nikon or Leica R lenses.

Nikon AI and AI-S lenses all work well but there are not many wide angle options. 24mm are easy to find. 18 and 20mm less so. Not many options wider than that that are "affordable".

If you are looking for wide angle lenses for the EF mount your best option is probably the Tokina 11-16mm.

The Nikon series E does have a couple of gems, I would not hesitate to pick up the 50/1.8 and the 135/2.8 as they are excellent performers and performs just as well as their AI(s) versions.

Like adamroberts mentioned, the 18/20 might be harder to come by, but a 24/28/35 can be found easier, but in the standard wide focal lenghts the series E lenses are not worth it. You would want a lens in this focal length, so you would have to pay a little more for a regular AI(s) version.

The Canon FD lenses are great but they will need to be mounted on a MFT version of the camera, so I would stick to Nikon if you would like to use them on the Production Camera in the future.

Also, some vintage lenses will much more easier flare on the BMCC, some lenses I were not bothered with flare at all or very rarely on my 5D, but I think the longer turret with the lens mounts sometimes causes some reflections with some lenses. This is easily corrected with a matte box, hood or a little flag.

Thanks for the reply's. I'm very seriously considering getting some of the nikon e series lenses. Though I'm curious if I adapt these lens to my ef mount will there be any problems with infinity focus or a drop in picture quality?

If anyone else wants to suggest other brands/types of lenses I'm still very interested. I just came across 'minolta md' lenses. Would anyone recommend these?

Thanks again guys!

Samyang/Rokinon has a nice set of inexpensive, fast primes.

I haven't got a BMCC EF but are interested in one.

But whats wrong with Canon/Sigma EF glass?

Canon 50mm 1.4 is a great lens.
Sigma 20mm 1.8 and 30mm 1.4 is also great.

A cheap M45 adapter gets you a world of vintage lenses primes.

There's nothing wrong with Canon EF glass, just more expensive and I guess they also lack manual aperture control. Also don't forget old M42 screw mount and Pentax PK mount which also adapt to EF; especially the BmCC which doesn't have a mirror to get in the way

Cheers guys, I've just come across the 'SUPER TAKUMAR 50 MM F1.4 LENS'. That's definitely a contender!

And yes theres nothing wrong with canon glass, just looking for dirt cheap options that give great performance.

There's a youtube video on this subject, but I can't find it.. Anyway, in the video the guy has a very limited budget, and just spent most of it on his BMPCC. He only has a couple hundred left, and wants a set of lenses. His solution was to go on Ebay and buy old SLR lenses and adapt them. He found some Mamiya glass (I think), old Pentax glass, and some others. No frills, just some old camera lenses that were available for like $50 a piece or so and had T-threads so he could put whatever adapter he wanted. Then he showed some footage using this "cheep" glass and it was outstanding! If I remember right, the Mamiya was something like 22mm f2, and the video was every bit as good as the stuff I've seen from the Sigma fast primes.