Blackmagic Forum

Hi John and thank you very much for the nice shots you provided here.
My question is:which EF lenses one should avoid using with the BMC?
I heard you talking in an interview about extreme wide angle lenses.

I'm also very interested in this, as I'm currently weighing up what my kit should insist of. Tragically, while I am a photographer with a large collection of lenses, they're all Pentax K-Mount, there's not a smart adapter available I've managed to find that would allow me to use my digital lenses with EF mount...

I know it's not the topic but I'll be interested in how the EF-Lenses perform relative to the Zeiss Lenses (in contrast, resolution) John used. Will it be a lot softer? Because most of the EF-Lenses are pretty sharp in the middle and just loose resolution on the edges. Since the camera has a high crop factor this shouldn't be a problem anymore.

From the DNG shots the Canon lenses look a bit more soft. A main factor for this is surely that it is shot at F/T1.4 .

Any thoughts to that?

Kamel wrote:Hi John and thank you very much for the nice shots you provided here.
My question is:which EF lenses one should avoid using with the BMC?
I heard you talking in an interview about extreme wide angle lenses.

EF-S lenses work great and are a good low cost option. There are some nice wide lenses like the Sigma 8-16 or the Tokina 11-16 F2.8 or the Canon EF-S 10-22.

jb

If people haven't seen it already, this is a pretty useful site for calculating relative focal length between sensors. They have a list of all major sensors available at the moment, including the BMC.
http://www.abelcine.com/fov/

Just picked up a really nice EF-S lens which I believe is as nice as any L Series.

Canon EF-S 17-55 2.8 IS USM

With regard to the crop factor for an APS-C lens on the Blackmagic Camera
it's an effective:

25-81mm zoom

It's a nice fast workhorse zoom lens.

Be happy to post my results once I get the camera

Here's an interesting option I'm seriously considering getting:
Rokinon 35mm T1.5 Cine Lens

http://www.photographybay.com/2012/08/2 ... -in-stock/

It's essentially just a rehoused version of the Rokinon 35mm f1.4. A full manual lens that got some really good reviews. And at a price of just over $500, it is very agreeable.

These charts are very helpful to make up your mind if want to compare lenses side by side:

http://www.the-digital-picture.com/Revi ... &APIComp=2

I am looking forward to finding out the best (budget) lenses for this camera.

At the moment I don't own lenses, I just wondered what would be the best couple of lenses to buy to start off? Maybe renting a couple when I receive the camera is the best bet? I'll be doing a lot of live band recording/interviews as well.

Cheers

the ef-s 17-55 should be more like a 40-120 on the BMCC...but still: a great lens for a pretty good price....along with a good extreme WA zoom this will be my first choice as well....

pss wrote:the ef-s 17-55 should be more like a 40-120 on the BMCC...but still: a great lens for a pretty good price....along with a good extreme WA zoom this will be my first choice as well....

Use that web site referred to earlier to compare it to the Tamron 17-50, but the non-VC version. It also looked very sharp in the centre to me and saves some cost.

wizardofoz

really brilliant chart!

now i see why canon lenses are so soft compared to sigmas and nikons.

Telephoto is easy as anything over 50mm on BMC is going to be long. The hard part right now is going to be on the wide side. Right now the Tonkina 11-16mm is going to be a must have for this camera.

The popular focal lengths on this camera are going to be 11-16mm on the wide side, 24-35 on the normal side and 50mm + for the tele side.

Here are some zoom options.

wide zoom
Tonkina 11-16mm
EF-S 10-22mm f/3.5-4.5

Normal Zoom
EF 17-40mm f/4L
EF 16-35mm f/2.8L
CN-E14.5-60mm T2.6 L S

Sigma 8-16 also gives another rectilinear wide zoom option. It would look like a 18-37 on a full frame or 13-26 on a S35.

I was looking at a couple of Zeiss ZE lenses;

Zeiss ZE 15mm (36mm BMC)
Zeiss ZE 18mm (43mm BMC)
Zeiss ZE 21mm (50mm BMC)
Zeiss ZE 28mm (67mm BMC)
Zeiss ZE 35mm (84mm BMC)
Zeiss ZE 50mm (120mm BMC)

Opinions?

See the chart showed few posts back and you will see if and what you like.

There you can see 2 lenses side by side shooting the same chart.

Very informative imo.

John Brawley wrote:

Kamel wrote:Hi John and thank you very much for the nice shots you provided here.
My question is:which EF lenses one should avoid using with the BMC?
I heard you talking in an interview about extreme wide angle lenses.

EF-S lenses work great and are a good low cost option. There are some nice wide lenses like the Sigma 8-16 or the Tokina 11-16 F2.8 or the Canon EF-S 10-22.

jb

If I understand it right, the BMCC has an EF mount, which won't work directly with an EF-S lens, right? Are you using an adapter or modifying the lens to make it work?

klojewski wrote:

John Brawley wrote:

Kamel wrote:Hi John and thank you very much for the nice shots you provided here.
My question is:which EF lenses one should avoid using with the BMC?
I heard you talking in an interview about extreme wide angle lenses.

EF-S lenses work great and are a good low cost option. There are some nice wide lenses like the Sigma 8-16 or the Tokina 11-16 F2.8 or the Canon EF-S 10-22.

jb

If I understand it right, the BMCC has an EF mount, which won't work directly with an EF-S lens, right? Are you using an adapter or modifying the lens to make it work?

Nope, wrong. Any EF-S Lenses will work fine for the BMCC without an adapter.

Macro lenses are a very good option, IMO. You get that edge-to-edge sharpness that isn't as noticeable in still images, but jumps out at you when something crosses the frame in a motion image and goes blurry-sharp-blurry. Also, they tend to have less distortion and that's another one of those things that's best avoided in motion imagery. Also a good reason to avoid zooms. All IMO, YMMV.

-Rob