Blackmagic Forum

Hi guys,

To accompany our Tokina 11-16mm F/2.8 AT-X DX II for camera car mount work, we're looking for a lens for a studio setup for green screen. I was thinking of the Canon 17-55 f2.8 as this would be the range without the most distortions for the human face... correct? The speed of the lens also seems useful.

Any tips? Or am I over thinking it now? It's going to be full body shots.

depending on the size of your studio - but the 17 - 55 should be fine. More then f:2.8 you will not need since anyway you have artificial lights and could adjust the level. In my opinion it is always better to have rather more DOF than less (did you ever try to track with marks which were out of focus...? - no fun!) - so you will stop down anyway. The sweet spot of most lenses is between f: 4 and f: 11 somewhere.
Much more important seems to me to have a proper mattebox with sunshades in order to avoid lens flair from the backlights. This could ruin a greenscreen shot.

I've never encountered a lens that was bad for green screen. as in, the last thing that will make my job hell is the lens, there's so many other things that people fail to realize/do when doing green screen shoots its not even funny. as long as the lens can focus you'll be fine with whatever you use. just try and use the same lens as your plates (if you do your own plates).

Unless you plan to make the green all white later in post, the lens that was used for the background (you want to replace the green with) would make most sense to me, to keep it believable and constant.

Nothing screams more amateur than - let's say - a model shot with 80mm in front of a green screen and the background material was shot with a 24mm.

Edit: Ah, TZ beat me to it.

MIDDLEEASTMAMBO wrote:depending on the size of your studio - but the 17 - 55 should be fine. More then f:2.8 you will not need since anyway you have artificial lights and could adjust the level. In my opinion it is always better to have rather more DOF than less (did you ever try to track with marks which were out of focus...? - no fun!) - so you will stop down anyway. The sweet spot of most lenses is between f: 4 and f: 11 somewhere.
Much more important seems to me to have a proper mattebox with sunshades in order to avoid lens flair from the backlights. This could ruin a greenscreen shot.

Thanks.. The lens "business" is kind if new for us coming from a Sony HDV camera.