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Best 2K Lenses + a Few Super 16mm Lens Qestions

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Andrew Patterson

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I am interested in knowing what everyone thinks are the best 2K Zoom lenses. I know this will depend on experience, preferences, usage, application, etc. But I am hoping to pool that information from different points of view -- and gather that info in one thread.

I have been learning from this link a lot: http://cinematechnic.com/resources/optics_for_super-16.html

But there are some unanswered questions for me still about Super 16 Lenses and zooms in particular -- so here they are:

  • Many of these zooms seem EXTREMELY wide -- 6.6mm, 10.8mm, 8mm -- these are wider than I am used to at the 35mm level. These seem almost Fisheye to me. So I am curious, are these the same Field of View as a lens made for a full sensor (35mm)? When I see a 6.6-66mm Canon Zoom, would that be the exact equivalent to a 6.6mm Field of View on an 35mm 6.6mm Equivalent? Is a 6.6mm going to look super curved? With barrel distortion?

  • Based on a Wikipedia Entry, RED's 2K is 2048x1080. Is this the standard for 2K? I am reading in other places 2K can be 2048x1152 and other variants

  • This is going to be a difficult question, but I'm going to try: If I buy a Super16 Lens -- let's say the Canon [SIZE=-1]11.5-138mm -- I have read that 2K is covered by this lens through its entire zoom range with no vignetting. But what I would like to know is how many pixels does it cover if I'm shooting 3K? In other words, what is the maximum resolution that can be pulled from this lens or similar? Knowing that I will be vignetting and will have to crop out corners in post, what is the active pixel count both vertically and horizontally I could get from this lens or similar? I've read that 2.5K is sort of the sweet spot, but what is the standard for 2.5K? I have no problem shooting with vignetted corners and cropping down to 2K.[/SIZE]

  • Why do Super16 Primes typically seem to only go up to 50mm? Is it just assumed after that you will start using 35mm Glass instead with a crop factor?

  • What is everyone's favorite Super 16 Zoom? What are it's strengths? What are it's weaknesses?

  • I'm looking for something with a minimum FOV of 18mm (could go wider) on the wide end and a minimum of 80mm (could go further) on the far end -- I would also like to focus closer than 3 Ft. Any suggestions?
Thank you for anyone that gives this a shot. I am looking for lightweight options that I can't seem to get with Still Lenses and 35mm Cinema Lenses are too heavy for my needs.
 
Andrew Patterson said:
  • Many of these zooms seem EXTREMELY wide -- 6.6mm, 10.8mm, 8mm -- these are wider than I am used to at the 35mm level. These seem almost Fisheye to me. So I am curious, are these the same Field of View as a lens made for a full sensor (35mm)? When I see a 6.6-66mm Canon Zoom, would that be the exact equivalent to a 6.6mm Field of View on an 35mm 6.6mm Equivalent? Is a 6.6mm going to look super curved? With barrel distortion?
Click to expand...

I not exactly sure what you are saying here, but the field-of-view for a given focal length is certainly not the same for 16mm as for 35mm. Field of view is proportional to format size. Super 16mm is about half the width of super 35mm, so a 6.6mm lens would be roughly the equivalent of a 13mm lens on super 35, or a 17mm lens on full frame 35mm, which is very wide, but there are many lenses out there that go that wide.

Barrel is distortion is often an artifact of wide angled lenses but it is not necessarily present. For example, the Tokina 11-16 is extremely wide with no visible distortion. It varies by the lens, some are deliberately fish-eye while others are engineered to have minimal distortion.

Andrew Patterson said:
  • Based on a Wikipedia Entry, RED's 2K is 2048x1080. Is this the standard for 2K? I am reading in other places 2K can be 2048x1152 and other variants
Click to expand...

2K just means that its 2048 pixels wide. There is no standard aspect ratio.
 
Okay -- So on Super16 Lenses, you need to double the focal length? In other words if I wanted to shoot with a Field of View of 18mm on a full 4K sensor -- then I would need a 9mm in terms of Super16 Lenses?

So, 9mm = 18mm? 12mm = 24mm? Etc.
 
Yes more or less, though you are mixing metaphors so to speak -- Super-16 is a physical size, 4K is not... in theory you can cram 4K onto a 16mm sized sensor or a 65mm sized sensor (as in the case of the Phantom 65).

So if you mean a 4K sensor that is 35mm cine / Super-35 / APS-C in size, yes, it's roughly double, but to be exact you'd have to do the math. But for general purposes, you can say that the Super-16 frame is 12mm wide and a Super-35 frame is 24mm wide, so the conversion factor between them is 2X. So yes, a 9mm on a Super-16 camera would give you a similar FOV as an 18mm on a 35mm camera.

Keep in mind that the focal length itself doesn't change whether the lens is put on a larger or smaller sensor camera, only the field of view changes due to the crop factor. But lens coverage can be a factor - a lens designed to fill a smaller sensor may vignette when put onto a larger sensor.
 
David -- Thank You! I haven't seen this stated in clear terms anywhere and where I live, I can't just go rent a lens or two to find out.

So, I know it varies with each lens, but a Super 16 Lens will cover 2K. Does it cover more thank 2K? In other words, if I wanted to shoot something at 3K with a Zeiss 11-110mm and live with the Vignetting during production with the intent of removing it later in post, is there a downside to that?

You should know that I don't ever finish to anything higher res than 1080p.

Thank You.
Andrew
 
Just to clarify, my intent is to get maximum resolution out of a Super 16 Lens -- the most pixels it will cover on the sensor. Then remove any side effects of this approach.

I need a light lens with a long zoom and don't need 4K all the time -- But I still want some room to play with above 1920x1080 if I need to do post stabilization, etc.
 
Why do Super16 Primes typically seem to only go up to 50mm? Is it just assumed after that you will start using 35mm Glass instead with a crop factor?
Click to expand...

The same reason why 35mm prime lens sets generally stop at 100mm. 18mm to 100mm is the most common range of focal lengths used in narrative 35mm cinema shooting. Which is also why many 35mm zooms fall into that range.

Lenses don't have a crop factor.

Yes, most people use 35mm cine glass for more telephoto shots in Super-16, or adapted still camera lenses for extreme telephoto. It's all a supply & demand issue: Super-16 cameras need shorter focal lengths to achieve wide-angle shots, plus there is generally a desire to build and use physically smaller lenses for Super-16, which is possible since they don't have to cover the 35mm area. However, above 50mm, there wasn't enough market demand to build Super-16 prime lenses designed specifically for Super-16, not when at that point, most shooters are willing to use 35mm prime lenses for those longer focal lengths.

I'm not a Super-16 shooter, but looking at an old Birns & Sawyer catalog on my desk, the Super-16 zooms they were renting 10 years ago were:
7-63mm T2.6 Canon
8-64mm T2.4 Canon
11.5-138mm T2.5 Canon
11-165mm T2.5 Canon
12-120mm T2.4 Zeiss
 
The 3K area of the Red One sensor is 16.59mm wide. I don't know if Super-16 lenses cover this but my guess would be that most of the wider-angle Super-16 primes and wide-angle ends of the zoom won't... because they barely covered Super-16. But how much more beyond the 2K area that they cover is just something you have to test on a lens by lens basis.

If you really want a zoom that covers 3K and goes from wide-angle to telephoto, you probably have to look at 35mm zooms, not Super-16 zooms. If you want something lighter, you may have to look at a 35mm still camera zoom.
 
This helps a lot. I was unclear on a few points and this helps confirm my suspicions.

I am okay if 3K isn't covered on the wide end of a zoom. My preference would be to find a lens that shoots higher than 2K in order to still provide more than 1920x1080 worth of pixels, since I finish in HD. Then I will have some wiggle room. I don't need 4K most of the time, but when I do, I have those lenses already.

So it would help to have an all purpose lens that weighs little, breathes little, zooms far and doesn't ramp. And certain Super 16 Lenses seem to fit that bill if you are okay shooting 2K. Plus I still have RAW workflow and eventually HDRx, which you can't get at 2k or 1080p anywhere else, really.
 
Unfortunately you may find that some of the sharpest and longest Super-16 zooms breathe the worst... at least, I remember that Super-16 Zeiss zooms, for example, were terrible for breathing. But they were very crisp & sharp. Generally it's hard to design a zoom with a long zoom range that is physically small where the design compromise wasn't to allow more breathing. To take out the breathing problem, often you either have to make the zoom range shorter and/or the glass elements much bigger.

I remember talking to some Fujinon people who had a great 2/3" zoom that didn't breathe, but because it was larger, it didn't sell well, so they did a second version that was smaller, lighter, but breathed more.
 
That's understandable. I know every lens has compromises, but I would be willing to live with breathing over some other limitations. To each his own, I guess.
Thanks again.
 
Andrew Patterson said:
  • This is going to be a difficult question, but I'm going to try: If I buy a Super16 Lens -- let's say the Canon [SIZE=-1]11.5-138mm -- I have read that 2K is covered by this lens through its entire zoom range with no vignetting. But what I would like to know is how many pixels does it cover if I'm shooting 3K? In other words, what is the maximum resolution that can be pulled from this lens or similar? Knowing that I will be vignetting and will have to crop out corners in post, what is the active pixel count both vertically and horizontally I could get from this lens or similar? I've read that 2.5K is sort of the sweet spot, but what is the standard for 2.5K? I have no problem shooting with vignetted corners and cropping down to 2K.[/SIZE]
Click to expand...

We did a test with a Canon zoom for exactly this... From my shaky memory I think we found out that it covered 3k for about half of it focal range... But covered about 2.5-2.7k all the way through. I think it was the Canon 6.6 - 66 Zoom Lens. (it may have been the slightly older mrk 11)

We also tested primes and this was interesting. Arri/Zeiss Ultra16 T1.3 lenses (the sharpest and most modern design of S16 glass) didn't cover out to 3k. We didn't test every focal lenght so there may be some that do. Projecting non imaging light down the throught of a camera is not a good idea so the best designed lesnes tend not to have image circels bigger then they really need to be... Zooms struggle in this respect for obvousle reasons and I assume this is why they fall short of primes when it comes to just out of shot light sources.

There is a few of use that hope Red will pop in a 2.5k (ish) resalution for both your purpose and for certain high speed duties.

I am a little biased in this as my biz parter owns 2 sets of Ultra 16 lenses.

regards

Michael


PS yes as David points out the Canon zooms where pretty weezy... I've operated on a couple of shoot where the director shooted over for me to stop reframing.
 
I'm seriously debating between these two Lenses:
1 - Angeniuex 7 - 81mm
2 - Canon 8 - 64mm

And possibly considering one of these, if there is a reason one is better than the two above:
3 - Canon 6.6 - 66mm
4 - Canon 7 - 63mm

Any opinions on any of these lenses? Anyone love/hate any of them? Anyone have any of these lenses in the surrounding states that I could come look at -- Texas, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri?

Michael -- What did your PS Mean? Can you clarify or rephrase? I am curious as to what you meant?

"PS yes as David points out the Canon zooms where pretty weezy... I've operated on a couple of shoot where the director shooted over for me to stop reframing."


Also, are there any downsides to shooting 3K and recropping to 2K/HD in post?
 
Andrew Patterson said:
I'm seriously debating between these two Lenses:
1 - Angeniuex 7 - 81mm
2 - Canon 8 - 64mm

And possibly considering one of these, if there is a reason one is better than the two above:
3 - Canon 6.6 - 66mm
4 - Canon 7 - 63mm

Any opinions on any of these lenses? Anyone love/hate any of them? Anyone have any of these lenses in the surrounding states that I could come look at -- Texas, Kansas, Colorado, New Mexico, Missouri?
Click to expand...

It's been a while since I've used them, but If I'm remembering correctly, the Canon 8-64 is the best of the Canon lot. Sharper, and it covers S-16 better than the others. Pretty sure it was the last of their designs.

I've never used the Angie.

Michael -- What did your PS Mean? Can you clarify or rephrase? I am curious as to what you meant?

"PS yes as David points out the Canon zooms where pretty weezy... I've operated on a couple of shoot where the director shooted over for me to stop reframing."
Click to expand...
He meant that the Canon can breathe so much it looks like a zoom. (I don't remember this being as bad as all that with the 8-64, but again, it was a while ago.)

Also, are there any downsides to shooting 3K and recropping to 2K/HD in post?
Click to expand...
Only lower max fps and that you'll have more data to deal with. Quality-wise it will be exactly the same as shooting 2K. The upside is exactly as you propose, potentially more pixels to work with.
 
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