Is there a difference in looks between EF vs PL glass?

[Stephen Pruitt]

There are certainly major differences in the mechanics of high-end cine glass and professional stills lenses, but those differences have very, very little to do with what most of us would consider "image quality." After all, Canon L and high end Nikon lenses have been used in the fashion world for years and their look is obviously fantastic. The real differences are in things like breathing (generally less significant than some people make it out to be. . . with the exception of the COPD-level breathing issues that the Sigma Art 50-100mm f1.8 suffers from!), the degrees of rotation of the lens barrels (very small for stills lenses; much larger for cine glass, making them easier to use), and parfocal characteristics.

The bottom line is that just about ANY lens is capable of producing Hollywood-quality images in the right hands.

Stephen

 

[Björn Benckert]

With a good PL Cinema built lens you can hit the end stop full throttle using a strong focus motor. without anyhing flexing or bending. On a EF still foto lens, not so much. Still lenses are simply not built to be sturdy when pulling focus, does not matter if the elements rattle around a bit when changing settings on the lens, more important to get to the right setting fast to be able to snap a still frame as fast as possible with autofocus.

Also still foto does not need heavy matte boxes and such things hanging of the lens, demanding a more sturdy function, they are more built for godo handling and low weight. Cine lenses are built in a way where you normally worked with not only a AC but also a clapper loader. A heavy camera and lot of other gear. So lens weight for cinema is not really crucial at all. Where as the still guy is looking to fit his whole tool box into a shoulder strap bag... All that is changing of course but some of the points are still valid.

Also the difference in breathing between cine glas and still glas is quite minor. I guess people assume the breating on still glass is so much bigger as its way easer to drag them from closefocus to infinity as the focus swing is normally shorter. But if you take even a high quality lens from cooke or such and make a very rapid full swing focus pull and you will see its far from keeping a fixed FOV value. Same goes for most cinema lenses, some better than others of course but for the same focal lengths is usually quite similar a well built still lens, except the still lens usually rattles.

K35´s for example have in its regard very similar mechanics and builds as the FD´s still lenses, both old lenses ofcoruse but shit have not changed much in that regard.

 

[Uday Bhaskar Karra]

Well I guess to make my question more straight forward. Will an Ultra prime or Red Pro Zoom or Prime give me a better resolved image in terms of skin texture than say a Canon EF Prime or zoom lens?

Each Lens has its own characteristics based on the way its designed (Coatings/Glass elements/ Iris rings etc. etc.)... So, Color rendition/Resolution/Distortion/the way CA is handled/Focus fall off/ Etc would vary for every lens... no matter if it is a Still/Cine or EF/F/X/E/PL Mount.

As everyone said... EF vs PL Doesn't matter much.
Example: Sigma Cine Primes are a rehoused Art series lens. So if you compare an F/EF mount Stills glass (Lets say 50mm) and a PL/EF Cine glass... the image/skin texture/footage shall look almost same.

If you are asking whether Cooke 50mm T2.8 miniS4/i Cine Lens produces better skin textures compared to Canon EF 50mm f/1.2L USM stills glass! Though it's subjective, most of us would vote for Cooke... the differentiating factor is not the Mount.... The Glass itself.
The other way around example could be Zeiss Otus 55mm (F/EF) vs CP2 PL Glass... The Otus would give you better Resolution/CA control may be Skin Texture as well.

Sorry if i understood your question wrongly!

 

[Blair S. Paulsen]

PL is a stronger mount well suited to motion projects, particularly if you are swapping primes all day vs living on a zoom. As noted, most of the best cine lenses are native PL - but more and more are now available in EF or swappable trim.

I keep hoping that we will see more hybrid lenses that are switchable between fast AF for snapshots and precise focus control for motion work. Having the FIZ motors inside the barrel, rather than needing to rig up external motors/MDR/cables/power would leave more room for wireless video TX and all the other gack... ;-)

Cheers - #19