Lenses for wildlife cinematography

[Martin Lohse]

Any wildlife cinematographers out there?

I'll be travelling through Latin America next month and want to get into wildlife cinematography.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with zoom lenses that work well with the Red Komodo's S35 sensor.

Apart from a great image, I'm looking for something that is lightweight (to be able to do handheld), RF mount and preferably weather sealed.

One example could be the Canon RF 100-500mm f/4.5-7.1 L IS USM Lens

Thanks

 

[Steve Sherrick]

You could try the 100-400 with a 1.4x converter if you want to stay in the RF mount. It's a lot cheaper, in fact on sale.
https://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1663581-REG/canon_rf_100_400mm_f_5_6_8_is.html

I'm assuming you won't be relying on autofocus so you probably won't run into issues with lens being too slow for autofocus at F8 or worse with teleconverter. And the slowness in general not usually going to be a problem as you'll probably want deeper depth of field anyway.

There are some great wildlife photographers/cinematographers that are members here and can probably give you some more in depth advice about additional lens options and techniques.

 

[Martin Lohse]

Thanks for the suggestion, Steve. I hadn't heard about that lens. Seems like good place to start, so I swung by B&H and bought it today.

Yes, I won't be using the autofocus so that should be fine.

Good to hear that there are some wildlife cinematographers here - I'm still learning the ropes here.

 

[Steve Sherrick]

No problem. Let us know how it works out.

 

[Vedran Strelar]

I think you will be happy with 100-400mm range.

I was using a Canon EF 100-400mm f4.5-f5.6 lens for a recent wildlife project on the Komodo and this focal length range works really well, considering you can shoot 6K and 4K cropped to get extra reach if needed...

 

[Martin Lohse]

Thanks, Vedran, that's comforting to hear that you have real life experience with the 100-400mm range for a wildlife projects.