Mixing Lens Brands?

[C Barker]

Hello,

We need some Steadicams shots for a two camera scene and the op suggests we use an Angenieux cine lens on his camera, rather than a Canon L series photo lens, which is what we're using for everything else.

The edit will be cutting back and forth between various scenes in general.

I am concerned that a different sort of lens may stick out, or will it not matter if it is quite neutral?

Many thanks

 

[M Harvey]

The short answer is that you have to test.

If the answer is very important and you want to know how it applies to your specific situation: test.

The more general answer is that professional (Hollywood etc.) productions mix glass brands all the time-- often mixing in zooms for example with a different set of primes. (The various versions of the Angenieux 24-290 being a prime example-- it's a Hollywood workhorse, but until recently Angenieux didn't even make their own set of primes, so it's almost always used on just a few shots.) A lot can be done to match certain lens characteristics, such as avoiding situations that bring out a distinctive optical characteristic (e.g. noticeable flare, distinctive out-of-focus highlight shapes, super dreamy look when wide open) during production and work to align color in post.

One other thing to keep in mind is that audiences often don't really notice lens mixing-- or at least not enough to distract them. The extremes show up, of course-- mixing Sigma cine primes with the Deakinizer set would probably be noticeable to a civilian. But if you're talking about mixing sets of similar vintage and tweaking color temperature to get them close, I'd venture to say that most of the time it's not distracting except to lens nerds. Another rule of thumb is that audiences will give you a lot of latitude if the lenses are being used with changes in other visual characteristics-- the fact that the Angenieux will be moving on a steadicam may make the lens difference even less noticeable. (This is also true if you're cutting between 300mm on one lens and a 20mm of another brand.)