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Wider Red

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Martin Drew

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I would like to go wider than the 18mm end of the Red Zoom. The cheapest way to do this seems to be 14mm Nikon stills lens, but that would mean changing the lens mount whenever I needed to get a wider shot. Is there an easier way that isn't big bucks and that will still give an acceptable quality level (I appreciate that is a subjective question, I can accept some compromise, I just want the image to be good enough to intercut without looking obviously crap).

I have used adapters with SD cameras before never with HD. Has anyone had any experience of using lens adapters or converters on s16 or 35mm cameras? If so what sort of results did you get? certainly a 0.8x or 0.7x adapter on the front of the Red zoom will give an acceptable FOV but would one be even usable, they require macro focusing, will Red zoom have macro?

Martin
 
Why not look at using Primes, you can pick up 2nd hand Zeiss Primes for a fairly decent price or look at cheaper manufacturers if budget is a large constraint (As it is for many of us!). Some of the best Nikons brand new can be similar prices to 2nd hand Primes. Quality is an issue of course but you ought to be able to find PL mount Primes alot easier which means not needing to change the lens mount. Also if you were looking to hire yourself with the camera or the camera with accessories they'd be more responsive to having Primes they know than Nikon Stills - The value of renting with a decent prime would be alot more as well.

However if you are looking purely at personal use and do not consider it an issue then Nikons are a great way to go. Overcome the inherent issues with still lenses and you will enjoy similar images to the primes.
 
i've been looking into this myself and did not find anything wider with manual aperture ring control.

from another thread i read, its possible to use lens with no aperture ring, adjusting the setting from dslr.
hyperfocal that with ie' a sigma 10-20mm (equivalent 15-30) would make it the most affordable, inconvenient, widest option.

i will probably end up with the sigma 15-30 (equivalent 22.5-45) thats a nice wide & normal in1, with aperture ring control & its affordable.
 
As always budget is the issue a 14mm PL mount prime would be ideal and ultimately a set would be great (a bit out of my range at the moment though). I have been keeping my eye out but I haven't seen much around second hand at this kind of focal length without paying a lot of money.

Martin
 
im still confussed on why nikons wouldnt be a good choice for a commercial production. As i understand they can definatly cover a super 35mm frame...is it just the focusing thats an issue? not as smooth as a zeiss prime? whats up!
 
I believe that focusing is harder (but a good follow focus unit can help a lot), and they breathe more (which can't really be helped).

The actual quality and sharpness should be spectacular, though. I'm most definitely going to start with Nikon lenses, and for big productions I'll rent PL lenses.
 
Yeah, that's been what I was thinking of doing. The Nikons though, from all the 35mm adapter footage and some of RED test footage, don't seem to be anything to worry about when it comes to image quality. :cool:
 
Broadly speaking there is no problem with the image quality of still lenses, obviously there are good still lenses and not so good still lenses but there are a number of operational issues with even the finest quality still lenses which make a compromise for cine use.

Breathing: When you focus a lens the elements move and that can add a zooming effect. This isn't a problem for still cameras because you only take the picture when you have finished focussing. It is a problem if you are racking focus mid shot on a cine camera. Cine lenses are designed to reduce breathing

Pulling focus: When shooting motion any focussing on shot must be smooth and precise, for this reason cine lenses have an expanded focus ring range compared to still lenses. In contrast modern still lenses are designed for autofocus so often the focus ring only turns a small way to cover the whole focus range.

Image centreing: With still zooms the image centre may not remain constant while zooming. Cine zooms are adjusted to so that the elements are aligned to avoid this.

Consistancy: Cine primes within a set are matched, so that if you swap lenses the image doesn't subtly change colour.

There is no reason why you can't use a still lens but it is limiting for these reasons. Having said that a 14mm Ultra Prime T1.9 is about $15000, in contrast the Nikon 14mm f/2.8 can be had for about $1350. So budget sometimes decrees that these operational compromises are acceptable.

Martin
 
OTOH -
How often do you see yourself using 14mm over 18mm? If the answer is "once in a long while", why not rent the Zeiss for individual days/shots? Maybe the answer to the Red Lens dilemma is to own the most basic stuff, rent the rest, and upgrade as budget permits?
 
Don't forget that a 14mm Nikon for the still format will not be wider than 18mm designed for cine format. Also, extreme wide angle lenses for still format will tend to have greater curvilinear distortion.
 
Maybe you are getting that the wrong way around Greg. You could say that a 14mm lens used for a 35mm cine format will give you the same field of view as a 22mm lens used on a 35mm stills film camera, was that your point? But 14mm is 14mm whatever format it is used with. A 14mm stills lens on RedOne will still be 14mm and will give a wider FOV than 18mm.

Martin
 
Martin said:
Maybe you are getting that the wrong way around Greg. You could say that a 14mm lens used for a 35mm cine format will give you the same field of view as a 22mm lens used on a 35mm stills film camera, was that your point? But 14mm is 14mm whatever format it is used with. A 14mm stills lens on RedOne will still be 14mm and will give a wider FOV than 18mm.

Martin
Click to expand...

Sorry, Martin, but that is not true. A 14mm Nikon still lens (for the 36x24mm format) will NOT provide a wider FOV than an 18mm cine lens when used on RED ONE (sensor size 24.4x13.7mm). In fact, they're roughly equivalent in terms of FOV. If you're talking about a Nikon mount lens for the APS-C format, that's different, but I don't think you were.

Yes, a 14mm lens is always a 14mm lens, but the FOV is different for different formats.
 
remember the Mysterium sensor is the same size roughly as an APS-C sensor.

We have a Tamron 14mm lens at Red with manual overide aperture (nikon mount) that I put on to test a few weeks ago when i did the other Nikon test and it worked fine.
 
A 18mm gives a 64˚ Horizontal FOV, a 14mm 75˚ in N35mm gate (Red at 4k)

A 14mm still lens will have the same FOV as a 14mm Cine lens when exposing the same gate size.

The image circle of the still lens will cover a larger format, but that doesnt matter as the crop is defined by size of the gate.
 
For example on a Nikon DX body (Close to Red at 4.5k), the Nikkor 17-35mm f2.8D and the Nikkor 17-55mm f/2.8G DX both have a 79˚ FOV at 17mm, even thpugh the latter is a scaled down lens with a smaller image circle.
 
Anders Holck said:
A 14mm still lens will have the same FOV as a 14mm Cine lens when exposing the same gate size.
Click to expand...

Sorry to disagree, Anders.

Let's be specific here. The RED sensor is 24.4x13.7mm. One would need about a 9mm still camera lens (designed for the 36x24mm format) to be roughly equivalent to the FOV of a 14mm cine lens on the RED ONE.

A 14mm still camera lens is roughly equivalent to a 20mm cine lens in terms of FOV on the RED ONE.
 
I'm with Anders (and Martin) on this Greg. People talk about the 'conversion factor' for 35mm full frame stills lenses when used on an APC-C DSLR, so a 14mm still lens on a Red may be 'equivalent' to a 20mm lens on a full frame 35mm camera, but it's still the same FOV as any other 14mm lens, ciné or otherwise.

Nick
 
Yup. 14mm = 14mm = 14mm. You can use a crop factor to think about how the lens might look on a camera with a different size sensor, but, mm always gives the FOV of the lens.

Graeme
 
Is it just me or are some people repeating the same things back to each other but with different wording?

Is everybody talking about Field of View or are some of you actually talking about Depth of Field?

Field of View represents the degrees a film format or sensor is seeing.

Anybody remember Dimension 150? An 18mm lens which gave a 150 degree field of view for the 70mm format.
 
Yes it's Field Of View.

The misconception is that there is somehow a multiplier included in the given focal lenght of a lens based on the gate size. Which not true.
The focal length of a lens is not dependent on the gate size but strictly on the distance from the secondary principal point of a given lens to the imaging plane.

The FOV of the lens is dependent on both the focal lenght and the gate size. The formula for H FOV at infinity focus is 2 * arctan (Sensor width/(focal length * 2))
 
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