CINE LENSES LENSES
THE CINE LENS ADVANTAGE Why optics designed especially for filmmaking are a great investment
WORDS ADAM DUCKWORTH
I f you come from a background shooting stills or started your filmmaking journey on DSLR or mirrorless cameras, chances are you’ve always shot with lenses designed for stills photography, with fly-by-wire focusing systems, aperture rings that have clicks stops – or none at all – and maybe noisy AF motors. You can get by with DSLR-type lenses, but there is a big advantage of using dedicated cine lenses when shooting movies. Ultimate quality, ease of manual focusing, different types of ‘look’, consistency between lenses in terms of size and colour rendition, changeable lens mounts, anamorphic shooting and lack of focus breathing are just some of the advantages of using proper cine lenses. And they really show you mean business as a filmmaker, which could be an advantage when marketing your services to certain clients. When most people think of cine lenses, it is fast prime lenses that usually come to mind, as they are the mainstay of cinema production, fromHollywood and Bollywood to commercial shooters looking to give their films a quality edge. When buying a set of primes, it’s best to go for neutral, multi-purpose lenses with good control of flare, then create any looks you want in post. And there are lots of options. Cine primes typically have fast, large T stops rather than the f/stop apertures of stills lenses. An f/stop is calculated,
IMAGES Cine prime lenses tend to have a lot of aperture blades, which means they have smooth bokeh
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