Pro Moviemaker Spring 2020

ACADEMY ULTIMATE GUIDE TO LENSES

DSLR MANUAL FOCUS LENSES

Not all of the latest lenses designed for DSLR or mirrorless cameras are autofocus. Some offer old-school manual focusing so are very suitable for use as filmmaking optics. Perhaps it’s no surprise that the brand leading this movement is Zeiss, which has very different manual focus lenses for DSLR use. The Zeiss Otus series is about the best you can get in terms of quality. Offering a fast f/1.4 aperture and a solid build quality, they are large and heavy lenses – and pricey. The 85mm Otus is £3399/$4491. The Otus is Zeiss’ attempt at a no- compromise lens purely focused on image quality. It has 11 lens elements in nine groups, in the legendary Planar design. There are six special glass elements and five aspheric lenses. At 1140g, with an 86mm front filter thread, it’s a big lens that oozes quality and will last for years. When you get it right the quality is amazing, with superb detail and contrast, accurate colours and no distortion. The Zeiss Otus is a stunning performer in terms of optical quality, but trying to shoot manual focus on DSLRs with a shallow depth-of-field is a huge challenge. Get it right and you are rewarded, though. At a fraction of the cost and size, Zeiss also offers manual focus lenses like the Milvus and Classic series for Canon and Nikon, and the Loxia range for full-frame Sony E mount. Compared to the monster-sized cinema lenses, the Zeiss Loxia looks like a toy. You’d be forgiven for thinking a lens that costs just £669/$949 and is a fraction of the size of the cinema lenses, with even fewer lens elements and no aspherical lenses, would give an optical performance that would be nowhere near

“Trying to shootmanual focus on a DSLRwith a shallowdepth-of-field is a huge challenge”

as good. And you’d be wrong. The Loxia performs incredibly well, with sharpness, colours and contrast right across the frame that is just superb. It’s not quite got the ultimate resolving power and biting edge sharpness of cine prime lenses that costs almost five times as much, but it’s not that far off at all. The bokeh is relatively pleasing, too, thanks to the 11-bladed iris, but it can appear a tiny bit jagged at times if you look really closely. But it’s the sharpness that is impressive for such a small and relatively simple lens. At f/5.6 it’s a stunner, and wide open it’s softer but not too bad. For a lens that’s so small, light and affordable, the optical performance is fantastic. The manual focus ring has a 180° throw and the aperture ring can be de-clicked for use on video cameras. All you do is use a small screwdriver on a slotted screw on the lens mount, and the clicks are gone. Samyang, which sells the lenses as Rokinon in certain markets like the USA, already has a full range of DSLR lenses specifically for video use. These lenses – sometimes branded Rokinon Cine DS or Samyang VDSLR – use the lens elements and technology of the very affordable DSLR range, which are then rehoused in very compact, manual-focus bodies with de-clicked aperture rings. They are a

half-way house between DSLR lenses and proper cine primes, and are a compact lens solution popular for Super35-sensor

cameras. They make an ideal pairing for the new Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K, which uses a Canon EF mount and a Super35 sensor. And with the 35mm T1.5 costing just £458/$449, they are very affordable, too – ideal for filmmakers on a budget. IMAGES The Samyang VDSLR lens (right) is a hybrid; Zeiss has lots of options, from the no-compromise Otus (top) to the more compact Loxia (left)

PRO MOVIEMAKER SPRING 2020