Definition November 2020 - Web

TECHNOLOGY | C I NEMA ZOOMS SPEED WITHOUT COMPROMISE? LENS MANUFACTURERS ARE SPOILING US WITH CHOICES OF CINEMA ZOOMS THAT PROMISE CONVENIENCE WITHOUT THE TRADE-OFFS

WORDS PH I L RHODES

One reality of modern filmmaking that’s sometimes not acknowledged very candidly is the use of zoom lenses on single-camera dramas. Most productions will admit to having one on the truck, but outside natural history and other documentary work, the discussion is almost invariably about primes. Still, directors of photography will often admit, carefully off the record, that once a zoom goes on the camera, simple convenience occasionally means it remains there for quite a while. With the performance of zooms now better than ever, and virus precautions set to take a big chunk out of precious production hours, now seems like a good time to look at the state of the art in zoom lenses. If the winning characteristics of primes are size, weight, speed and optical quality, it seems almost perverse to reach for an anamorphic zoom, given that anamorphics traditionally sacrifice almost all of those things in pursuit of a look. Cooke, on the other hand, is keen to help us avoid that compromise, with a telephoto 45-450mm T4.5 zoom, and two general-purpose 35-140mm options. One of the 35-140mm options has the SF suffix, indicating what Cooke calls the ‘special flair’ characteristic. It’s probably best described using the company’s own description: “they allow you to kick the flares, bokeh and other aberrations into new visual territory.” The usefulness of that will depend heavily on the project, of course, but it’s clearly designed to complement the existing Anamorphic /i range, which is also available with the SF feature. The Anamorphic /i zooms are 2:1 anamorphics with reasonably generous 33.54mm coverage.

34 DEF I N I T ION | NOVEMBER 2020

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