Lenses, Lenses, Lenses, Lenses and more Lenses! Such a beautiful thing!

I'm going to assume you understand the basic principles of camera lenses such as focal length, aperture and field of view as well as the fact that Canon and Nikon and Pentax and Sony all have different mounts and so you should buy the ones that work best with your camera (adapters exist and will be mentioned).

I will just talk about lenses that I either personally own and am using right now or have used in the past. If I haven't physically touched it, then you probably won't see it mentioned here. So to start us off I will quickly list the lenses that I use and if any of these interest you, feel free to continue reading. Keep in mind I am using these primarily for video on my Canon 60D, not for still photography.

The Nikon 35mm f1.4, a famous oldschool piece of glass. One of my most treasured and useful lenses.

From widest to longest.
Tokina 11mm - 16mm f2.8 (Nikon mount/constant aperture zoom/auto-focus with Nikon)
Nikon 17mm - 35mm f2.8 (Nikon mount/constant aperture zoom/auto-focus with Nikon)
Nikon 35mm f1.4 AIS (Nikon mount/prime lens/manual focus only)
Nikon 50mm f1.4 D (Nikon mount/prime lens/auto-focus with Nikon)
Nikon 85mm f1.4 AIS (Nikon mount/prime lens/manual focus only)
Tamron 90mm macro f2.5 (Nikon mount/prime lens/manual focus only)
Tokina 80mm - 200mm f2.8 (Nikon mount/constant aperture zoom/auto-focus with Nikon)

As you can see, I do not own a single Canon mount lens... not necessarily by design. I've been a Nikon shooter since I began to take photography more seriously and older manual Nikon glass is great for video, but i'll get to that.

What I use is a Nikon to Canon lens mount adapter from Cinevate.com, for $40 you can attach any Nikon lens to a Canon camera and be ready to shoot. Of course, you can only manual focus, though aperture priority auto-exposure still works fine, but not shutter priority since the camera cannot control the aperture of the lens.

A lens mount adapter that allows you to use Nikon lenses on a Canon Camera body. Approx. $40

I do not use or own a "kit" lens (aka the lens that comes packaged with the camera). As I find them too slow and these lenses do not have a constant aperture, that is to say, as you zoom in with the lens, the aperture goes from perhaps f3.5 to f5.6 this isn't that big of an issue when shooting still photos (though still not ideal) but it presents a large problem with video applications.

Nikons 85mm f1.4 the perfect compliment to the 35mm. A great set of primes will really show in the quality of your visuals.

You certainly wouldn't want to zoom while recording with a lens like this (not that I condone zooms much anyway, we're out of the 70's here people) as the lighting levels would noticeably change and it would read as very odd in a movie, also if you decide you want to zoom in for a tight shot of a scene, since your aperture changes, you would have to either re-light or bump your ISO to compensate, neither are very attractive options.

But I digress, in short: Kit lenses, great for people who want to learn and play around on the cheap, not great for professional applications.

In the interest of post-length, I will separate each lens category starting with the Ultra Wides.

Now let's get to the fun part!

How sensor size can affect your photos. The APS-C sensor will crop the image compared to a full-frame 35mm sensor.

When using a camera such as the Canon 60D or T2i, essentially any mid tier Digital SLR, the sensor size of the camera is what we call

APS-C, it closely resembles 35mm film (movie). If you're used to thinking of lens focal length  in terms of still photography then you want to consider that this size of sensor would have a 1.6x (Canon) or 1.5x (Nikon) crop factor.

For example a 50mm lens resembles the field of view of approximately a 75mm lens.

So these cameras require you to get some fairly wide lenses to really get that extreme sense of space.

I've chosen the Tokina 11mm - 16mm f2.8

Tokina's answer to the Ultra-Wide war, the 11 - 16mm f2.8

This lens is relatively new, it has been on the market since about 2008. It has a constant aperture of f2.8 which means you can zoom from 11 to 16mm and your aperture will not change.

Right from its initial announcement, this lens has garnered a lot of interest and is still quite sought-after today. The fast f2.8 aperture and extreme wide-angle are very attractive to photographers and film-makers alike.

At first glance this looks to be a completely different lens, but it has simply been adapted for use on professional cinema cameras. For more information, click on this photo.

This lens has been adapted to cinema standards by numerous companies, most famously by Duclos and if you have the cash, you can pick up one of these re-housed cinema editions.They can be found with PL mounts and fully geared Focus, Zoom and Iris rings.

I picked up my copy used from Henrys.com a photography website. I saw it one day selling for about $500 which in Canada is a great deal. They typically sell for around $786 new. Though in the USA you can buy the same lens brand new for $599, oh Canada...

If you are buying used, beware that the original release of this lens was hit or miss in terms of sharpness and contrast so try before you buy, I'm very happy with my copy.

An image from a rectilinear lens vs. a fish-eye lens.

The Tokina 11 - 16 is a rectilinear wide-angle lens, which means it shows very little distortion even though the image is extremely wide. The opposite of this is what is referred to as a Fish-eye lens where the image is distorted at the edges.

The other options lens wise that are straight competitors with the Tokina are Nikons 12mm - 24mm f4. ($899.95) This lens has a better zoom range (though not quite as wide) and can be more versatile in terms of focal length. The Nikons maximum aperture, however, is f4 so you lose a stop of light. For me, f2.8 is necessary, and while the Tokina is not EXTREMELY sharp at f2.8 it is very serviceable and by f4, pristine. This outweighs the loss of zoom range for me, and is the main reason why I picked up this lens.

Here we see a lens split open with its insides out for all to see.

Next we have Canon's offering, the 10mm - 22mm f3.5 - 4.5. ($799.95) I love the zoom range of this lens, a great wide-angle of 10mm all the way to 22mm. The problem is its variable aperture, at least the Nikon has a constant f4. By the time you get to 22mm on this lens the slow aperture of f4.5 is going to cause you some trouble, half a stop is still half a stop and when you're comparing that to f2.8 it can mean having to bump up your ISO to undesirable levels.

Finally we have Sigma's 10 - 20mm f4 - 5.6. ($479) The most affordable, for a reason. The range is good, but not the best, and it has the slowest aperture. It isn't known as an overly sharp or excellently performing lens but on a budget it will get you a very wide image, in my opinion however the Tokina beats this with Canon's 10 - 22mm being my next choice.

Finally, I just want to mention the build quality. Tokina is my favorite 3rd party lens manufacturer, i've owned 4 of their lenses over the years, the 11-16, the 16-50, the 20-35 and the 80-200 all constant f2.8 zooms and all of them have been built like tanks. I have never had an issue with any of them and all have been excellent values. Canon and Nikons lenses are almost always built and perform very well albeit at a higher price while Tamron usually has excellent performance in terms of optics but suffers in the build quality and Sigma can be so-so optically but usually built fairly robustly.

"Hotel Chevalier" by Wes Anderson, starring Jason Schwartzman and Natalie Portman

In closing, all of these lenses are great options for your ultra wide, however, this wouldn't be my first purchase. An ultra wide lens is a fun tool to have but unless I need that extremeestablishing shot or i'm going for the "Wes Anderson" look then it will probably stay in my bag.

One place that a lens like this can really help is shooting hand-held, the wider the lens you're using, the less "camera-shake" shows up. Throwing this lens on a dolly or cheap steady-cam can yield pretty decent results.

A quick test video I shot on my Canon t2i when I first got it, running through my apartment primarily with a wide lens.

I hope this informs you about the extreme wide-angle options out there, a new comer to this category and one that I have only heard of and not seen or used in person is the Samyang lenses, they have a few different options which are showcased in this "interesting" trailer. (Possibly NSFW) Take a look!

A series of articles about what equipment we use and why.

This first post in the series will deal with Cameras. From a young age I have always been interested in cameras, my father always had an SLR around and enjoyed taking photos recreationally. I begun seriously playing with  film (photography) and SLRs when I was in Junior High School. In High School I was fortunate enough to have access to a dark room where I really got to experiment which led to me studying Fine Arts in University and focusing on Photography and Video.

I now run a small production company and have worked on films ranging in budgets from $100 - $16,000,000. I have had the chance to work with many different cameras and while I have shot on film and worked with film cameras, I much prefer the ease of use of Digital equipment right from the capture phase through to post-production.

Camera's that I will be discussing are the current trend for budget filmmakers and are all Digital Video Cameras.

What I currently own and Primarily shoot with: Canon 60D.

The Canon 60D, with it's flip-out LCD screen and excellent video quality it shows Canon's dedication to creating great video DSLRs.

As you may or may not know, the Canon line of DSLR cameras can shoot in 1080 24p or 720 60p. Starting with the 5D Mark II ($2300*) Canon also released the 7D ($1800*), the 60D ($1200) and the Rebel t2i/550D ($800) all with similar features. Now I don't want to bore anyone to death with technical specs so I will only touch briefly on the differences of each, this has been covered much more thoroughly on other more credible websites.

*Please note, all prices are approx. retail prices for the body of the camera unless otherwise specified

There are several reasons why I choose to shoot with a DSLR camera. While the ergonomics are not ideal and the cameras a certainly not designed primarily as video cameras, they produce excellent images for the price and are very compact and light and allow you to film in locations that you otherwise would have a great deal of trouble getting into.

The Red Epic, a revolution waiting to happen. These are slowly trickling out into the wild. The epitome of Digital Cinema Cameras.

For me the price tag is a fairly large consideration at this point in my career, if i had unlimited (or substantial) resources I would purchase a Red camera, they are simply the best thing on the market in terms of value/quality. I just don't have the necessary funds to create a solid camera package when the body of the camera alone is $25,000.

Regardless, DSLRs are quite capable video cameras and gives the user a lot of freedom to create some beautiful imagery.

The sensor size of DSLRs are the biggest selling point. On a 7D/60D/t2i you are working with a 35mm equivalent sensor, in essence it is similar to shooting on film (movies) the depth of field and field of view are very similar.

The frame rates of these cameras also help create that organic film-look. Until recently, most video cameras filmed at 60 or 30 frames a second, this tends to make everything VERY clear, too clear. There is no blur when things move quickly and it ends up looking very fake or "digital". DSLRS, on the other hand, offer Full HD 1080 video at 24 frames a second. This frame rate is something that reads as very natural to the eye with some motion blur that creates an organic look. It is the combination of sensor size, depth of field and frame-rate that creates these film-like images and using some creative colouring in post-production can really sell the film look.

There are several other factors which lead me to choose this type of camera for my film-work. Interchangeable lenses is another great

The Sony EX-3, the go-to low-budget broadcast camera. We will begin to see these replaced by the likes of Panasonics AF-100 and new models from all manufaturers.

option. Other professional video cameras such as the Panasonic HVX200 or Sony EX-1 have fixed zoom lenses. While these lenses are usually high-quality and have fairly good ranges from Wide to Telephoto, you really don't have much in the way of other lens options. If you want a wider lens you have to put an adapter on the front which will degrade the overall quality of the image.

A DSLR allows you to put any 35mm lens on the camera, some people have even modified the cameras to accept professional PL mount lenses. Which is maybe going a little too far in my opinion but the option exists...

Since I began as a Nikon still photographer I happen to own a number of very nice lenses and luckily there are simple lens adapters for these cameras that allow you to mount Nikon lenses on a Canon camera body.

I will go into which lenses I own/have owned in another post but I have a range from 11mm through to 200mm with everything in between and that allows me to shoot whatever I want.

Another excellent aspect of these cameras is the Low-Light ability. Just like when shooting still photos, you are able to change the ISO of the camera when shooting video. ISO is the sensitivity of the sensor and while high-ISOs such as 800 and 1600 are not ideal, the ability to change this setting in camera is revolutionary. Mix this feature with a nice fast f1.4 lens and you can get great images with very low-light.

Finally, one reason why I choose to shoot with these cameras is the portability. They are very small, compact and inconspicuous. When filming in the arcades in Japan, I often had to be somewhat secretive or unobtrusive. People mistake these cameras as simply used for photography and tend to not care as much when you're wearing it around your neck. The newly released Canon 60D takes this to the next level with its flip-out screen, allowing the operator to be extremely stealthy and capture moments without intruding.

With the lens removed the cameras are very small and slip into any bag which allows for quick and easy travel.  I rarely leave my house without my camera.

Not everything is perfect in DSLR world however. The biggest glaring issue that I've come across in extended use of these cameras is the high-rate of compression used. You are shooting 1920x1080 video on a sensor designed to take 18 megapixel photos. What this means essentially is that the detail of the image isn't always great, there can be some bad artifacts and often a lot of Moire (weird lines through the video when dealing with small detailed patterned objects).

Sky by Philip Bloom
(Be sure to click on some of the other links in this article for more video content)

The digital files are saved using the H.264 codec which isn't the greatest, especially for editing. When using software like Final Cut Pro for editing, it creates a bit more work to get the file ready to edit. It's not a deal breaker by any means, but post-production contains more than a few "work-arounds".
The camera also uses what is called a Rolling shutter. This means for example if you're trying to shoot a television screen that has a quick or slow refresh rate and you'll see the waves of the TV's video as it is updating. If you pan the camera too quickly, you will see some distortion in the video or another example is if someone shoots a camera flash while you are filming, the bright white light of the flash will only fill about half of the screen because of the "rolling shutter".

The other con that will definitely come up when filming is the recording time. The way that the memory cards are formatted in the camera is an older technology called FAT32,

this format only allows for 4 gig files. Which means we can only film for 12 min. in a row. Any longer than that and the camera will automatically stop recording and you'll have to press the record button again. For narrative films this isn't really a problem as you'll very rarely have shot that lasts longer than 12 minutes.

The camera that started it all. Panasonics flagship pro-sumer camera that made 24p available to the masses.

When shooting a documentary however, you want to capture as much footage as possible and this can be annoying. When filming

something like an interview, you can plan ahead and make sure your subject understands that you'll need to stop every 12 minutes, its an inconvenience but certainly not the end of the world. You have to sacrifice some usability for the images that these cameras make.

Last but not least, one of the more important aspects of film-making is Sound. I'll be very honest here, these cameras do not record good sound. There is no real way to get good sound directly from the camera, it's not worth the effort to get usable sound from them. Get an external audio recorder (i'll talk about these in a future post) and record audio onto that. It isn't very difficult to sync audio in post and the quality is infinitely better.

A camera is a camera, it's the vision that matters.

There are many situations where these DSLR cameras make great video cameras and for the price they are hard to compete with but if you are recording things such as live concerts, long interviews or objects/places with lots of small intricate details then I would go with a different camera system. Panasonic recently released the AF-100 which may have addressed many of these concerns although it is brand new so if you want something tried and true for a more robust filming experience, Sony's EX line of cameras are excellent choices for the budget minded with a Red or Alexa being the best digital solutions if you have the money.

I hope this helps explain why I use the camera that I use. I also hope that this isn't too wordy and drawn out, it's tough to explain all aspects of my choices in interesting but informative fashion.

Thanks for reading! Future posts will cover my lens choices, my support gear including shoulder mounts, tripods, monitors, follow focuses etc. as well as lighting and sound equipment.

Behind the Scenes of our interview with Justin Wong

First off, the biggest project that is always looming over my desk is of course 100 Yen, which is our feature documentary about the arcades in Japan. We've already released two trailers and a teaser for the project but we've got some more content to release before we head off to Japan in April. Coming up will be some more interview samples from our footage of the Canada Cup event over in Calgary, Alberta. These focus mostly on the Street Fighter scene with people like Gootecks, Mike Ross, Justin Wong, JS Master, Daigo Umehara and Mago as well as our gracious host Lap Chi. (Check out all the Behind the Scenes photos, Shot by the amazing Eric Au)

One of the lovely cosplayers from the Canada Cup as Juri from Super Street Fighter IV

On the same vein, we are working on a promo video for none-other than Mr.Duong (Lap Chi) himself. This video will highlight the amazing event that was THE CANADA CUP and help promote some events that will be announced in the near future.

These two projects are more or less in the forefront of our thoughts when it comes to work.

Another aspect of 100 yen that we are constantly working on is our story edit, this means we document the footage that we've captured, sort through the types of shots we have, what kind of quotes from interviews we've captured and start to lay out the ground work for the overall arc of the story.
This organization and planning of our current footage will enable us to plan for our trip to Japan and discover what our story is lacking and what we will need to cover in-depth to help flesh out not only the visual aspects but the overall story of the documentary.

All of this is very key to making sure we get the best final product and we've begun a rough dialogue with a local editor by the name of Jaimz Asmundson who may be able to help polish the documentary and give us a fresh look at the footage that we might be too attached to.

A short film that we shot with Director Cam Patterson in 2009 entitled "Hold Your Breath" is still in post-production. In actuality it is more of a scene from a feature film than it is a short. This project is something that I would really like to see finished. It is sitting on my hard-drive screaming to be edited, I simply need to find the time to complete it. That and I was waiting to get some non-copyrighted music that I could use to add atmosphere but I may just go ahead and play with what I have to create a finished film or perhaps a nice trailer.

Take 2, a snapshot from our interview with Daigo "The Beast" Umehara

In October I had the pleasure of working on a Zombie/Post-Apocalyptic short film with Director Chris Vandale, this piece was shot in one day and was quite challenging. The best part

Here we see Gootecks at work in the great white Canadian north

of the shoot was we had Dave Brown, our local firearms expert on-board to not only help us shutdown the street but he brought out his toys as well. Namely, a shotgun and a Mac-1o pistol. The Mac-10 was great, we shot the bullets flying out in slow-motion and the shotgun, when fired, has about a 3ft. flame that flies out of the barrel. It makes for great visuals and a damn loud BANG. Overall it was a great day that saw a lot of hard-work from people who all wanted to be there. This film is also currently in Post-Production and i'm anxious to see what comes of it.

Finally, a good friend of mine, Eric Nicholas is an accomplished musician who I met out in Japan. Having played around and shot a music video for him before, we've been in talks to take a second shot at it. This time we'll be using the song "Lost inside your eyes", check out the track, I think it has some great atmosphere and I love the change of feeling from the intro to the end, its catchy and grows on you with a couple of listens.

As far as the video for this song goes, we're planning an all-narrative piece. In other words, there will be no performance, no lip-syncing. Eric is

Peace, from Cami. Until next time.

currently living out of province but that is not the only reason for this choice, the previous video was mostly performance and we'd both like to get more creative and have some fun making a video. This will be a small independent project shot over a number of days, I really want to shape each scene and perfect the shots, not just slap together a video for the sake of shooting something. I've begun writing the concept and will begin the story-boarding process shortly to bring my vision to paper. From there? Hopefully we can shoot this in the near future.

That's all that is really on my plate at the moment, I'm of course working on a few corporate gigs here and there along with my full-time job which is editing for the Federal Gov't (as a contractor) but I like being busy and i'll make work if I can't find any. That certainly wasn't the case in 2010, and I'm hoping 2011 will be as productive, if not more so! Happy New Year!

BRAD

Have a look around and feel free to leave comments. Find us on Facebook or Twitter and follow along with our documentary progress over at: IndieGoGo

thanks for checking us out,
BRAD