Cine lenses for regular photography too?

3 years 5 months ago #699069 by Macon B
Morning.  Quick question on Cine lenses, they are for shooting video.  I get that.  But can those lenses be used for photography as well?  

Actually what are the differences with a Cine lens?  I thought that they have manual focus and gears on the side.  Optically, are they different?


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3 years 5 months ago #699072 by Nikon Shooter



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3 years 5 months ago - 3 years 5 months ago #699082 by Piechura

Macon B wrote: Morning.  Quick question on Cine lenses, they are for shooting video.  I get that.  But can those lenses be used for photography as well?

Not if you want to use autofocus. Cinema lenses are manual focus.

As for why they're so expensive, they're generally better engineered for the job they do. So the manual focus is more accurate. If you've ever tried to shoot a film on a photography lens using manual focus, you'll realise that it's not that easy to nail focus on a moving subject, and that's because focus-by-wire lenses don't have a completely accurate link between the distance you move the focus ring and the distance the focus moves. Cinema lenses do. Obviously if you're just making a Youtube video or messing around with friends, it's not a big deal, but if you've got 20 professionals standing around on a film set and you miss focus on your actor's best performance, then it's not going to go down very well, and more importantly, it's going to cost you money.

Another difference is focus breathing (there are a few definitions of this, btw). You might notice when you shift focus from one subject to another on a lens, the framing will often shift slightly. This isn't really an issue for photography, but on film it doesn't look great, so cinema lenses put a lot of resources into stopping this from happening (not always successfully).

If you have the time, here's a really long video with a guy from Arri.



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3 years 5 months ago #699135 by Macon B
Oh, awesome!  Thank you for the videos.   I'm driving and will watch these when I get home!


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