Digital BW, The Print

Paul,

A little OT...Just for the curious.

I work on feature films. From my experience, we use zooms more often 
than primes. We just don't often zoom during the shot and we are 
fanatical about shading the lens from stray light.

Some of the newest cinema zooms are quite good, easily equal to the 
older (10 year old) zeiss primes. The newest primes are incredibly high 
contrast and sharp. Many cinematographers place diffusion filters in 
front of the lens to cut down on the harshness of the lens.

These cinema zooms do cost upwards of $50,000 though and some weigh 
20lbs or so. Not used for handheld of course:)

I have shot a lot of stuff with lightweight zooms converted from pro 
still camera lenses(17-35 and 27-60something). Bet you couldn't tell, 
even though in a lens test they don't look so good. I wouldn't use them 
on a still camera unless I had to.

-back to our regularly scheduled program



On Thursday, Nov 18, 2004, at 13:04 US/Pacific, 
DigitalBlackandWhiteThePrint@yahoogroups.com wrote:

> NO ONE in the feature film end would shoot anything with a zoom . . . 
> they can't afford the loss in quality. Remember that these are people 
> who insist of their gear being stripped and calibrated on a regular 
> basis . . . they can afford and insist on, the absolute best that is 
> available.