Hi, Carl here for ProAV TV, and today I am going to look at these lovely 3 lenses and
try to help you choose which one is best for you and your work.
Up until very recently, an ‘all purpose’ zoom lens designed for video but at an affordable
price point was something that was very hard to find.
These 3 lenses range from £2,500 to £4,000.
Which yes is a lot of money, but when you consider that up until very recently if you
wanted to spend that kind of money, video specific lenses for large sensors just didn't
really exist.
You had to use stills lenses or you would be looking at spending 10 grand or above on
cinema zooms.
This is effectively a whole new category of lenses, which is very exciting.
So what are these lenses in front of me.
Well first up is what I call the ‘ENG’ or the convenience option.
This is the Sony 18-110mm f4 which is the lens Sony have designed to be paired with
the new FS7 II.
I have a whole video on this lens specifically which I will link to below if you want more
detail, but it is a fantastic choice for Sony users.
It doesn't achieve the optical quality of these two, but it gets close, and can actually
compensate for some of the issues electronically in the body.
For example its not a par focal lens by design.
But it has a neat trick up its sleeve and compensates for that as much as possible by
electronically adjusting the focus when you zoom.
This makes it effectively par focal and it does seem to work pretty well.
You also get image stabilisation, full servo zoom which can be controlled on the sony handgrip
or it can both zoom and focus completely manually if you prefer.
On the other end, this is a fully manual cinema lens from Fujinon, the new 18-55mm T2.9.
This is a brand new lens and has got a lot of people very excited, as it really does
have all the benefits of the larger (much more expensive) cinema zooms, but in a small,
light and affordable lens.
Its completely par-focal, is a consistent T2.9 and has next to no breathing at all.
Plus it weighs just under a kilo, which for a lens of this is remarkably light.
The only real drawback here is that it is E mount only, so you are stuck in the sony
system.
Yes thats also the case for the Sony lens, but with cinema lenses like this people are
used to being able to invest in them and use them on whichever cameras they like for each
job.
So it is a shame that its only E mount, but that is of course the only way they have been
able to get the size, weight and cost down to this level.
So I think its a fair trade.
Its a beautiful lens and perhaps my favourite of the bunch to use.
Then we have the middle ground.
This is the Canon 18-80mm T4.4 which I also have a separate video on, and as always, the
link is in the description below.
The reason I call this the middle ground is that Canon have managed to make a lens with
the cinema quality of their larger lenses, fully par focal and nice manual control, but
with the ENG features for convenience when shooting.
You get a full servo zoom and fast autofocus, especially when its used with Canons cameras.
But here, with the fs7 and a metabones adapter, the autofocus doesn't work unfortunately.
You do though get the servo zoom and Image stabilisation with the FS7.
So its definitely a more convenient option for run and gun filming than a fully manual
lens like the Fujinon is.
So lets have a look at some footage.
I took all 3 lenses and the FS7 II to the woods with my friend Dan for a little dog
walk.
This is a completely unscientific comparison, I tried to pull of the same shot with each
lens to make it look as good as I could with each lens rather than matching aperture, focal
length and exposure exactly.
For example in this pull focus test I wanted to see how much breathing was noticeable with
each lens, but I zoomed in to the max of each lens.
The Sony lens was the only one I noticed the breathing on here which was expected to be
honest.
Then I did a portrait shot of Dan to see how the Bokeh looked and how the lenses handled
a face.
All lenses were wide open and around the 50mm mark.
Personally my favourite here is the Fujinon, the background blur seems a lot smoother and
more appealing to me, probably due to the faster aperture.
Interesting side note here, this is when I really noticed the benefit of having the Variable
ND on the FS7 II.
It meant I could get exactly the same exposure at T4.4 and at T2.9 which was really useful.
Then I spent a while looking at the focus breathing with each lens.
Just adjusting the focus to see if the edges of the image zoomed at all.
Again I think the Fuji lens was the clear winner here with no breathing either when
wide or telephoto.
The sony interestingly didn't have that much, but it there was definitely some.
The canon had definite breathing at the wide end but none at all when zoomed in.
Then I did some zoom tests.
This was to see if there was any light fall off when zooming which luckily I didn't notice
on any of the lenses.
This also gave us a look at how par focal they are in a real use case, and they all
held up very well there as well.
I think you can have confidence in your focus when zooming with all these lenses.
So its clear all 3 lenses are solid choices.
They all have their clear strengths and weaknesses.
For me, the decision comes down to the kind of work you do.
If you need the servo zoom and image stabilisation you unfortunately have to rule out the fuji.
I think, for the fs5 & fs7 the Sony is a better choice as you get more range and autofocus
if you need it, but if you want the flexibility of using your lens on other cameras, the canon
is the only one here that will work.
Both the the sony and Fuji are E mount only lenses.
In terms of optical quality, let me know your opinions in the comments section.
But to me, the Fujinon 18-55m stands out as the nicest images of the bunch.
I also personally find it the nicest to use.
Ive always preferred fully manual lenses so thats probably why, but the focus is very
smooth & just the right amount of rotation to get easy focus pulls.
it also feels very balanced and comfortable on both the FS7 and FS5 wheres the Sony lens
feels a little large.
The Canon does feel nice, but I think the fuji is a slightly more comfortable pairing.
So I hope that was helpful, let me know in the comments section which lens you would
choose.
Make sure to subscribe to the channel and i’ll see you in the next video.