The best EF lenses for 5D Mk. II?

[Ray Bell]

In the Canon line of lenses there are the "Magic" Lenses.... those will make this camera earn its money....

Some of the magic...

35mm
50mm
85mm
100mm
200mm 1.8 ( if you can find one )
300mm

I can't wait to put a tilt/shift on this cam... :-)

just remember, if you get a fast lens... 2.8 or faster you can always dial in a slower number... (greater f stop) but you can't get a slow lens to go faster....

A lens faster than 2.8 will have to have some form of filter ( polarizer, ND filter ) on the front if you plan on using it full open in bright light...

[Chris Hurd]

Ray's post above came from another thread, but I thought the subject of best available glass for the 5D Mk. II was worthy of its own discussion. The EF 200mm f/1.8L USM he mentions above has been discontinued and can only be found used. Meanwhile, I would add two more lenses to his list:

The brand new EF 24mm f/1.4L II USM is the fastest wide available. A couple of days ago I briefly played with a production model 5D Mk. II mounted with this lens (thanks Mike) and it is beautiful, no other way to describe it. This lens doesn't have IS, but at that short 24mm focal length, I don't think it's really needed.

And the EF 28-300mm f/3.5-5.6L IS USM telephoto zoom. This L-series lens has the greatest zoom ratio of the entire EF line (at nearly 11x) and it has IS. At the wide end, it almost has the focal length of a Canon XH with WA adapter. At full telephoto, it's just about at the half-way point of the 20x reach of the Canon XH... just add a 2x Extender to make up that difference. Because of its high zoom ratio, it is the one EF zoom lens that would best lend itself to being mechanically converted for video use, by adding a geared ring and motor drive for zooming. The only big negative about it is that it's not a constant aperture zoom. And I have no idea how bad this lens breathes when changing focus... but the numbers are right at least.

[Dan Chung]

See my reply to this thread here http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/photo-hd-...-november.html for my take.

I really believe this is going to be the answer for video, which is bit annoying as I have a Canon 35mm f1.4L, 24mm f1.4L, 24-70 f2.8L and 135mm f2L gathering dust.

Dan

[Ray Bell]

Dan, I think you might try out using your Canon Lenses and see how they work....

One difference between a Nikon Lens and the Canon Lens is that the Nikon Lens
allows adjustment of the iris without power applied to the lens... its a mechanical interface.

When power is applied to the Canon Lens, all you have to do is set the lens to manual...

It will then act just like the Nikon Lens.... you can also set the camera up to manual
for the exposure and iris control.

This is why most folks choose the Nikon over the Canon when using a 35mm adaptor because Canon didn't want to release the specifications for controlling their lenses to
the public...

But we are now talking about Canon Lenses on a Canon Body (5DMKII) and there are
huge advantages for using Canon Lenses on this body...

[Dan Chung]

Ray,

I think you misunderstood what I am saying. I understand fully the way a manual lens functions on a Canon body. I have been using adapted lenses alongside my EF lenses on Canon bodies for a few years now.

The issue is that with the 5DmkII video mode no matter what you set the aperture on a Canon EF lens prior to shooting a video the camera overrides it and chooses an aperture of its own liking. There is no way to manually override this. There are numerous reports from people who have tested the 5dmkII video mode who claim that the camera behaves this way. That is why the adapted Nikon lenses will be better in my view.

If Canon get round to changing the way this works then they will have a much better camera. All the technology to do this is out there but not in one camera body yet.

Dan

[Don Miller]

Laforet made it very clear that there is a "work around" for aperture control. All the pre-release movies seem to been done with intentional apertures. He used all canon lenses.

Perhaps someone saved the link to Laforet's explanation?

[Don Miller]

Originally Posted by Ray Bell

In the Canon line of lenses there are the "Magic" Lenses.... those will make this camera earn its money...

I believe Ray is referring to all "L" lenses. For the budget minded, I wouldn't hesitate to recommend the 35/2, 50 1.4 and 85 1.8. While its nice to have 1.2 and 1.4 lenses, the price is much higher. It's also difficult to focus at the very wide apertures of the wider L's.

I don't know of a way to get faster than f2 below 50mm inexpensively on Canon.

[Don Miller]

Originally Posted by Dan Chung

The issue is that with the 5DmkII video mode no matter what you set the aperture on a Canon EF lens prior to shooting a video the camera overrides it and chooses an aperture of its own liking. There is no way to manually override this.

You can set the aperture, remove the lens, tape the contacts, and replace the lens. It will remain at the previously set set aperture.

But as I said Laforet found a work-around. Clearly people using the camera had aperture control without the pain of taping contacts.

I expect Canon's next one series camera to have all the video controls we want (including 24p)

[Dan Chung]

I'm pretty sure that Vincent's solution was to shoot in low light with light sources he could control, forcing the camera to maximum aperture. The taping this should work but will be completely impractical for most users, certainly for my run and gun use. The advantage of adapted manual lenses is that they can control exposure more precisely coupled with an AE lock in video mode. This is all subject to testing though.

The alternative method for EF lenses would probably be to force the camera to expose for a dark subject (ie open up the lens), lock exposure, recompose for your normally lit subject, then dial in some ND to compensate for the resulting overexposure. To this end a vari-ND filter would be good.

Dan

[Don Miller]

Laforet says there's Av mode:


"For those asking for the ability to manually set exposure - I understand why. But you’re not really thinking very creatively. Set the camera to aperture priority… aperture is now locked down… then the shutter speed is either 1/60th or 1/125th… ISO is set as a result of the meter… so point the camera to a dark area or to a light area and once you’ve got your desired final setting - and hit the (*) button - boom you’ve locked down both the shutter speed and the ISO forcefully… until you press (*) the exposure won’t change - even if you stop and then record again (that is my current understanding of things) make sense? So the camera as is can be “tricked” into full manual already… you can always point a small flashlight into the lens to force it to stop down or hold you hand over the lens to force it to open up… may not look good to clients - but a lot of the little tricks we do are our little secrets after all eh? "


Could Canon be stupid enough to take out Av mode to cripple the camera? Yes! But probably not.

[Chris Hurd]

Originally Posted by Don Miller

You can set the aperture, remove the lens, tape the contacts, and replace the lens.

Or just press the Exposure Lock button (the star or "*" button), that's all it takes.

...as Laforet describes in the quoted post above.

[Don Miller]

Just doing my part to slow Dan down. He doesn't seem willing to accept that there's Av mode with video.

[Dan Chung]

Well all I can say is that everyone I've spoken to seems to suggest this is true only within a certain brightness range. Think about it, even if the camera has a base sensitivity of say 50asa there are very few daylight conditions where this is going to give you f1.2, 1.4 or even f2.8 at 1/30th to 1/125th. And there are no handy ND filters to dial in as you would on a regular pro video camera. This leads me to conclude that av mode can't work in those situations, Canon has for a long time had a function called safety shift that automatically adjusts the aperture when the camera thinks it is out of range. In stills this can be disabled, but I'm guessing they do something like this with video. Alternatively it may just overexpose and white out but I've had no-one report that.

I'm sure Vincent's technique works for low to medium lighting situations, but it simply can't work without ND's in bright light. That's why using ND's with a manual lens is going to be an easier option for serious work.

Dan

[Nicholas de Kock]

I know of a store here in South Africa that has an old 200mm F1.8 in stock, they can't get it sold, I had it on loan for a week to decide if I would buy it. The DOF is so narrow that it's virtually impossible to use the lens at 200mm F1.8. I opted not to buy because of this. Prime lenses are your best bet however the 70-200mm F2.8 IS L is crystal. One of the best lenses I've ever owned.

[Dan Chung]

Just got off the phone with my Canon contacts who confirmed that there is no aperture control in video mode (they likened it to green square mode in stills), look again at this Canon usa page Canon Digital Learning Center - EOS 5D Mark II: Movie Mode Basics

It clearly states:

In addition to the adjustable settings listed above, the following settings are made automatically by the camera and cannot be adjusted by the user:
ISO speed
Shutter speed (from 1/30 to 1/125)
Aperture (varies according to lens; no arbitrary restrictions)
Color space (sRGB)
Exposure metering pattern (Evaluative)

Dan