Telelens?

[Ulf Marquardt]

Hello everybody,

I am looking for a telelens or telezoom for the F5. Any suggestions?

Thank you!

Ulf

[Doug Jensen]

How long? What's your budget?

[Ulf Marquardt]

Oh yes, you're right, I should have provided some more information.
I need the lens for filming wildlife, which means, it can't be too long. My budget allows to rent a good lens.
Best
Ulf

[Nate Weaver]

By "how long" he meant some sort of millimeter reference for focal length.

Tele on the F5/55 can mean anything from 100mm to 600 or 1200mm, with wildly varying costs, sizes, weights.

So again, you should start by telling us that if you'd like any suggestions. I could rattle off about 4-5 options, but I'd rather not since we have no idea where you're coming from on this. "Can't be too long" means almost nothing to us, because some of us here consider a physically long lens to be 24" and up.

If you can't tell us MM, then describing what subject at what distances...

[Ulf Marquardt]

I think, a lens between 400 and 600 mm, perhaps with extender, could do the job.

[Cees van Kempen]

What about a Nikon 200-400 F/4. You can use it with a 1.4 or 2.0 extender. It is not a dedicated film lens, but I use it a lot and.... it is parfocal !!

[Ulf Marquardt]

Cees, sounds good, I will look into it. Do you rent yours?

[Cees van Kempen]

No I don't rent mine, I use it daily.

[Steve Phillipps]

Needs to be pretty big on S35 sensors. I've been using the Sigma 300-800 with and without 2x on the Epic and will do on the F55. It's a beast but you need it for a lot of wildlife - even with the 2x it's still not as powerful as the "standards" for wildlife filming on the Varicam and HDCams, that is the Canon HJ40 and HJ18x28.
It's just something you have to deal with.
Steve

[Cees van Kempen]

Steve, do you know of an alternative for the Sigma 300-800, but designed for S35 sensors? I would be interested in such focal length. But the Sigma is, for as far as I know, designed for Full Frame dslr cameras, so a lot of the glass will never be used on a F5/55.

[Steve Siegel]

Ulf,

The Nikon 70-400 is a good wildlife lens, but may not be powerful enough for your S35 sensor.

[Jim Michael]

On the long end there is an 800mm manual focus Nikkor 5.6. It weighs about 15# and is pretty long so you have to consider that transportation aspects. I put a wrap on mine and carry it on in a backpack. Also look into something like a 300 2.8 and teleconverters.

[Alister Chapman]

Well depending on budget you can always rent in a 2/3" B4 adapter and use a 40x 2/3" lens or similar. The Fujinon 42x9.7 goes from 9.7-410mm or with the extender 19-820mm. After adding a 2.4x B4 adapter this actually becomes a 24-984mm lens. Big and bulky and will need a damn good tripod, but it's an option if the budget is there.

[James Ewen]

I agree with Alister on this, whatever long lens you have you need a rock solid tripod and head otherwise you will find that much of you footage is unusable. Even locked off the slightest breeze can make the picture, for want off a better word, jiggly. I use a Sachtler Studio II on heavy duty sticks when operating long lenses, it weighs about 15kgs. I know that Steve Phillips has tested a number of heads and might comment on this. Bottom line though is that for extreme telephoto on the F55 you have limited options and all have been mentioned except the old FD 150-600 5.6.

Warm regards,

James Ewen

[Steve Phillipps]

Cees, I don't think there's anything for S35 as such - the Sigma really is the only choice, unless you don't mind primes, but with wildlife they're a pain (finding the subject in frame and also for changing shot size). I had the old Canon FD 800 f5.6 and that was a bit softer than the other FD L lenses and also only focused down to about 45'!
The Canon HJ40 or HJ18 are certainly an option and are being used on Epics a lot. I thought they would be terrible as the adapter is basically a 2.5x teleconverter but the HJ18 at least performed surprisingly well - it was not quite as sharp as the Sigma and didn't quite has as much contrast or saturation, but it wasn't that far off - which really surprised me. Even with the 2x converter engaged it wasn't terrible - and this is basically using the lens' 2x converter plus the 2.5x converter in the adapter! But certainly the Sigma seems to be a really good bet, with and without the 2x extender, and I kind of expected them to become scarce on the used market due to wildlife guys buying 'em up! I also expected a lot of people to hunt around for the LowePro Super Trekker backpack as it's the only thing that'll take the 800mm lenses plus camera kit!
As James says, big tripods are in order - of the ones I tested the best ones were O'Connor 2060 and 2575 for sure, but the Sachtler Studio II (also known as Video 30 II and the similar Studio 65) and Ronford Atlas 30 were also good - just gives you much more confidence. Having said that, if you're over-sampling you do have more room for image stabilising in post - so if delivering for HD maybe you just go with a lighter tripod and use software to smooth out the bumps!
Steve