What camera lens should I get for this project of shooting animals close up?

[Paul R Johnson]

My experience is that photographic designed lenses often show their weaknesses at the extremes. A friend of mine has the same camera I have, and bought an adaptor to use a longer lens. Physically, it fitted but the results were very disappointing very soft images. Using adaptors and trying to squeeze extra focal length effectively lowers the resolution by quite a bit. Using SD lenses, even expensive ones on an HD camera shows them up. I'm left wondering if instead of adaptors that are mismatched to the optics, a 4K camera with permanent lens, purpose designed for the sensor would produce better images by cropping than an hD camera with magnification. Not tried it yet. With DSLRs, of course, the choice is usually what glass you can bolt on the front that you can afford.

[Brian Drysdale]

The lenses needed for tight shots on birds are going to longer than the run of the mill lenses most people purchase, so they're going to be expensive. Your current focal length would be coming into the equation if you were shooting 16mm film or on a 2/3" camera for this job and you'd still need to be close.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh okay thanks, I'll see what I can do...

[Ryan Elder]

Originally Posted by Brian Drysdale

If you see the artifacts on North American television they are wrong, you don't get them on European TV, which uses 25fps.

Use the 30 fps setting, it's the standard for broadcast HD..

I am uncomfortable with this 30 fps, as it looks like a home video camcorder at that framerate. Why is 30 fps the best just because it's standard?

[Paul R Johnson]

Ryan, have you ever watched tv wildlife? Blue planet, and anything by sir david attenburgh? Tv format and looks amazing. Friends is also tv format and there is no comparison between this in quality terms! You say the most crazy things sometimes. 1080, in 16:9, distributed on 25 or 30 frame systems can look stunning. If you cannot see this and understand why, give up and take up flower arranging.

[Josh Bass]

I know what Ryan means here. 30 fps INTERLACED (60i) does look like the news/a soap opera. 30p (progressive) is sort of a halfway point between the soap opera look and the “cinematic” 24p. I dont really watch or shoot wildlife so I have idea what the norm is. Maybe its supposed to look like the news.

However, the answer, as always, is doing what your (reportedly awful) client wants. If they dont know what the hell youre talking about when you ask them things about framerates etc. then follow what the last shooter did.

[Paul R Johnson]

uk delivery formats to the broadcasters in SD and HD are all interlaced, with progressive only for UHD/4K - so people watching quality produced sport, current affairs and documentary programmes need to select one of these formats for it to be accepted into the transmission chain.

UHD
• 3840 x 2160 pixels in an aspect ratio of 16:92;
• 50 or 25 frames per second progressive - known as 2160p/50 or 2160p/25;

HD
• 1920 x 1080 pixels in an aspect ratio of 16:9
• 25 frames per second (50 fields) interlaced – known as 1080i/25, top field first;

SD
• 702 x 576 pixels in an aspect ratio of 16:9;
• 25 frames per second (50 fields) interlaced - known as 576i/25, top field first;

So people watching on basic TVs are watching interlaced quite happily and seeing excellent pictures.

The slightly tongue-in-cheek comment about Friends (very popular here) is a good point though. It looks far worse in quality - so as it has to be delivered in the spec above, the picture mangling has been done elsewhere. The stunning Blue Planet stuff was delivered in exactly the same format to the soft and very old fashioned US NTsC looking Friends.

Why this is I really don't know, but we do see this quality still - quite often, yet it's all good in other US shows?

[Josh Bass]

Not quite sure I understand you...

Friends, as far as I know, was shot on film, presumably at 24 fps. Even if broadcast here (US) at 29.97, it still originated at 24 and retains the look during broadcast, which is different than what you guys are telling Ryan to do which is ACQUIRE at 30 fps interlaced/60i unless I’m misunderstanding something.

[Paul R Johnson]

If it was shot on film, then what we see here is severely mangled = extremely soft and washed out.

No I think (or at least I was) referring the end product. Shooting of course depends on the content. The series I keep mentioning was shot on a range of cameras, including Red Dragons with broadcast Zooms and extenders at a range of frame rates, but then squashed down to the ones I mentioned for submission. I just felt that interlaced was being rejected in favour of 'progressive is best', but with 25p/50i discussions I'm not even really sure how the difference works in practice any longer?

This is the statement that got me.....

30 fps, as it looks like a home video camcorder

[Josh Bass]

That’s what I mean, Ryan’s saying the look of interlaced 30fps as an acquisition framerate is “home video-like”. It sounded like people were telling him to shoot that way (maybe they were) rather than output his final piece that way regardless of what framerate he shot at.

As a guy who used to work master control and tape op at tv stations, I can tell you there are any number of ways a 22-year old making $15 can hour can screw up a transfer to get the results youre seeing with Friends. Or maybe they werent even given a high quality master to begin with.

[Ryan Elder]

Oh, should the final output be a different framerate then? And yeah I guess I don't watch enough wildlife on TV maybe. Is it maybe because wildlife on TV is shot with fuller frame cameras, and that is why it doesn't look as 'home video-ish', compared to my APS-C sensor?

[Brian Drysdale]

If you want a more film look, shoot progressive frames, but not at that 50 or 60 type frame rates, these will look more like video in their motion..

23.976p 25p and 29.97p are used to shoot dramas and high end documentaries that wish to look less like video. They shoot wildlife programmes,,es on 2/3" cameras and/or Super 35 cameras like the RED. They also go through serious colour correction in post using higher quality codecs than you're using on the DSLR.

"Friends" was shot on 35mm film, so 24fps would've been used, The degraded quality would be due to the transfer to NTSC, then another change to PAL in the UK.

I gather there is remastered 16:9 HD version. One of the advantages of shooting on film is that as the transfer technology improves, the more you can get out of the negative.

[Paul R Johnson]

I got a new lens adaptor today, something I meant to do before, but Ryan's post kind of gave me a kick. A B4 ⅔" lens adaptor to it fits on my ⅓" JVC. I expected the results to be poor. I'd been told to expect a very soft image with my old Canon lens, and all kinds of nasty coloured fringing and odd artefacts. I'd also been told that the 2X lens extender wouldn't work.

I tried the beach, but heat haze - 31.5 degrees C here today - made this location not too good, so I went to the local broads and no haze.

I also took some photos with my iPhone to show you what it could see, as most people are familiar with the field of view of phone cameras.

The collection of clips from the better location shows how sharp an SD B4 lens can be on a small sensor camera. I'm struggling with the maths a bit to calculate the equivalent focal length compared to 35mm, but once you zoom out even a little, the image quality is not anywhere near the issue I thought it would be, and for wildlife stuff - it would be rather useful, but even my Vinten 5LF head is not stable enough for lurch free pans and tilts, unless I wind in some friction and then pan by turning the head, rather than the pan bar - using the pan bar is very 'touchy'.
The collection of clips is here - using the 1x and 2 x converter

YouTube (Short URL)

[Brian Drysdale]

You can also fit these lenses on large sensor cameras using a suitable adapter. Obviously it would be the HD or 4k ENG/EFP lenses that you would use for higher end work, these lenses are used by wildlife camera people.

[Paul R Johnson]

In a way - I've done a Ryan. A friend of mine with the same camera tried one of these adaptors and bought a second hand B4 lens on Ebay. He told me the results were disappointing, and I took his experience as typical of ALL B4 ⅔" lenses, when clearly, this one is quite usable.

I have no idea what's inside, but in the store are two more large Sony flight cases - I think one is empty having scrapped the other Betacam a couple of years ago, but the other is heavy - and clearly has something in it. I will drag these out and have a look inside. It could give me another lens to try?

All I can do is encourage Ryan to not give up and try something a bit different. Try alternatives, and don't believe everything people tell you. I'm already thinking of things I can do with this. I also know that I like to thin k that I'm pretty good with normal lenses, but this afternoon showed me that working with long lenses is a totally different technique when you don't have the mass of a box lens on a Vector head!