Reverse Engineering
Most of my video purchases, really all of them until recently have been reversible*, which is to say, they could all be additions to my stills range if video becomes too frustrating or pointless.
Lenses are interesting here. What would a cine lens add to my stills kit, now that I have 8 of them and it is a thing?
The 7Artisans Hope 25mm wide open on a G9 (ISO 1250). Focus was easy to acquire, the heft of the lens both reassuring and helpful for s sharp image at 1/40th.
Something I have noticed with all of them is a feeling of old fashioned comfort when handling them and sometimes even a little nostalgic rendering.
For me, one of the advantages of manual focus is framing off centre, so it follows a lens needs to be roughly as sharp on the outer frame as the centre, which this lens is.
The Spectrum glass has been directly compared to my Lumix-S lenses and apart from their opposites being true opposites in colour (1 warm 35, one cool etc), the cine lenses are gentler in contrast, but not massively less sharp or less capable in rendering.
The Hope, Sirui and Vision lenses are all capable of holding their own in my MFT stills kit, as crowded as that range is, but nothing wasted.
Specifically, I would use them as studio portrait lenses making the most of their smoother, less punchy contrast in the world of hard and soft light.
Overall rendering is usually good with cine glass. The inability to easily change things is post means their simpler designs can be focussed on classic results, Bokeh and draw being some of these.
Rear Bokeh is pleasant enough.
As is foreground.
Close focus is very good. I have a lot of MFT lenses with decent close focus, but even so, it never hurts.
I doubt I will be getting out of video as my path seems to be more determined than ever, but it is nice to know that only a few bits would be useless apart from the odd video job regardless.
*My sound kit, the Video Assist and the recently purchased gimbal.