Yes, But Can They Work As A Team?
With a small clutch of cinema lenses at hand I guess the question to be asked is “do they, or can they match each other in colour, look and style?”.
It should be a no-brainer with two as they are a “matching” set of 7 Artisan Spectrum lenses, but unfortunately, the one thing they do not match in, is colour.
The third, the IRIX, theoretically comes from a superior stable of semi-pro cinema lenses, so the question is, does the IRIX stand out, do the 7Art pair stand tall and together or is the whole thing a colour graders nightmare?
Below mostly as they were shot*, which I realised was not going to work for Bokeh etc, but colour, its all about colour, oh, and feel.
Warm, but not to an extreme level. Not ugly or even unattractive, just warm. This tends to fill in depth and is usually more attractive to most viewers, but can “muddy” up. I used the same settings for all three lenses starting with the 35mm and thanks to its warmth, the exposure for the other two looked just a hair hotter. The more pleasing Bokeh may be due to slightly stronger chromatic aberration.
Cool to magenta. To me, this is the natural look of this sensor, so the 35mm above on a warmer one like the GH6 or S5II would look. Positively “retro-organic”.
The difference between the two above is actually less than mixing a G9II with GH6 or S5 with S5II footage, so an easy adjustment away. A S5II and the cooler 50mm would probably match the S5 with the 35 almost perfectly (as would an S5 mk1 with a little WB tweak).
Neutral to cool, very close to the 50mm. Slightly contrastier, but no sharper and thanks to the extreme nature of the lens, it is usually up against it in other ways. Wide open at T3 it is sharp enough, but it hardly matters as very little is actually in focus (I had to bracket my shots to get the front half of the doll sharp as the peaking was indicating all good, but was actually getting the side and back.
T3 at minimum focus (these heads are about 1cm across). There are razor blades in there somewhere, but a lot of cotton wool to.
As shot, things are actually looking ok. The IRIX may render slightly differently, but because it is such a different lens, used for very different shots, I doubt minor differences in rendering will matter.
The 35mm basically left alone, because on this cool-ish sensor it seems pretty right. I love the background rendering of this lens, very natural.
The 50mm warmed slightly to match, looking just a hair more contrasty, or maybe it is Bokeh “snap”.
They pretty much match with a very slight bit of work and could even better with consistent practices. Bokeh seems to be in the same school of smooth-blobby, the 50 and 150 very close. As is sometimes the case, the two sharper and contrastier lenses seem to have busier Bokeh, or it might be a perspective/magnification thing.
Note; none of these are perfectly colour accurate to the scene. The book panel is clean white, the un-edited 35mm lens file coming closest in this light.
As far as other elements go, rendering, Bokeh etc, I think that used as they would be, with changing perspective, different angles etc, they are close enough to be acceptable partners.
If I had to pick a favourite overall, it would be tough, but interestingly, the IRIX is not automatically the big boss. I probably like the 50mm more for stills, the 35 for video and the IRIX for its powerful tricks and its ability to bridge the gap between my Lumix-S and 7Art lenses.
My initial fear was the 150 would stand out too much being the dearer lens (the IRIX series are roughly 250% dearer than the Spectrums), but actually the 35 is the outlier with warmer colour and smoother Bokeh.
It seems that by grabbing the Christmas sale bargains, I have accumulated a decently compatible set of cinema lenses with no standouts, no odd-balls and no real grading headaches. Not bad for about $1600au, or less than the cost of the IRIX alone at full price.
I still have to compare the 12mm 7Artisans Vision and Sirui 24 from my M43 kit, but I have time.
Ed. I did recently use the G9/Sirui and S5/35mm as a pair and they were quite different. The Sirui was cooler and contrastier.
IRIX at T5.6. Fixing that white balance issue made processing this file very natural.
*f2.8, RAW, S5 - the last two lenses had their exposure reduced by about a half of a stop in the top shots, but zeroed again for the adjusted ones.