A cheap cinema lens is a little like a cheap sword.
A cheap sword can hurt, even kill, it just lacks finesse.
Equally, a masterwork blade in the wrong hands is more likely to hurt the wielder than the intended target.
A cheap cinema lens is not a weapon, but the comparison stands.
I own a few, quite a few.
I have some 7Artisans Hope, Spectrum and Vision, some Sirui anamorphic and Nightwalker lenses and a lone IRIX tele-macro. All were carefully chosen from their many offerings to better match each other than even their actual set-mates often do, which is part of the reason for this post.
It has not all been perfectly smooth sailing, but a fun voyage.
I have returned one lens due to poor mechanical and optical performance, which can happen to any lens and as I have said above, another reality of cheap lenses.
So, what are they in reality, how do they hold up compared to dearer glass and what do you risk loosing?
The premise is, cine glass is allowed some “character”, does not need modern mechanical refinements like AF or complicated zoom construction, does not need to be light or compact and super fast lens speed is often considered excessive.
Mechanical consistency is important and these have that potential by design, but it is often more than just intent that is needed. I have found that they are not reliably consistent in focus resistance nor mounting tightness.
These are my favourites to focus pull without a speed focus attached.
The 35 Spectrum is quite tight, the 50 Hope slightly heavier to pull than the very sweet 25, the IRIX is professionally damped-near perfect (a little tighter than the Hope 25) as I will assume all of their lenses are, the Sirui anamorphic is similar.
I guess I should also include the Lumix S-Primes in this group, a set of semi-matched lenses with stills/cine optics. Like all the others, they are not perfectly colour matched, one warm (50), two not (35/85), but are otherwise interchangeable. Mechanically, they are excellent.
My Vision 12mm, Sirui anamorphic and Spectrum 35 are all more or less loose on the mount. The 12mm is the loosest, but it is so light to focus pull and so wide, I rarely care.
The rest are more or less tight depending on the camera (my S5 and GH5s have tight mounts, the G9II and S5II shows up as the worst offenders).
The returned Hope 16mm had the double issue of a loose mount and extremely tight focus ring, which added to iffy optics made it a clear dud. The thing actually made a slight clunking sound and shifted when used, not ideal for a video lens.
In comparison to my stills lenses that are most often used for video (S-primes and zoom, 28-70 Sigma, 12-60 Leica), they are solid and heavy, have longer focus throw and manual apertures and are able to take a follow focus without attaching a separate ring, but on average are about as consistent mechanically (the 20-60 and 28-70 are also slightly loose on the S5II’s mount).
Optics.
This is difficult to clearly measure. Cinema lenses are usually extraordinary in some ways, very poor in others. They have character, which can also be labeled “workable flaws”, anamorphic and legacy glass in particular. These obvious flaws are embraced, but have to (1) fit in with the creators vision and (2) not stand in the way of creation.
Below are a some test images recently taken with my Hope 25, an example of a “heart breaker” budget offering. this lens is a pleasure to use and could easily slip into my stills kit.
Flare is acceptable until it is not, distortions also. Sharpness needs to be transparent, so the lens does not show itself, but soft edges can be accepted even sought after. Contrast and colour is often flatter to allow for wider dynamic range capture, more can be added later.
The stills lens paradigms of razor sharp, super high contrast, super saturated, super smooth Bokeh, perfectly corrected and flare free need to be ignored in favour of a smooth rendering, predictable flaws and a more natural look.
Distortion? Sure, we have plenty and for top end directors like Wes Anderson, they become signature, taking an accepted short coming and making it part of the process.
Some top end cine lenses are actually near perfect, because sometimes that is wanted, but even then, they are capable of rendering moving stock differently to highly corrected stills lenses.
This image taken with my Sirui Nightwalker at minimum distance and wide open at T1.2 is beautiful, but falls short of being usable in most situations.
They have that special something.
This is the key to it really, a cine lens needs to add beauty in some form without unwanted distraction, or if it adds distraction, it needs to be intended and still beautiful. Cinematographers often chase a distinctive “look”, but that look needs to be transcendent, spectacular, not just crude gimmick.
The reality is, the get the very best, cutting edge control of aberrations and clarity, the best lenses are needed. I recently googled the lens used by the makers of The Bear and was stunned, but not surprised by the $38,000 u.s. price tag.
Probably the thing that stands out with cheaper cine glass, even the IRIX, is a lack of that mature confidence, that feeling that “you will know it when you see it” quality. They are often good at some things, but fall short somewhere.
My Hope and IRIX glass is reliable, clean and well controlled. They are the start of the road, but it is long. They are surprisingly well corrected, sharp, clean, smooth rendering and relatively problem free, but they are not also adding that signature look.
The Hope 25 is a favourite lens for any use.
My Spectrum and Nightwalker lenses are more character leaning, with some short comings, the Sirui anamorphic is a very good performer, in a class of lenses renown for their fickle attributes.
I guess if you want both quality and character, it costs.
At the level of of the IRIX ($2000au) each, there are lenses gaining a reputation for true cinema magic, like the Thypoch Simera-C and their stable mates the DZO Vespids, but the IRIX 150mm leans more towards well corrected, slightly boring purity and lenses at this level stilll fall foul of the optical consistency gods. They are stills grade, but not yet perfect cine grade.
For character, you can go super cheap, like the TTArt 35 f1.4 for under $100au. It has bags of “character” looking for all the world like an anamorphic lens without the wide frame, but is only really an option for art projects.
Super sharp in the centre, but obvious distortion, swirly Bokeh, soft edges, just like an antique anamorphic, all for chump change. It even gets “better” is you use it on a full frame and split the difference in cropping. Its tiny form factor gets it no marks in the handling department.
Seriously, this is from a major Marvel production, complete with edge weirdness, CA and distortions galore.
I have faith in my cine lens set for reasonable consistency across both M43 and FF*. They are solid, look great (i.e. impress clients) and work as indicated. I do not feel they are a compromise optically compared to my stills glass, sometimes even have more pleasant Bokeh and image look overall (I am keen to try the Hope lenses in the studio), some even have effectively no focus breathing, but I also realise there are very special lenses out there with long and proven pedigrees and eye watering price tags to match.
Mechanically they vex me slightly.
My 35 Spectrum is too tight for run-n-gun, my 12 Vision and 24mm Nightwalker by contrast are very loose. They are consistent in build heft, do have a longer throw than stills glass and they seem to expose as marked on the barrel. Most even line up similarly in a rig, even those from different sets.
In a nutshell, they do act like cine lenses and can produce professional looking results, just don’t be too picky when comparing one lens to another.
The IRIX macro is a mid range cine lens, my dearest by a wide margin, but still not in the top tier.
So, mechanically less than perfectly consistent and optically boring or randomly character endowed?
Even some mid range glass can be accused of the same, so still great value.
Subjectively measuring and comparing top end with budget lenses is largely pointless. Even if they cost ten times more, it is still possible a budget lens can beat them in some ways, but the end product, the look of them.
The fact they often only come in mounts to suit the very top cameras, is always going to give them precedence. Hard to compare Arri Alexa footage on lens “X” to FX-3 footage on lens “Y”, when they cannot be or are just not directly compared.
As for the many AF super stills lenses around?
The trade off of using “best practice” manual focus and aperture selection has to be weighed against the advantages of touch screen AF. They both have their place.
On the plus side, the whole collection of 8 lenses, often bought on sale has cost me sub $4000au or to put it another way, about the same as a single mid-tier cine lens**.
Of course lens selection is only one part of a complicated and inter-dependent web of factors, but it is no less important for that and if you ask a cinematographer, the matching of the right lenses to the right camera is all.
My current system is;
Use the GH5s and S5’s (using B-Raw) which have the less reliable AF, with cine glass and support rigs (various) for static and more serious work, especially personal projects.
I then use the G9II and S5II as “B” cams with the same or as my movement cams, relying on touch screen AF and in camera V-Log to keep the rig small, I use stills-hybrid lenses.
My most used lenses for a variety of reasons are the Hope 25 and 50, Sirui anamorphic 24, the 35, 50 and 85 S-Primes, 12-40 Oly and Leica 9mm AF M43 lenses and increasingly for hybrid run and gun, the Sigma 28-70.
*The Vision and Spectrum series are mostly consistent in ring placement, but vary wildly in rendering, wide open performance and colour temperature in their own sets, so I have “cherry picked” these. The Hopes are closer, but still vary slightly in temp. The two Sirui lenses are both warm and similar in rendering even though they are different by design, closer than their own stable-mates.
**If I had my time over I would have simply gone the 10-25 and 25-50 f1.7 Pana zooms in M43 (only) and/or the Lumix S-Primes for full frame, but then I may have missed out on some fun glass.