Video Lenses

Nero

Senior Member
So my girlfriend and I have been thinking about getting into doing some amateur video with my Z6, just for fun. I've been looking into equipment to get (gimbal, etc.) but I was wondering about lenses. Any recommendations?

If you have recommendations about other equipment, post those as well. My budget isn't very big so for lenses, I want to keep it to about 1000-1200 CAD.
 

spb_stan

Senior Member
What style, scenes, distances between the shooting position and the subjects? I would recommend a Z mount S lens. If you are doing grand vistas or more than one person at fairly close quarters the 24mm 1.8 or if decent light, the 24-70 f/4 is not only a bargain, quiet and very good corner to corner sharpness. IF you have that zoom, you have all you need to start..
So much depends on your topics. The zoom allows very close working distance if B roll is needed for detail close ups. By switching to Dx mode, effective field of view of a 105mm telephoto for details of more distant subjects.
The most expensive added piece of gear will be a stabilization system. There are weight passive stabilizers that are very effective for those shots that stay on the same plane. If dynamic movement of orientation, rotating on a axis perpendicular to horizon or rolling than a much more expensive motorized 3 axis gimbal is needed. A lot can be done with just a tripod for smooth pans. You might save lot of money by not getting a 3 axis motorized gimbal at the beginning until getting enough experience to figure out your style. If you are following skate boarders on a skate board. yeah, you need a quality high torque gimbal. If you are just walking to track someone walking a weight passive cheap stabilizer is plenty good enough.
If there is live sound to be recorded, a low cost multichannel digital recorder can be very useful and not depending on the sound from the camera recorder because sound recorded close to the source should be #1 rule to make sure sound does not ruin a production. Even with a $5000 mic, recording from 15 feet away will be usually hardly usable while a $2 mic close, within 18 inches of the source will be perfectly competent. That will require wireless mics on the talent, and receivers, or a boom operator with a overhead out of frame mic. Few beginning video production efforts consider the importance of audio quality(meaning diminished levels of ambient sound, reflected sound and reverberant fields that destroys intelligibility.
The best editing suite for free is DaVinci Resolve 16. But any editing suite is a processor workload that calls for a pretty powerful video processor and main processor.
If you are doing anything in dim light the Z6 is pretty darn good at high ISO but consider some continuous lighting. You can make LED panels that can be made of strips of equalized LED of a wide variety of color temperatures.
 

Nero

Senior Member
What style, scenes, distances between the shooting position and the subjects? I would recommend a Z mount S lens. If you are doing grand vistas or more than one person at fairly close quarters the 24mm 1.8 or if decent light, the 24-70 f/4 is not only a bargain, quiet and very good corner to corner sharpness. IF you have that zoom, you have all you need to start..
So much depends on your topics. The zoom allows very close working distance if B roll is needed for detail close ups. By switching to Dx mode, effective field of view of a 105mm telephoto for details of more distant subjects.
The most expensive added piece of gear will be a stabilization system. There are weight passive stabilizers that are very effective for those shots that stay on the same plane. If dynamic movement of orientation, rotating on a axis perpendicular to horizon or rolling than a much more expensive motorized 3 axis gimbal is needed. A lot can be done with just a tripod for smooth pans. You might save lot of money by not getting a 3 axis motorized gimbal at the beginning until getting enough experience to figure out your style. If you are following skate boarders on a skate board. yeah, you need a quality high torque gimbal. If you are just walking to track someone walking a weight passive cheap stabilizer is plenty good enough.
If there is live sound to be recorded, a low cost multichannel digital recorder can be very useful and not depending on the sound from the camera recorder because sound recorded close to the source should be #1 rule to make sure sound does not ruin a production. Even with a $5000 mic, recording from 15 feet away will be usually hardly usable while a $2 mic close, within 18 inches of the source will be perfectly competent. That will require wireless mics on the talent, and receivers, or a boom operator with a overhead out of frame mic. Few beginning video production efforts consider the importance of audio quality(meaning diminished levels of ambient sound, reflected sound and reverberant fields that destroys intelligibility.
The best editing suite for free is DaVinci Resolve 16. But any editing suite is a processor workload that calls for a pretty powerful video processor and main processor.
If you are doing anything in dim light the Z6 is pretty darn good at high ISO but consider some continuous lighting. You can make LED panels that can be made of strips of equalized LED of a wide variety of color temperatures.
Thankfully, I had already considered most of that. The only thing I need to figure out is what kind of videos we're going to shoot the most.
 

Patrick M

Senior Member
I've heard the 24-70 f4 S isn't good for video because of the manual ring.

With Manual Focus on the lens, the focus ring works as a focus ring, but you can set it OFF in custom settings f2 which means when the lens is set to A, the focus ring is inactive.

Are you saying you’d use manual focus for shooting video?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
 
Last edited:

Nero

Senior Member
With Manual Focus on the lens, the focus ring works as a focus ring, but you can set it OFF in custom settings f2 which means when the lens is set to A, the focus ring is inactive.

Are you saying you’d use manual focus for shooting video?


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk
Yup I would.
 
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