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Yes, exactly. That was the part I was agreeing with and developing, not trying to claim as a new point. If two people are saying the same thing, there is usually a reason for it. Always better than one person going one way and the other going the other way, just to create confusion, isn’t it? ; ) What interests me is that once convenience starts affecting the rhythm of the set, it is no longer just convenience in a minor sense. It becomes part of how the scene can actually be made. Time, pressure, continuity, the actors’ energy, the crew’s patience... all of that can feed back into the creative result. And I take your point on the 2x/3x terminology when it comes to lens design, range, price and compromise. In that context, of course it tells you something useful. My issue is more with the way it is used as shooting language, especially with phones and small cameras, where “2x” or “3x” often replaces any real sense of focal length, distance or perspective. Your parlor trick is actually a perfect example of what I mean. If you can look at the lens and camera position and already have a good idea of what is probably in the frame, then focal length is not trivia. It is practical spatial knowledge. And yes, Kubrick was right there. The frame may look similar, but once the camera distance changes, the shot has changed.

For me, it's not even an argument. Or if it is an argument, it's a silly one and I want to stay as far away from it as possible. There was a time when zooms were noticeably worse optically than primes - potentially made worse with the release of lenses like the Nikkor 43-86 (that said, I have and kind of love the 43-86, though I have yet to convince anybody to let me use it on set). But since sometime in the 80's, high quality zooms have existed. The 24-70/2.8's and 70-200/2.8's from Canon/Nikon have been fixtures in the bags of nearly every professional photographer since then. They're sharp, fast enough, and extremely convenient. I've used them on set dozens of times. When shooting by available light or when going for more extreme subject isolation, I might move to a faster prime... but when I do, I'm rarely like "wow, this is so much better." I'd even go so far as to challenge most of those people to tell the difference between the 24-70/2.8L II at 50mm stopped down to f/4 or f/5.6 and the EF or even RF 50/1.2L stopped down to f/4 or f/5.6. There might be a different character in the bokeh from the RF, but that's more of an ultra-modern design vs still-pretty-modern design concern vs a zooms vs primes one. I'm pretty sure that's what I just said. 😉 This goes with another of my parlor tricks when on someone else's set - pointing out things to them that will be a problem in their scene simply by looking at the lens on the camera and where it's pointed - I usually have a good idea of what their frame is without having to look at the screen. "You sure you don't have the sound engineer's pack in the frame on the right edge? With that 35mm lens, I'd think you'd see it." (pause) "Oh, yeah. Could you take a step back?" It can be useful for making a guess at the price/quality ratio of the lens (also based on the widest aperture). Finding a good quality f/2.8-f/4 lens that's a 2x or 3x is usually relatively affordable. 4x less so. At 5x, you're either going to be forking over a lot of money, getting a slower lens, or mounting a coke bottle to the camera. That said, I still check prices on the EF 35-350 sometimes in a fever dream since I'd like to see if it can be "good enough" in many cases - and the same with the more useful EF 28-300, but its used price is staying stubbornly high. Once it hits $700, I might buy one in a late-night drunken rampage or something (I barely drink these days so there are fewer opportunities than there once were). Kubrick was fully correct! As he often was!

That Kubrick story is a fine example because it puts the whole thing in very practical terms. It is not about fetishising focal lengths, or saying one lens is more “cinematic” than another. It is about the fact that the moment you decide whether to move the camera or change the lens, you are already making a directing choice, not just a technical one. Much as with the recent example I gave from Leonel Vieira’s A NOITE, which was based around specific focal lengths, the 75mm and 100mm lenses I mentioned. That is not just a preference for a certain look. It is about camera distance, pressure, and the way actors are observed inside the frame. Different names, different contexts, but the same practical truth: once the choice is made consciously, focal length stops being just a number on the lens and becomes part of the mise-en-scène.

I really wanted to like the PDMovie. I had the previous version (Air 3 Smart? Something like that) for a bit and ended up selling it after trying to use it just a few times. The weird batteries were a little annoying, but I could have lived with them if not for the complete lack of ability to choose what it focuses on. As far as I could tell, the focus would always be on "whatever is closest" With DJI focus, the hand grip has a little screen where you can at least tell it where you want the focus to be - and it'll successfully focus on that thing about... well, 85% of the time. For me, the systems that fake out PDAF are more exciting. I hope that someone comes out with one for RF mount sometime - or even better, for EF mount. Otherwise, the ones with a little motor are kind of neat - though moving the lens back and forth is not quite the same as adjusting the focus (though usually it's a relatively petty distinction).

This is exactly why I ended up selling my fp and fp-l. I tried just about everything to keep the kit small for raw recording. And kept coming back to how big they got, even with the smallest possible external SSD (one of the DPL SSD cases in their mount). By the time I added that, I had a camera the same size as my Canon R5, but also less capable than the R5. If Sigma would release the exact same camera, but able to record compressed 12-bit raw to SD card (Canon did it on the C70 and they do it in raw lt on the C80!) - or with a CFE slot that can record the existing uncompressed raw, I'd be strongly considering it again. The default size for the fp is just so good. Similarly, once the price of the bf gets to "not silly" level, I'd be apt to get one. Anyway, the ZR seems to be almost everything that I wanted the fp to be - it's another one that I'm likely to get someday after prices drop more (or there's a crazy good sale).

Interesting to see this thread again in 2026. Back then the idea sounded a bit futuristic, but now it feels like we are finally getting there from a few different directions. The iPhone LiDAR side is still interesting, especially with things like LidarAC, but what really caught my attention more recently is that we now have dedicated systems actually trying to turn manual lenses into something much closer to AF behavior. DJI Focus Pro is probably the most serious example so far. PDMOVIE is trying something similar too, though it seems a bit more compromised in how it decides what to lock onto. So in a way the original idea in this thread was right, just early. It was never only about using the iPhone as a clever measuring tape. The bigger idea was using LiDAR / distance mapping / external motors to bring some level of autofocus logic to manual lenses and cine setups, and that definitely seems real now. We are still not quite at “perfect native AF for any manual lens”, but compared to where this discussion started, it is no longer science fiction either. Has anyone here actually used one of these newer systems on a real shoot rather than just testing it at home?

I assume some of you have heard this story... when Stanley Kubrick got his first Hollywood job directing a movie, he asked the cinematographer to switch to a different lens for the next shot. Instead, he moved the camera to get the shot. Kubrick asked him to put the camera back and switch the lens like he asked. The cinematographer told him it was the same shot if you moved the camera or changed the lens. Being a photographer in his previous life, Kubrick disagreed and said the perspective changed. Unless I'm remembering this story incorrectly, the man vehemently disagreed and refused to do what Kubrick asked, so Kubrick was forced to fire him and throw him off his set. Of course there's a lot to lensing than just FOV, the question becomes how important does the perspective, in this case, matter? Kubrick was right, the shot changed and it mattered to him because it was his film. Would the audience have felt the difference in what he was trying to communicate with that specific lens, from that specific distance? Possibly. The question becomes how much does it affect yours. I remember when I first got my 5Diii and the 24-70mm f/4. I was checking the light on the talent and lining up my shot and the image looked a little flat, so I zoomed in and stepped back and the talent popped. In that instance, I used a little bit of 1,2 and 3 I suppose. I can't lie and say I did this to emphasize any theme or symbolism, I was merely looking for a shot with a bit more dimension so I zoomed with the zoom and zoomed with my feet... it was that moment I knew I was a pro in my own mind.

I think @kye’s point still stands, and maybe it becomes even clearer once you move away from the usual zooms vs primes argument. It always comes down to how much convenience a zoom actually buys you, especially when time becomes critical. On a controlled set, changing lenses can break rhythm, slow down the crew, cost minutes, and sometimes cost the shot. In uncontrolled environments, it can be even more decisive, because you may simply not have the time, the space, or the chance to change lenses before the moment is gone. So yes, a zoom can solve a very practical problem: time, reaction and continuity. That should not be underestimated. If the situation is changing in front of you, the practical convenience of a zoom can become creatively important too. But I don’t think this cancels the OP’s deeper point. There is also another kind of convenience in truly understanding a given focal length. It teaches you where to stand, how close to be, how to move, how much space to leave, and how the scene changes once your own position changes. A zoom may save the moment, but understanding focal lengths changes how you read the moment in the first place. And this is also why I have never had any patience for the 2x, 3x, 5x terminology. I always prefer the actual focal length value, because that tells me something real about the relationship between camera, subject and space. “2x” may be convenient marketing language, but “35mm”, “50mm” or “85mm” immediately tells you much more about how the image is likely to feel and how you may need to position yourself. Leonel Vieira is a good recent example of this. This June, while shooting the making-of on A NOITE, I was able to observe that very particular relationship he has with focal lengths, especially his liking for 75mm and 100mm lenses, focal lengths he has often favoured and used there. That is not just a technical preference. It affects distance, performance, compression, the way actors are observed, and the emotional space between camera and subject. With those lenses, the focal length becomes part of the staging itself, not just a number attached to the lens.

Exactly. What you call availablism is central here. But with Wong Kar-wai it never feels merely opportunistic. The available does not remain simply available. It becomes emotional architecture. Pre-handover Hong Kong gave him the lights, the colours, the cramped spaces, the corridors, the streets, the reflections and the limitations. But the art is in turning those given elements into mood, memory and desire. That is the difference between just using a location and allowing the location to become part of the film’s inner life. In that sense, the uncontrolled city is not only a background. It becomes a collaborator. Wong Kar-wai does not simply take what is there. He finds what is hidden inside what is there.

The gyro control itself is not new, correct. But I don’t think the interesting part here is simply that “gyro control exists”. Of course it does. Larger gimbals, phone apps, remote monitors and systems such as the Ronin 4D have already explored that territory. The question for me is not whether the underlying idea existed before, but whether it becomes useful in a different way once the whole system becomes small enough, fast enough, integrated enough and unobtrusive enough. Many ideas in cinema technology existed before they became truly useful. Stabilised camera movement existed before Steadicam became the right combination of body, balance, operation and image. Small cameras existed before 16mm, and later DV, changed the way filmmakers could move through reality. Remote operation existed before it became practical in the hands of a one or two-person crew. So yes, if we reduce this to “a gyro controlling a gimbal”, then it may sound like nothing new. But if we look at it as a pocket-sized 1-inch 10-bit Log gimbal camera, with several focal lengths, proper monitoring, autonomous operation and a dedicated head-tracking accessory, then the proposition changes. It is not only the control method. It is the form factor plus the image pipeline plus the operating mode. A phone strapped to your head controlling a larger gimbal is one thing. A compact dedicated device that can sit inside a BTS, documentary or walk-around setup, become boring after a while, and follow intention without the operator constantly raising, aiming and correcting the camera is another thing. That is where I think the usefulness may appear. Not necessarily for everyone. Not necessarily for controlled narrative setups. And probably not as a replacement for a skilled operator with a proper camera package. But for small crews, making-of work, observational documentary, rehearsals, production diaries, street work and situations where the act of operating the camera visibly changes the behaviour of the people being filmed, I can absolutely see the value. In that sense, I don’t see it as revolutionary because gyro control is new. I see it as potentially revolutionary because a previously awkward idea may finally be arriving in a form factor where it can become natural, invisible and operationally useful.

"Cinema" over the last 130 years would strongly beg to differ in terms of the size of the imaging sensor used. 😉 This one is a best seller, presumably, because it was just recently announced and it's still in preorder state (with a free PL adapter!). I'm tracking it, though, as it's in the "less squeeze, but with oval aperture" that I find somewhat interesting, as shooting true 2x anamorphic feels generally unwieldy. I'll point out that even in a distortion-free 28mm lens, shooting a close-up tends to be unflattering due to perspective. The reason longer focal lengths tend to be seen as more flattering is because the relative distance from the nearest part of the face (probably the nose) and the rest of the face (especially the eyes) is much larger. If I am standing 12" from a subject with a nose 1" long, the nose will seem much larger in comparison than if I am standing 48-72" from the same subject. This can be observed simply by holding the hand about 11" from the face and moving it back 1". The difference in size is noticeable - and it is for the nose in a portrait as well. There's an additional part of this which will get you chased out of a number of forums for heresy - if you are shooting at sufficiently high resolution, you can take a couple of steps back with your 28mm lens and then just digitally reframe/zoom in on the subject and get functionally the same result as putting on a slightly longer lens at the same aperture value (give or take variances in lens character, etc). If you're shooting at 8K to deliver in 4K, it can be a pretty big couple of steps. This is basically turning a prime lens into a zoom lens. This sort of thing is specifically why I love having a 180mm macro lens - it lets me do extrame c-u of an actor's eye or eyes without getting the entire camera package right up in their grill. No matte box, though. I ain't professional enough to use a matte box. Controlled sets can also be places where using a Zoom lens becomes more attractive, as swapping lenses can take 3-5 minutes. - Detach FF gears - Remove support - Unmount first lens - Mount second lens - Attach support - Attach FF gears - If using electronic FF, run calibration - Potentially, if on a fancier set than I'm usually on, inform whoever is doing script notes of the change If shooting under any sort of time constraints, everybody will start to hate you after a little while if doing this frequently. This sort of thing is why I've begun using a Canon C80 with autofocus stills lenses for timed film competitions. I did one with the RF 24-105/2.8 on loan from CPS (worked great, beautiful lens, maybe someday when the price is more reasonable, I'll buy one) and another with my own 24-70/2.8L II and 24-70/4L IS and swapped in the 85/1.4L IS for some close-ups and the 180/3.5L for some extreme close-ups. It's been working really, really well. On the last set, when someone got annoyed that I was swapping lenses again for some reason, they timed me - total time for a lens swap was about 1 minute 15 seconds (no lens supports, no FF gears).

For me, I'm still not seeing that as especially useful or revolutionary. It's been possible for a long time, probably 10+ years, to do gyro control of larger gimbals (usually through the phone app, but I think I had or saw at least one with an external gyroscope controller in the past). It never took off much and I never saw anybody strap a phone to their head to remotely control their gimbal. I'm not sure if gyro controls are in DJI MIMO, but if they are, it's already basically possible with the Pocket 3. I've found gyro control to be somewhat useful with the Ronin 4D (including with the flex unit). On one shoot, I was getting too tired to carry the camera anymore so the grips started carrying it around while I controlled the frame from the gyro on the high bright remote monitor. It worked... OK. It'd be better if we'd practiced it beforehand, probably. For me, it's more "parlor trick" than "genuinely useful tool" in most cases.

When I was younger I got some idea that all movies were made this way. I don't know where I got that idea but maybe heard something about the methods on TV. I was surprised that, after a long time in the indie film and video art world to then enter the world of the commercial conventional film industry and see the scripts and crew people all the work to make sure things go exactly as planned. (It kind of takes the fun out of it.) Wan Kar Wai's "look" really comes out of availablism. He was living there and went out and shot it. This was pre-handover Hong Kong where space was limited. The lights, colours and "sets" were already there. The art is in taking what's around you and framing it for a story.

They only bummed out twice today, but as I was anticipating it, could manage the situation. But it is a super heatwave for France and not normal for anything more than a day or so max, but this is heading towards a week and the biggest issue is the cameras are hot even before you switch them on due to the air temp in the shade. I think storing them in a cool box is the way forward and not something I have tried before but maybe should! Just have to empty all my water bottles…

Yeah there's definitely an "I don't care what you're doing" thought process in NYC but I think it's more of a survival instinct than anything else. It's actually quite odd. You can walk by someone, make eye contact and nod or smile and they will completely ignore you. I'd imagine if you lived there you'd get used to it, but it seems like you're alone in a sea of people. But for filmmaking on the sly, that's great. Without knowing the exact concept (I'm picturing a Before Sunrise kinda thing) I stand by the idea of keeping a small footprint and understanding the POV of the camera in the story. As @Bioskop.Inc said, if you can keep the dialogue minimal, by utilizing the mood and tone of your locations, then all the better. Also make sure to get clean dialogue takes so you can cut to a different take and use the dialogue over it... eventually people will look at you as they pass by. Otherwise stay small and nimble and flexible with your locations. If you can make a scene work on a park bench instead of walking... even better.

Same. Well I only have one body but I'll never sell it. If not for a few modern conveniences, none of which being higher resolution, I wouldn't even bother with any other camera. I bought and returned the R50V. I actually really liked the camera, especially for the price, but its inability to display exposure tools and the View Assist LUT at the same time was way too frustrating and the Histogram wasn't accurate enough for me. But I did see they updated the firmware to allow the LUT and False Color to be turned on at the same time, so that's pretty cool. Of course that happened exactly 3 days after I returned it. I picked up a refurbed V1 directly from Canon and I like it a lot. Am using it, and the 5D3, for a short film I'm writing. That's exactly what I thought about the FP and when it arrived my jaw dropped seeing how small it is... but... then you quickly realize how big the thing gets once you add a cage and an SSD on top. I spent hours upon hours researching and testing different configurations to keep it compact. I looked at the Dark Power stuff, but I was trying to keep the camera package as cheap and small as possible. The best I could come up with was to shoot it in 8bit cDNG mode with an SDXC card and a NiceyRig handle. The 8bit quality isn't bad at all in CDNG. But the cards are expensive and you can't get much footage onto a 128gb card... plus I'd rather shoot 12bit so I got a generic cage off Amazon and bought a couple SSDs and just attached them with a phone tripod clamp. I also bought a SmallRig drive encasement and put a Samsung drive inside and that kept it fairly small. Last summer I finally had a project to shoot with it and with all my tests, I didn't really realize how quickly it ate through batteries until I was on set. Luckily, I had just enough power and drives to make the day, but I was starting to get nervous. That's a great price for the FP if you can find one. I'm probably going to trade mine in to take advantage of the ZR $100 trade in bonus through B&H. I'll get a little less for the camera, but not that much less when you add the fees and headaches of eBay, private sales. I was wavering between the ZR and R6V, I really like the idea of the 3K S16 crop mode on the R6V and I love the body style, but the ZR just offers to many other shooting options internally and the internal 32bit audio... no brainer for me for now. All that said, if you like shooting raw video, which you obviously do, then the FP is a fun camera with a bunch of little quirks that aren't necessarily deal breakers but can be frustrating sometimes.

During the shooting of IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE, the lead actress, Maggie Cheung, complained to her co-star Tony Leung that she had absolutely no clue what was going on. He told her something along the lines of not to worry, because they would end up with a masterpiece. That uncertainty was not accidental, but part of Wong Kar-wai’s working method. Rather than starting from a fixed, fully locked script, he often finds the film during the shooting itself, shaping scenes, characters, rhythms and emotional tensions through repetition, variation and discovery. The actors may not always know exactly where the story is going, but the final film emerges from that process: less as a pre-planned construction than as something gradually found in the performances, the silences, the gestures and the atmosphere. It remains one of my favourite films, and Wong Kar-wai one of my fave filmmakers BTW : ) On a personal note, my own career in Asia as a filmmaker began there. Not only because of the beauty of his images, but because of the way he turns uncertainty, restraint and emotional incompletion into cinema. Few films are so precise while seeming so elusive, or so deeply romantic while refusing almost every conventional gesture of romance. With Wong Kar-wai, desire always seems to exist somewhere beyond the frame. The way the inner universe of the male character is developed makes cinema an internal experience: from the male character into the viewer. An absolute gem. Wong Kar-wai shoots the soul from within, and the inner world through the soul. Remarkable stuff, and yet it is there.

Zoom Vs Primes! Horses for courses isn't it, but more and more i will go out with my Tokina 28-70mm f2.6-2.8 - 3 focal lengths in one, no brainer! This is not to say that I don't like primes, well not entirely - I'm not too keen on wide angle lenses as they produce distortion the wider you go. And then this can be a bonus, try doing a close-up with a wide angle lens - the wider the better. So, the whole thing about you have to use a wide lens for landscapes or an 80mm for portraits is just nonsense. You use what you want to achieve the result that you want - there are no rules or if you are more traditional, rules are meant to be broken! If you follow the herd, you'll just produce pictures/films that look like everyone else's - how are you going to stand out if you aren't being creative in your lens choices?

Chungking Express by Wong Kar-Wai Absolute masterclass in film making. Think it was shot in S16mm film, but the most impressive thing about the film was that he shot it in 2 weeks whilst waiting to edit Ashes of Time. The script/story changed whilst they were filming and they shot on location in Hong Kong. I think if you're going to write to make a film, keep it simple - if you look at Wong Kar-Wai's early films like Chungking Express, Fallen Angels, In the Mood for Love etc. - the premise is always simple/basic and they shine a focus on very few characters which really draws you in and with quite limited dialogue. He creates a mood and you should use the environment where you are filming to make it another character in the film, which complements the atmosphere you are trying to create in the story you are telling. Having filmed a lot for TV in cities etc. it really makes you focus on what you are trying to do and ultimately achieve - you've got to do things quickly and ignore what is actually going on around you, get the shot and be ready to be adaptable.

That's such a bummer, re: the overheating. I've been eyeing the original S1R for stills. Was hoping he used price would go down more, but it hasn't moved much in the last year.

Voigtländer made a 90 mm f/3.5 Apo Lanthar for DSLRs. Nikon made a series E 100 mm f/2.8 that is very compact. I think most people today prefer to use zooms for landscape photography. Short tele lenses of smaller maximum apertures typically have some close-up capability or even may be optimized primarily for close-ups. I believe for the most part, manufacturers follow sales and make their product lineups based on sales data combined with estimated future demand. Often users just have to adapt to what is available if they want to use new lenses. Even popular lenses can be neglected or discontinued if the manufacturer wants to promote something new. One issue with non-macro primes of smaller apertures is that manufacturers find it easier to market product lineups where there is a clear line of progression from one level of product upwards to the mid-level and top-of-the-line, and every parameter of performance should improve along the way. This means that although it would be easier to make smaller-aperture lenses better optically than large-aperture lenses of corresponding focal lengths, the manufacturers will make every effort to make the reverse true and the larger-aperture lenses better in image quality, focus speed, etc. and sometimes this means the smaller aperture lenses don't get all the quality they could have. This is unfortunate as I believe there is significant demand for compact, very high quality lenses.

I remember Jim Kasson once said in his blog he wished there was a small but sharp corner to corner 85mm f/4 lens for landscape (he would prefer a f/5.6 one, but it would look silly marketing wise). 99% of photographers these days can't see whats the point of that, they all learned that 85 is for portrait and it should be fast to create a blurry background. So lens makers don't even think about that. We have gazillions of 85mm f/1.4 on the market right now, but none truly optimized for landscape. The irony is camera makers are trying to make full frame body as small as possible, so a compact 85mm would be ideal for a landscape combo, but everybody assumes compact=slim body+28mm pancake.

Well one thing is for sure and that is the S5II absolutely annihilates the S1RII, even with the ‘heat management’ firmware update. Shooting a pair of S1RII’s and a single S5II, same or at least similar lenses, tripods, same settings (4k) at approx 40 degrees Celsius in the shade…and the S1RII’s within 20 minutes shut down each, 3x. Quick battery changes helped string out a couple more minutes before the next inevitable shutdown. Meanwhile, the S5II mumbled something about holding its beer. That’s it, one unit is being traded for an S1II, which was something I was considering anyway. S1RII principle photo and occasional video S1II principle all day video unit S5II workhorse tripod unit S9 backup and roaming ceremony unit L10 candid & details unit But otherwise zero criticisms of how this kit is performing. Ticks basically every box for my needs.

I've been thinking about lenses a lot over the last few years, and just to be cheeky I've put some observations into a framework. Level 1 is where we start - with zooms The normal start to using lenses is with zoom lenses, probably the kit lens. We know the thinking at this stage: its convenient, you stand in one place and zoom, hooray! Level 2 is what most YT lens videos are about - primes are better than zooms We all know the arguments. Primes make you "zoom with your feet", they make you learn about perspective, they're sharper, better in low-light, BOKEH!!!!1, you can learn the FOV and develop an instinct for it, vintage ones are cheap, "real photographers / cinematographers use primes!" There are approximately 1000 billion videos and tutorials explaining this, but this seems to be where the thinking stops. I've not seen that much stuff that goes beyond this, but this is really just the start. Level 3 is where understanding begins - zooms and primes have their uses Almost none of the discussion up until this point acknowledges that lenses create images, and images have aesthetics, and aesthetics are what is actually being discussed. Moving to talk about motion pictures now, and cinema especially, there is a bunch of nuance that Level 2 doesn't really discuss. People have decided that FF sensors are the most 'cinematic' and typically are used with FF vintage lenses. This means that the FOVs are 24mm / 28 / 35 / 50 / 85 / 100 etc, with maybe a 40mm in there if you're getting fancy. These weren't the FOVs of cinema though, because cinema was S35. So the FOVs of cinema using the 50/40/35/27/18 were really like 75mm/60mm/52.5mm/40.5mm/27mm. It gets stranger when you add anamorphic into the mix. If I go to B&H anamorphic cinema lens category and sort by best sellers, we get: - DZOFilm Arcana Anamorphic Prime 3-Lens Kit, which are FF and 32/45/75mm and 1.5x, so on FF they are: 21mm 30mm and 50mm - BLAZAR LENS Talon 50mm T2.1 1.5x, which is FF and equivalent to a 33mm - Sirui Saturn 35mm T2.9 1.6x which is FF and equivalent to 22mm If you're using the standard FF lenses on a FF camera, you are using the FOVs that stills photographers used, rather than those that cinematographers used. Shooting on S35 sensor size (or crop mode) with FF lenses can create some of these in-between FOVs too. People at Level 2 thinking probably won't be swayed by the above. I would imagine the thinking is take a step forward or back, what's the difference? Level 4 is where understanding begins to mature - enter the feedback loop The feedback loop is where you realise that the focal length changes how you shoot. A ridiculous example to illustrate it. You decide to shoot on only a 28mm on a FF camera, but when you frame up a close-up shot, the distortion makes the talent look awful, so you take a step back and now the footage feels more distant because we're not seeing the talents face so much because there are no close-ups. We all know about perspective from level 2 thinking, but the level 3 thinking was that taking a step forward or back was no big deal, so which is it? This stuff is subtle, but (like all feedback loops) it pushes us to act differently and this can create a cascade of changes over time. Level 4 thinking realises that this dynamic is powerful and pervasive. I shoot in public, so I don't control the environment. I discovered that if I shoot with a 35mm FOV then I can get environmental portraits of my friends and family from close enough that people won't walk in-between me and them, but moving beyond a 45mm I'd either get shots of them that were tight and didn't really show their environment that well, or I'd step back and be struggling with people walking in-between me and the subject, which is a completely different situation. How would I respond to this? I might shoot from eye-level instead of chest height. Now I've changed the shot angle because of a FOV change. If I shot from eye-level for a while I might notice that I get more attention and now I find that the people interacting with my subject are more aware they're being filmed and keep looking at the camera. Now my subjects are acting differently because of a FOV change. If I asked someone the difference between shooting with a 35mm and 45mm would they think it would change the shot angle and subject behaviour? Not with the Level 2 thinking of "primes are sharper! duh!!", or the Level 3 thinking of "just take a step back! duh!!". What about controlled sets? Sure, on a controlled set there aren't random people walking in-front of the camera, but now we're talking about actors and all the dynamics that goes on there. Can great actors deliver amazing performances while the matte-box is only inches from their face? Sure. Do YOU have actors that are that good? I don't think so. Can great production designers change a set to accommodate a camera being further away, while keeping the frame looking the same? We know that as we move the camera back the subject gets smaller in frame, and that as we do that the background gets smaller but not nearly as fast as the subject does. This is great if you are only filming the subject and don't really pay attention to the composition of the entire frame. But you're a talented cinematographer, so you want to move back a bit and keep the same composition, which means that production design needs to 'cheat the camera' and basically rearrange every item in frame that isn't in the very background. I remember shooting a student film in a cafe and every setup required moving the vase of flowers on the table the subject was sitting at. That vase probably used two-thirds of the area of the table! I watched a video recently where a street photographer tested a 40mm prime for the first time. They didn't know what to make of it, having only a week to shoot with it before they had to release their video review. What struck me wasn't that they didn't know what shooting with a 40mm was like, it was that they didn't seem to understand that there's a period of learning that goes on, they didn't understand that the feedback loop exists. I realised they had 'learned' each focal length by memorising its attributes (which Level 2 photographers will crap on at great length about), rather than having learned them for himself by following a process where you explore the feedback loop and see how it makes you feel and how it makes you act and how the world responds to that, and how you respond in turn, and how the loop feels and matures over time, and how to make the loop go faster etc. I recently spent some time in a small town in rural Japan and shot the same location with FOVs equivalent to 71mm, 82mm, and 100mm. I went out for a walk each night with one of those lenses, going out for perhaps an hour or two. Shots that were possible with one were not with the next, shots that were great with one were lifeless with another. As I walked down the same road from my accommodation seeing the same shots night-after-night and making different framing decisions with each lens (and deciding to take the shot or not to bother as it didn't work) I noticed that I made different decisions to walk one way or another as certain subjects required different FOVs and distances to make them. I've also spend a lot of time, over several trips, shooting night scenes with 68mm and 71mm FOVs. In some locations I can make some shots and not others, while in other locations I can take different shots. If I'm shooting across a road then the width of that road (combined with my FOV) determines the type of shots I can take. After taking a number of those types of shots I start to adapt to how I'm shooting these locations. The more I shoot the more everything feels different. Level 3 thinking says "just take a step back, what's the difference?" and when shooting in those situations the difference between a 35mm and a 50mm feels like it's a span where there are several complete aesthetics in-between the 35mm end and the 50mm end. Thinking about shooting a 50mm FOV vs an 85mm FOV feels like travelling to a different country where things look similar but feel very different in practice. I know I'm barely scratching the surface of Level 4, and perhaps there are levels beyond this that I'm unaware of, but it's just amazing to me that almost no-one seems to talk about anything beyond Level 2. It's probably controversial to say, but I deliberately avoid almost all stills-only people because the thinking seems so rudimentary in comparison to people who shoot moving images. You can feel the limited thinking and the "well, actually!!!!" responses where they miss the entire point entirely because one lens is sharper or something ridiculous. Anyway, hopefully this helps. I've not really heard anyone talk about this stuff, which seems a shame as the rabbit hole is very deep and to only talk about ankle-deep water seems silly.

No. Remember: the First Amendment ; ) Secondly, we now have AI, and AI can be made to justify almost anything ;- ) The Soviet Union came to an end on Christmas Day, 1991.