Ben Ekstein bedazzled by light
So… what do you do when you are invited to hang at a lens test party with a bunch of cinematographers slinging cool gear and a promise of free food? A sort of lingerie party for guys? You shoot a BTS short film of course! And that’s exactly what I did as DPs Ben Eckstein, Chris Loughran and the gang scrutinized a plethora of lenses ranging in price from $350 to $20,000 on a Panasonic AG-AF100. But not before consuming some big beefy burgers and washing them down with ice cold beer.
The meat of the story
Where are the lens and bottle caps?
Chris Loughran and Ben Ekstein comparing shots.
Ki Pro Mini set to ProRes 422
Loughran slapped a Ki Pro Mini compact field recorder set to ProRes 422 on the AF100 rig while the rest of us assisted Eckstein lighting the set – his kitchen. Well actually they helped while I documented with my Canon 60D and Tamron f2.8 17-50mm lens. I told the boys to go easy on the Tamron putdowns, but you can scrutinize this BTS film here for yourselves. It’s not a bad piece of glass for run and gun work… and I picked it up on CL for $350.
Chris handles the Cooke lens with kid gloves.
Focus is looking good with minimal lens breathing.
Chris sets up the monitor.
The set was lit flat with no dramatic effect and had minimal shadows. And although the test did not include any low light conditions or blown out white levels, each lens saw the exact same short scene with no changes made in the room.
Keith Wasserman does some banana shtick.
Brandon Vincent playing it straight.
Keith Wasserman was hilarious as 1st banana repeatedly ad-libbing his way through each take and lens swap with 2nd banana Brandon Vincent acting as droll straight man. Michael Murie and Matt Stapleton also shot some footage of the event while Ben Pender-Cudlip was drafted for iPad FilmSlate duty. Even Eckstein’s dog Schnitzel made a cameo appearance in my BTS short.
Schnitzel waits for a burger???
Michael Murie shoots some footage for his BTS film.
Ben Pender-Cudlip slating the scene.
Matt Stapleton adds another camera to the mix.
The results? Besides the belching and a few random SBDs… here’s the full report from Ben Ekstein: benjamineckstein.com/2011/09/the-big-ole-lens-test-party/
Lens lineup
The Lenses:
Cooke S4 35mm
Zeiss CP2 35mm
Zeiss Superspeed 35mm
Nikon 17-35mm
Olympus 14-35mm
Canon 17-55mm
Tamron 17-50mm
Sigma 30mm
Most of the lenses were provided by Rule Boston Camera.
Music by Kevin MacLeod “Scheming Weasel”
incompetech.com
More BTS fun from Michael Murie: youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=kYpk94BIIGg#!
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