Prime Vs Zooms

[MitchSteedman]

Hello all! I’ve been looking into investing in some lenses for weddings, short films, & documentaries. I’ve been bouncing back & forth between purchasing some inexpensive cinema primes or middle-of-the-road zoom lenses. As a young cinematographer, I’m curious about what more experienced vets of the field have to say on this topic.

Do zooms

Topic

[MitchSteedman]

Whoops! Accidentally sent this out too early.

I meant to finish with: Do zooms give better future-proofing compared to cinema lenses due to their wide focal flexibility?

Thanks!

[Al Duffield]

Zooms buy you speed (shooting not aperture) at the expense of size, weight and image “quality”.

I don’t have any experience shooting weddings, but in documentary I have rarely has time to change lenses while the action is happening.

in narrative work, assuming you have assistants then changing lenses is less burdensome and there are regular and predictable breaks when lenses can be changed without holding anything up.

so I’m my mind it’s impractical to shoot weddings and documentary on primes, given that’s 2/3 of your listed work I see no logical choose other than to get both 😂.

[Matt Stahley]

I agree with Al. Zooms all the way for doc work unless you are just shooting talking head interviews and some b roll you could get away with primes but if you are running and gunning nothing more convenient than a nice zoom that’s wide to medium tele.

[Author]

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