Full Frame, What Would I Do Differently?

If I could wind the clock back to last year, with perfect hindsight of course, I would have either not done it at all, or saved a lot of money by chasing just the cinematic side of it.

The Lumix S primes are nice lenses. They are sitting in an odd spot in my kit/life.

They are auto focus lenses supported by a decent AF stills camera, but a video camera with issues. These issues are only highlighted by the newer S5 series, but even more so by the G9II.

Taken on my cheapest lens, the TTArt 35 f1.4 ($75au) which is very unlike these consistently sharp, modern and matched ones.

If used for stills only, Sigma makes a cheaper, smaller and sharper set.

If you take AF out of the equation, then the cinema lenses I have recently bought are better options for video. These have more character and are substantially cheaper (2:1 in this case).

The “other” three, the three I like to use and feel are better bang for my cinema buck.

It seems I have either;

A second “modern” cinema set,

or

A stills set, which could have been cheaper.

or

A hybrid set, with a better cinema option available.

The cine glass was a steal and it mostly came first, but I still went with completing the S-prime set?

I have two each of the 35 and 50mm full frame lenses, the cine lenses are my favourite.

I only have one 85mm, but I would have likely skipped this focal length for video with APS-C 75mm available (or bought the 85 Spectrum).

I have a 150mm macro, which to be honest is the oddest of oddities, but great fun and an equally good/bad fit for either set.

For cinema, wider is not really an issue, so the 20-60 can do that, but if I was only doing cinema lenses, the new 7Art 14mm would have done (or the IRIX 30mm for less than the three Lumix primes). The ideal in hind sight would have probably been the 30 and 150 IRIX for about $3k.

An even smarter idea may have been to do only Sirui Nightwalker lenses in M43 and APS-C L mount as perfectly matched sets, although they are poorly matched within their own range lens to lens. For example, two Sirui 24’s acting as a 35 in L-mount and 50mm in M43 mount equivalents would match perfectly, then a pair of 55’s (110 in M43, 85 in L-mount), but the 24 and 55 are slightly different to each other in colour.

All four would have come in under the Lumix S lenses, with room for maybe another like the 35 (50) in L mount.

Got to stop living in my recent past and embrace (or sell) all of my kit, but in answer to the question, I would have rigged up the S5 as a cinema camera (with Spectrum and/or IRIX lenses) and mostly left stills to M43, or gone M43 all up, or just bought the S-primes, but then I would have missed out on those bargains.