50mm Shootout - Which Lens is the Best?

today we figure out which 50 millimeter is the greatest ever [Music] [Applause] [Music] hey everybody welcome to another episode of tomorrow's filmmakers my name is Justus mcrainey and like I said in today's video we're going to be having a shootout between all of canons 50 millimeter lenses we have the 50 millimeter f1 point 81.4 Canon L Series lens F 1.2 and of course canons 50 millimeter cinema lens t 1.3 now I know what a lot of you guys might be thinking well won't the $4,000 lens win in like every single category so what's the point of this shootout and yes it does win in a lot of categories because it is $4,000 but at the same time I thought to myself can I really tell a difference in the quality like if I were to put the 1.4 and the cinema lens next to each other could I really tell a difference in the quality and that's what I want to ask you guys as well can you tell a difference between a $300 lens and a $4,000 lens so before I get started I just want to let you guys know that this is not a review of each of these lenses this is just a shootout to determine which one is better in different categories now if you want more lens reviews or lens comparison videos or basically anything about filmmaking check out our website at tomorrow's for makers calm or we have over 350 video lessons and materials in almost 60 hours of content I also want to give a special thank you to Lin's Pro to go for helping us out with this shootout so if you ever need to rent any sort of camera equipment whatever it is definitely check them out they have great products and fantastic prices and if you use the coupon code tomorrow's ten you can get 10% off your purchase all year round so the aspects of these lenses that we're gonna be comparing is price build quality the f-stop the lens breathing the focusing the function the lens flares the bokeh the sharpness and of course the quality and we'll have some video comparisons at the end so that you guys can determine for yourself if you can really tell a difference so starting off with number one is price so the 50 millimeter F one point eight comes in first place or last place I think it's first place first place the F 1.8 is a hundred and twenty-five dollars followed closely by the F one point four which is three hundred and fifty dollars the L Series lens is gonna be a jump at thirteen hundred and fifty dollars and an even bigger jump than that of course is going to be the cinema lens which depending on where you buy it is right around four thousand dollars but of course there are reasons for all of these price differences and we're gonna be talking about all of that starting with build quality the cheapest lens by far is going to be the most cheaply made lens which is the F one point eight which is made entirely out of plastic even the mounting ring on the back is made out of plastic and I've actually heard some people trying to remove the lens have actually broken it off sometimes because it's so cheaply made and to be honest I don't know if the glass inside of it is glass I'm still indecisive on that I'll get back to you the F one point four is definitely considered an upgrade to the one point eight it has some plastic parts to it but it does have a metal house and a metal mounting ring so that's definitely an improvement and second place is the L Series lens which is made entirely out of metal it's much heavier and much higher quality and of course first place is going to be the cinema lens which is another completely metal body without a speck of plastic inside of it at all it's improved glass improved optics and it is just so much better made than all the other lenses next is the f-stop or how wide the aperture can open and for this test we were gonna ask my really good friend to help us out and his name is Darth Maul and the F one-point-eight comes in last place because it can only open up to F 1.8 and the background isn't as quite as blurry and you aren't able to let as much light into the camera the F 1.4 comes in third place the L Series lens can open up to F 1.2 which is much wider now the cinema lens is a little bit different because it is not measured in f-stops it is measured in t stops now t stops and f stops are very different and a lot of you guys might know this but it is very very difficult to compare the two so it's very difficult to say F 1.2 is T 1 something so you can't really compare them perfectly but T 1.3 is around 1.2 1.4 so it's it can open up pretty wide but I can't tell you the exact amount that it can open up in f-stop form next is Lynne's breathing now if you've never heard of Lynne's breathing before basically whenever you are racking focus from something really close to really far away sometimes the cheaper Lynne's actually kind of zooms in and zooms out the frame just a little bit I mean it's not like obnoxious but it's obvious enough that it has a name and it's called Lin's breathing so with the cheapest lens the F 1.8 whenever we rack focus from our subject to the background if you can see on the very left side here at the edge of the poster that the frame actually zooms in and zooms out very slightly again it's not a lot but it is enough that it has a name for it and that's called Lin's breathing because it almost looks like the lens itself is breathing so of course the F 1.8 definitely has a lot more lens breathing than the others the F 1.2 does have some lens breathing not quite as much as the F 1.8 the F 1.2 has actually pretty similar lens breathing it's not a massive difference or a big improvement but it is some improvement and the cinema lens does do the best job it still has a little bit of lens breathing not a ton but it is enough that you can still see it just a little bit and I don't know if it is 100 cent possible to get rid of Lin's breathing entirely but the cinema lens is definitely improved and much better when it comes to lens breathing next we're gonna be talking about focusing how easy it is to focus with these lenses how difficult it is and last place is going to have to be the cheapest lens the F 1.8 with this very dinky tiny little focus ring this thing sucks it really does it's completely plastic of course and this focus ring is so tiny that the slightest little movement is going to throw it completely off now for some strange reason this lens has hard stops I have no idea why but I will give it credit for that the F 1.4 comes in third place with a much improved focus ring and more distance between the stops but it does not have hard it doesn't why on earth does the F 1.8 have heart stops I do not know this but the F 1.4 is improved in many many ways the F 1.2 comes in second place with again an improved focus mechanism that is much smoother and much quieter now the F 1.4 is actually much louder whenever you're focusing than the F 1.2 and that's because the F 1.2 has improved focus mechanisms that is a much smoother and much quieter and it has just about the same focus ring size as the F 1.4 it's a maybe the slightest a bit bigger but it's just about the same as the 1.4 but the cinema lens comes in first place with an absolutely beautiful and almost completely silent focus wheel and it has built-in grooves for a follow focus 300-degree focus throw which is almost like a complete 100 percent turn and the exact distance on the side of the lens now this makes it so much easier for a focus puller when you can actually see the focal distance that's on the side of the lens now I have found a slight problem that I've run into with the cinema lens that makes it lower on the totem pole in our next category which is function and this is where things get a little bit tricky now if you are filming a short film and you have a crew and you have a focus puller and you're setting up the shots beforehand and you're testing out the focusing then this is your lens then the functionality of this lens is perfect it's got the focal rings it's got the distance I mean everything is beautiful but if you are a running gun shooter you're a guerrilla filmmaker if you're filming a documentary in Afghanistan or something like that this lens will kill you now remember this has a 300 degree focus turn which means to focus really close to really far away you have to turn this thing almost all the way around and because it's so big you can't do it in one fluid motion so you're gonna have to be sitting there if you want to focus on something really far away you're gonna have to move it and then to focus really back you're gonna have to twist it and twist it and it's not gonna be smooth so running gun shooting this thing doesn't work at all because it is meant for precision focusing with a focus puller or if you're gonna be practicing the focusing beforehand that's perfect but run-and-gun shooting this thing doesn't work the L Series lens for example I can focus really far away to really close by just turning my hand one time just like that so if there's something really close get the focus get the focus get the focus and you can do it really quickly and it's much more user-friendly if you're a one-man band running gun shooter now I'm not saying the cinema lens is bad because if you're filming a short film or a bigger project it would definitely come in first place but if you're a one-man band running gun shooter it comes in last place alright so now that we have talked about the outside of the lens and all the features of it and the functionality and the focusing now it is time to talk about the meat of this shootout which is going to be the image quality and the first thing we are going to start with our lens flares so as you guys know lens flares are very popular now and if you're shooting video a lot of people want lens flares in fact I've been on professional sets where if there's not a lens flare they will create one with a mirror trying to reflect the Sun into the lens because it looks so beautiful so lens flares are very very popular now so which one of these lenses does the best with lens flares well you have to remember that three of these lenses are photography lenses that we're using for video and one of them is a video lens and in photography lens flares aren't quite as popular because you're trying to get that crisp image so that's why there's lens hoods that they sell and they try to coat it properly so you don't get as many lens flares and they actually market it as less lens flares with this lens so like the 1.8 if we try to get lens flares you can see maybe a little bit but it's not quite as good the 1.4 may be a little bit better lens flare the 1.2 it is a little bit better lens flare but again the lens flares just aren't that good they're kind of dinky and whenever we switch over to the cinema lens you can see that there's a pretty nice lens flare so these photography lenses try to actually not get lens flares and so whenever we put them on our camera we can see the lens flares aren't really that good and some of them they're not really even existent they're just kind of nothing the F 1.8 doesn't really have that good the lens flare it's okay and the cinema lens has a much better looking lens flare now the reason for this is because they have designed this for videos so there's nothing inside this lens that is trying to prevent lens flares in fact it's almost encouraging it so the reason the cinema lens looks so much better with lens flares is because they're not trying to prevent it like other photography lenses might so the cinema lens is going to look better with lens flares next is going to be bokeh now if you don't know a bokeh is it's basically out-of-focus light behind your subject that creates kind of a circle and what you want with those are perfectly round circles that looks very cinematic and that's proper bokeh now whenever I was doing these tests I found that the improvements were subtle but they were an improvement for example the cinema lens looks the most rounded it's a it's a circle and this light on the left side I know it's kind of strange I used it like a different shaped light because I wanted to try something different and it looks weird the entire time but this light is a circle and it looks beautiful now whenever you start to get into the cheaper lenses like the F 1.8 the circle can start to look kind of like an oval or sometimes kind of like an octagon or a hexagon or like a stop sign kind of effect and the reason that is is because the blades inside the aperture so a lens with say seven or eight blades whenever it's closed down into a circle it kind of actually has more of a hexagon or an octagon kind of look it's not a perfect circle and sometimes the bokeh in the back will start to look like that shape the cinema lens on the other hand has 11 aperture blades so it looks like a circle much better than the other ones would because it has more aperture blades the F 1.8 again seven or eight blades so it doesn't look like a perfect circle it can either look kind of hexagon ish or kind of oval ish but this one looks like a perfect circle so again even though the improvements are subtle they are still improvements and they are still thought out to be an improvement and to be better than the other lenses now the last two that I want to talk about is sharpness and quality and again this is where I really want to ask you the question can you tell a difference so before I tell you guys which one is which see if you can tell a difference in sharpness so right here we're looking at a brick wall with kind of a shadow through the middle of it and I've shot this brick wall with four different lenses all at the exact same settings all of these shots have the exact same settings and they are all at F 1.8 to kind of give everybody a chance [Music] [Music] so this one is going to be the $300 F 1.4 lens again set to F 1.8 number two was the four thousand dollar cinema lens number three was the cheapest lens the F one point eight at 125 bucks and the last one was the L Series lens which is thirteen hundred and fifty dollars now looking at those again can you really tell a difference can you really see a big sharpness improvement or a quality improvement now again I want to show you some other shots that I took with these lenses completely in random order without telling you what they are because I want you guys to see if you can really tell a difference [Music] [Music] so the first one that you guys saw was the cinema lens the second one was the cheapest lens the F 1.8 the third one was the L Series lens at thirteen hundred and fifty dollars and the fourth one was the F one point four now I don't know how many of you guys got it right the first time and you said oh yeah that's definitely the really nice one oh that's definitely the really bad one or if you guys were completely wrong and you just thought they all looked exactly the same now personally I can easily tell which one is the cinema lens and the cinema lens looks so much better it looks so much crisper the sharpness I love the colors I love the way it handles skin tones I love everything about it it is absolutely beautiful now for some strange reason I did notice that even whenever I had the other lens is set to F 1.8 the F 1.8 at F 1.8 was darker I'm not sure why that is I don't know if at F 1.8 it doesn't let as much light into the camera as these other lenses do set to F 1.8 but the widest that the F 1.8 could go was still darker than these other lens is set to F 1.8 I don't know why that is except maybe this lens just isn't the greatest lens of all time and to be honest guys I showed these video clips to my friends and family who aren't all video inclined if that makes sense and surprisingly almost all of them chose the cinema lens as their favorite one I showed this to ten people and of course all 10 of them said that their least favorite one was the top right which was the F one point eight eight of them said that their favorite was the top left which was the cinema lens and two of them said that the bottom right was their favorite which was the L Series lens so almost every single one chose the cinema lens out of a lineup and it was kind of shocking to me because I knew that I would be able to tell a difference but I thought the moral of this whole thing would be nobody can tell a difference so it's not that big of a deal but surprisingly the cinema lens is so good that actual non video people can pick it out out of a lineup so whenever you pay extra for a lens you're not paying just for the glass you're not paying for an 8k lens versus a 1080p lens that you're like wow that's incredible no you're not paying for that mind blown you're paying for everything that we talked about less lens breathing lens flares higher quality more sharpness better bokeh you're paying for all of that stuff to then create a lens that will last you forever because I have said this a lot in my other lens videos and that is a high quality lens will last you for ever so if you purchased this lens it would last you for who knows how long versus if you purchased this lens it might last you a couple years so as you can clearly see the cinema lens is the winner in almost every single category because it is the most expensive and you get what you pay for but we have to ask ourselves the question do I need this lens and if so when do I need this lens and my recommendation is this if you have a short film a bigger project a high quality bigger budgeted film with crew or or a client that's gonna be paying you a lot of money should you rent these lenses absolutely they are amazing the sharpness is beautiful the high quality of just everything about this lens is gorgeous and I would highly recommend you guys going and renting as many of these lenses as possible now should you buy this lens if you're a running gun shooter one-man band kind of person that owns their own company no this would not be a good lens for you to buy at all I would highly recommend picking up an L Series lens again this one came in second place but if it was just against these three it would blow those out of the water because it is absolutely beautiful again if you just have the F one point four or the F one point eight and you can't afford anything else definitely stick with it and keep using it but I would highly recommend getting the L Series lens if you are a running gun shooter who's a one-man band kind of style and you will not regret it so if you guys really enjoyed this lesson be sure to check out our website at tomorrow's filmmakers dot-com we have episodes just like this on every filmmaking aspect you can think of from color grading to acting to storyboarding to building your film business and we will walk you through every step of the process and also be sure to check out our completely free one-hour filmmaking webinar where I share with you my 15 secrets to improve your filmmaking how to make money as a videographer and what equipment to buy whenever you're starting out there's limited seating available so definitely check it out and I will see you guys there [Music] you

Channel: Tomorrows Filmmakers

Views: 398,692

Keywords: cinema lens, best lens, online film school, christian film school, online christian film school, 50mm, dslr, dslr video, dslr filmmaking, best starter lens, first lens

Id: 2xTOSiq1Pqw

Length: 20min 42sec (1242 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 06 2019