The Rokinon 35mm T/1.5: The Dream Lens For “Ava”
(This isn’t sponsored, I’m just a fan)
1.) Why Now?
On all of my previous work, I’ve leaned heavily on vintage or modified glass to construct the look of the film, but for Ava I’m going in a different direction. I’m choosing to shoot it with a pristine, modern lens, designed for clarity with controlled flaring, clean subject separation, and a beautiful wide aperture. But why this lens and why now?
With Ava, I want to bring out a large-scale film emulation pipeline, one that can be broadly applied to a feature film with little tweaking, while still being flexible enough to be customized per-shot.
I also really wanted to explore new ways of shooting, with a more hand held, free moving camera that would require a follow focus and a proper cinema rig. Vintage lenses, for all their beauty, would be a difficult proposition without extensive (and expensive) modifications for it to fit into this plan, especially with myself acting as director and DP simultaneously.
What I decided I needed was a lens and kit that would become completely invisible, and allow me to work without needing to be catered to or worked around.
Raw capture compared to the processed image. Early emulation trial.
More about the film emulation pipeline in this article.
2.) The Lens.
The Rokinon 35mm T/1.5 is designed to be an entry-level cine lens. At less than $300 for the E-Mount version, it’s also one of the most affordable lenses in it’s class.
Highlights of the lens include:
The built-in cine-gears, which make it easy to adapt to a rig.
The focus distances are plainly marked in imperial and metric, with a 77mm front diameter which makes attaching ND’s and other filters easy.
The step-less aperture ring that smoothly transitions from T/22 all the way to a ridiculous T/1.5.
The lens itself is well built, but still light enough that there’s no fear of cracking the lens mount without a support.
The image is crystal clear, and holds up well at 4K.
While wide open the lens exhibits very heavy red/blue fringing in contrasty areas, stopping down to anything above T/2.8 almost completely eliminates it while maintaining a gorgeous background separation.
The clarity of the image at 4K was something I had to get used to at first, after so many years of 1080p with vintage glass. I’ve been a fan of vintage lenses due to the way they “mess up” a digital image. I like the mix of imperfect glass with a mathematically perfect grid of pixels. But once that clarity is accepted, it opens up a huge amount of possibilities within the edit: character’s faces pop, the colors are captured without a cast, and the controlled flaring keeps things absolutely crystal clear.
That clarity allows me to build on top of the lens to construct a look.
3.) The Look Of Ava
The film Ava is a big deal for me in several ways, not least of which being my new approach to defining the look of the film. Instead of a film based on a mystery or some sort of sinister plot, Ava is a character study more in the vein of something like The Master. It’s about the titular Ava and her experiences following a series of tragedies that leave her lost.
In order to capture that, I gathered dozens of photos, video links, and even short stories to get a hold of what I wanted this film to bring to an audience.
The look is designed to support the heart of the film, rather than just look really good.
Roger Deakins has a great quote that I’ve taken to heart, that goes something along the lines of “there’s good cinematography and bad…then there’s the cinematography that’s right for the movie”.
It’s true, and it’s not something I’ve followed very much in the past.
The look of this film is going to be something that’s tweaked and refined right up until the premiere, but the initial design going in is to keep the camera locked into the emotion of the scene and the characters at all times, and the cinematography, grading, and editing will all be built on that focused foundation.
I find that a healthy layer of artificiality (film grain, certain color grading choices, etc) in the pipeline actually help an audience empathize more with the character and story being told. A great example of that separation leading to closeness is this video edited by Lucas Hager.
It’s not a 1:1 of what I want the film to look like, but it strikes a chord with me that I’d like to echo in the film itself.
So far there’s been a lot of philosophical words, not a whole lot of technical ones. There’s a reason for that too. While I love technical details, they’re not the reason anyone should choose to shoot a certain format or with certain tools. As much as I love the idea of shooting in 8K or with an IMAX camera or whatever else, the tools should be chosen entirely based on the story at hand, and this story is one that requires intimacy, clarity, and the technical ability to see a character even in very dark environments.
The A7S, coupled with the Ninja V, and joined by the Rokinon 35mm T/1.5 strike the exact balance I believe is needed to tell this story, and all of the extensive tests I’ve run have corroborated that belief.
For a peak at the technical tests being run, take a look at this video where I compare every file type the Ninja V has, as captured through the Rokinon.
