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Best budget lenses for video

Newbie_FIN

By Newbie_FIN,
in Sony Alpha APS-C Lenses

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Newbie_FIN Rookie

Newbie_FIN

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Posted

Hey

This is my first post. Just bought my first digi camera less than week ago (Sony a6000 with SELP1650 for 190€).

I did try to search but I did not find what I was looking for. If there is already topic about this feel free to link it here and I will delete this thread.

So I study communications and me and my friend have a plan of shooting a "0budget" interview/documentary about drugusers life on street.

Here in Finland is so dark during these winter months that I need lense that has good F-value. The current lense has f3.5 when not zoomed.

What is the cheapest zoom lense that you guys would recommend for my purposes? And how about some cheap wide angle prime lenses for this type of videography?

Thank you,

FinnishNoob

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Pieter Mentor

Pieter

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Posted

There is no cheap zoom lens with a large aperture, especially if you want a stabilized (OSS) lens. There is the Sony 18-105 F/4 OSS powerzoom (generally considered a decent video lens) but that one is already around €500 and not any faster than what you have now. You'd best resort to prime lenses.

Are you using a gimbal? If not then you'd likely want to use a stabilized lens as the a6000 has no stabilized sensor.

Your search is now narrowed down to a fast prime with OSS and autofocus. For street videography, the Sony 35mm F/1.8 comes to mind (the APS-C version, not FE). Costs about €380. For a somewhat tighter field of view you might try the Sony 50mm F/1.8 OSS at €270. Can both be found second-hand for about 60% of the retail price. Try your 16-50 kit lens a bit to see if these focal lengths work for your project.

If you're using a gimbal then the Sigma 30mm F/1.4 DC DN might be interesting at €350, or the Sigma 16mm F/1.4 if you want to go wide.

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  • 5 weeks later...
mirrorlessNY(youtuber) Enthusiast

mirrorlessNY(youtuber)

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I agree with the Sigma 30/16mm 1.4 lenses & the stabilization topic, am still making videos with 16mm 1.4 Sigma, its perfect match for a6000 as it's aps-c sensor struggles badly in low light. I used 16mm 1.4 Sigma with a6300 for a while, the picture is great but absence of stabilization was always an issue.

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    • XKAES
      JPEG options?

      By XKAES · Posted

      I'd suggest you start by running a simple test.  Take pictures of a typical scene/subject and each of the JPEG settings your camera offers.  Then compare them in the output that you normally produce.  You may or may not see a difference.  I normally shoot at the highest JPEG level and save that file -- but make a smaller file (lower resolution) for normal/typical use. There's plenty of editing that you can do with JPEGs on your computer -- depending on your software -- and there are features in your camera that can help out, as well.  That depends on your camera.  Put them together, and it might meet your needs.  For example, your camera probably has several bracketing features that will take the same shot with different settings with one press of the button.  Then you can select the best JPEG to work with on your computer.  I frequently use this feature to control contrast.
    • Cameratose
      JPEG options?

      By Cameratose · Posted

      If you set up some basic presets in your processing software and use batch processing, you don't need jpeg at all. I shoot RAW only, use (free) Faststone Image Viewer which will view any type of image file to cull my shots, and batch process in Darktable. I can start with 2000-3000 shots and in a matter of a few hours have them culled, processed, and posted. A handful of shots, say a couple hundred from a photo walk, are done in minutes.  This saves card space, computer space, and upload time.  The results are very good for posting online. When someone wants to buy one or I decide to print it, I can then return to the RAW file and process it individually for optimum results.  I never delete a RAW file. Sometimes I'll return to an old shot I processed several years ago and reprocess it. I have been very surprised how much better they look as my processing skills improved.  
    • Pieter
      JPEG options?

      By Pieter · Posted

      If you're only publishing small-sized photo's or viewing on a phone / computer screen, 12-ish MP should be more than enough for your needs. Since with JPEG, the ability to 'fix' stuff on the computer is very limited anyway, you're not giving up much except the ability to crop/recompose after taking the shot. If you tend to crop often or might print large, shoot fine quality instead as JPEGs don't take up a lot of space anyway. I tend to shoot RAW+JPEG. After a trip/shoot, I download my photos to my computer and quickly scan through my JPEGs to select my keepers. The JPEGs are fine for 90% of my needs but at times there are one or two 'WOW'-shots that I might one day print large. I'll edit the RAW of these photos to my hearts content, generate a JPEG, then delete all RAWs to clear up space.

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