Choosing a lens

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Choosing a lens

JamesM

I am looking at getting the black magic pocket 4k but I don't know what lens to get
My guess is a 50-300mm but I have no idea if this is what we need.
Our stage is just shy of 20m(65') from the camera and is about 10m (33') wide for the wide shots, but we want to zoom if for medium shots

Here is a link to our latest stream
https://youtu.be/_doVw2kRq1E?t=1124

What do you think?

joelwsmith

JamesM

Thanks for reaching out!

To be able to get a wide shot of a 10m wide stage and a medium shot of a person from 65' away you will need a lens that is around 30mm on the wide end and 280mm on the telephoto end. Unfortunately, there are no Micro Four Thirds lenses that cover that entire range.

The only lens that comes close is the Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-200mm f/3.5-6.3 Lens(Affiliate link). It will also need a 1.4x teleconverter paired with it to give you enough zoom for a medium shot, basically giving you a 17-280mm lens, which will also cut down the amount of light going into the camera. And that lens already gets pretty dark at the far end of the zoom (f/6.3), so it will not be the best option unless you have quite a bit of light.

Also be aware that lenses like that will not give you smooth motorized (servo) zoom capability. The will be manual zoom only, so any zooming you do while live streaming will be rather jerky and potentially distracting.

In this situation your best bets will either be a camcorder or adapting to something like a Canon EF lens.

JamesM

so I have a few options

use your suggested 12-200mm lens and have a dark image
use a camcorder such as Canon G60. lower picture quality
use a lens that doesn't go as wide, Olympus Zuiko 70-300mm f/4.0-5.6 ED Lens
use a lens that doesn't go as tight, Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 12-200mm F3.5-6.3 Lens
use a lens that doesn't go as wide or tight, Olympus M.Zuiko Digital ED 40-150mm F2.8

joelwsmith

JamesM

Yes, pretty close...

Use the 12-200 lens with a 1.4x teleconverter and have a pretty dark image (or need a lot of light to prevent you from having to use a lot of gain in the camera)
Yes, a camcorder will probably be better if you need smooth zoom. But the Canon G50/XA40/XA45 would probably be the better fit since you want a medium shot from 65' away.
You could use the Olympus 70-300mm. That will get you better exposure compared to the 12-200, especially after you add the 1.4x teleconverter. 70mm will show probably 2/3rds of your stage from 65' away.
Correct. That is the same lens that I recommended and the lens from #1.
Correct. 150mm will give you about knees up from 65' away.

Now, there is one other option I failed to mention earlier. It's not something I typically like to recommend, but it definitely is available if you want to use it. The BMPCC 4K can do what's called a "sensor crop", which basically takes the 4K resolution from the full sensor and only uses the center portion of it to create a 1920x1080 image that is the equivalent of a 2x optical zoom. It doesn't do any digital zoom or scaling, so the image quality is still very good. Now, you won't be able to record in anything over 1080p, so keep in mind if your plan is to have 4K recording capability then it won't work for that.