Canon 50/0.95 "Dream Lens" used to film this Netflix flick

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coincidence rangefinder
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https://www.cbr.com/army-of-the-dea...CplnfbFDn3hkdDDmteT0goC1UYQbBw9ZVQqBWzGcx5T8w

Army-of-the-Dead-Nora-Arnezeder.jpg
 
We watched this zombie flick on Saturday. So that's why this movie had such a dreamy look. Quite effective look too, I must say.

Jim B.
 
Will watch this just for that fact. I had to laugh at the people suggesting was a stuck pixel causing the look!
 
Expect whatever remaining workable copies out there to spike again in value.
A very idiosyncratic look that you either love or loathe.
 
I watched the trailer, and really liked the unique rendering of these lenses. I have one of each, but have never used them for video, although I can attach them to my Sonys. The effect reminds me a bit of old B-movies from the 1950s.
 
dexdog said:
I watched the trailer, and really liked the unique rendering of these lenses. I have one of each, but have never used them for video, although I can attach them to my Sonys. The effect reminds me a bit of old B-movies from the 1950s.
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I don't much care for the Extreme Bokeh look for stills, but I admit it works much better for video.
 
The Canon 50/0.95 was originally produced as a TV lens, according to Peter Kitchingman's book on Canon lenses. I have used both the 50/0.95 and 35/1.5 on Canon RFs as well as on Sony a7 variants. Truly unique lenses wide open, but not that unusual stopped down to f4 or so. Of course these lenses were designed to allow higher shutter speeds with the relatively slow film speeds common in 1960s. I should try shooting some video with the 0.95 on my a7iii. Might be kinda trippy, especially if shot into flare-y conditions.
 
dexdog said:
......I should try shooting some video with the 0.95 on my a7iii. Might be kinda trippy, especially if shot into flare-y conditions.
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I'm going to shoot some video with my 50/0.95 on my Canon RP mirrorless. Really curious what I'll end up with.

Jim B.
 
v0sh said:
meh, the rendering doesn't make the movie better.. just finished watching it.
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Don't know if it makes it better or worse; never understood the appeal of the zombie 'thing'.
But the lens' unique drawing style does impart an otherworldly atmosphere apropos to the genre.
 
Just watched it. Reminds me how color film always seemed so hard to correct with the Canon 50mm 1.4 LTM.
 
I’ll pass on the full movie, but the trailer had some interesting focus shifts with the old/new lenses. As we know, old lenses never die, they just get gummed up.
 
The use of those old Canon lenses was interesting, and the fact that a lens shop was able to re-house those lenses for modern cine cameras with closer focus abilities than the native 1.00m is really neat, but I am not sure what the director was attempting to accomplish with this. There was a bunch of "missed focus" on shots that was not really distracting, but noticeable. The busy background bokeh was also very apparent in tons of shots. I was not really a fan of the color balance either -- the primitive lens coatings on 1950s and early 1960s lenses, especially Canon for some reason, on color film at wide apertures often produce low contrast, flare-y, and coma-ish results. You would probably see similar results if you used, say, a Leica Summaron or any other lens from that era. As noted above, I stopped using Canon LTM (or really any 1950s/60s lens) for color film because the results are not great, and the negs are difficult to correct for a "modern look" in LR/PS. Goes to show how multi-coating really, really, really improved lens performance on color film.
 
Not the same thing, but I've used M43 f0.95 Voigtlanders on corporate and documentary video shoots because of the low contrast, high background separation and dreamy effect. The Voigtlanders themselves are much more organic in rendering than the Panasonic or Olympus lenses for m43, and when opened up to f0.95 or f1.2, they are even more organic looking. They have a look which is more in keeping with a vintage lens than anything made by the major players. I have to admit that pulling focus on lenses with such shallow depth of field is not easy.

But this is the issue: when an entire movie is shot like this, with character lenses wide open, I think it loses the 'specialness' of the effect. Using Zack Snyder himself as an example, there are parts of Man of Steel which use vintage macro / close focus shots to produce this effect, but that is in contrast with the rest of the film, which is shot more traditionally. There are parts of Snow White and the Huntsman (Chris Hemsworth and that woman from Twilight) which are shot with such odd lenses that I thought there was an issue of missed focus in the projection booth. I'm all for shallow depth of field in photography, and I enjoy using it for specific effect in video, but it's a bit much if it's for an entire film.
 
davidde1000 said:
[...] but I am not sure what the director was attempting to accomplish with this. [...]
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Likewise... I'm halfway through watching Army of the Dead and I think I've missed the point.

I'm all for creative cinematography, but I just don't get what Snyder was trying to achieve. It's an odd mix of a very mediocre, run of the mill zombie flick, and pseudo-art house camera work...
 
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