24-105 not good for video?

[Juga]

I have professional film friends and I think he should have said zooming isn't widely used for film unless it is artistic and used very rarely. At least my film friends share this sentiment.

Don't watch very many movies these days, huh?

I do but I don't make them also film isn't limited to movies.

Read my comment more thoroughly

 

[TCampbell]

I have two friends who do professional video. They'll both tell you that it's not so much that zooming is "bad" -- more that most amateurs tend to over-use it and do it wrong. Also, sometimes zoom is really zoom... but often times (and particularly in high-end productions), "zooming" is really a camera mounted to a dolly on a track and the camera is physically moving.

In still photography, we use the terms "front focus" and "back focus" to refer to focus error (most of the time anyway). In video, they refer to par-focal focus and the high-end video lenses allow the camera operator tweak focus on a subject when zoomed "in" as well as when zoomed "out" to guarantee that they'll stay focused when zooming (and they call those points the "front" and "back" focus.)

You might be interested in the Lensrentals.com article on the topic: LensRentals.com - Photo Lenses for Video

Also note near one of the final pages he lists lenses which are "parfocal" (meaning if you focus your subject, then zoom, your subject will remain focused... you will not have to re-focus after zooming.)

 

[Overread]

Interesting, I knew the 24-105mm was parfocal, but I didn't know that the 24-70mm original was as well (heck I can swear I recall reading that it wasn't).

That said interesting that both the MII of the 70-200mm f2.8 IS and the 24-70mm f2.8 IS both seem to drop the parfocal feature.

 

[hille141]

Digital Rev TV is filmed almost exclusively using a 5DIII and a 24-105L. I did a variation of a test I saw on their channel. Turn on the live view mode and zoom to 10x on the display. Flip back and forth between the IS on and IS off. It makes a huge difference, especially at longer focal lengths. In my case it was also on a crop sensor (T3i).

The video is here and gives some pretty basic tips on getting good video results with a DSLR.