Wide-angle Lenses

The Canon HJ11x4.7 compact zoom (top). Canon recently introduced HJ14ex4.3. The Fujinon HA13X4.5 superwide ENG zoom (bottom). The extra-wide field of view these lenses afford poses a challenge for shooters trying to maintain a flat field of illumination across the screen.

Many of us have long had a love affair with our wide-angle lenses—the wider the better. These lenses are our daily workhorses. They capture the vagaries of reality TV, add scope to expansive landscapes, increase the apparent height of skateboard acrobatics, and create woeful and distorted faces for horror and suspense. In short, they provide the eye candy and the ooh-and-ahh shots that get—and keep—us working.

But there's trouble to consider in these lenses as they've grown wider and more obese. As 2/3in. compact zooms have expanded their coverage from 5.5mm a decade ago to 4.7mm, 4.5mm, and 4.3mm today in the form of the new Canon 14X4.3, the increases in weight and girth have introduced a bevy of headaches for shooters. These include more obvious vignetting, a lowering of performance throughout the zoom range, and a sudden loss of filter and matte box compatibility. The latter concern is perhaps the most disturbing, as it can dramatically affect our bottom lines.

The latest-generation lenses are marvels of engineering technology. Take one look at the breadth of programming today, and it's easy to see the impact of these new wide-angles and how they've transformed our visual aesthetic.

Lens makers today must respond to often conflicting market demands. Out of their concerns for convenience or economy or both, ENG-style shooters have demanded everything and the kitchen sink in a single lens: It must be high-speed and lightweight, be compact with a 2X doubler, and pack a zoom range that obviates the need to carry additional lenses. Whether you're shooting vistas in the Gobi Desert or close-ups of puffins in the Canadian Arctic, one lens has to do it all.

To a remarkable extent, the lens manufacturers have obliged. Over the past decade, ENG shooters have demanded and received lenses with longer and more extreme zoom ranges, so 14X became 16X, which soon became 18X and then 22X. The latest Fujinon HA23X7.6 is a tour de force of optical engineering. Its long reach comes with little to no chromatic aberration and minimal breathing. These attributes make it ideal for wildlife and event applications because the lens is designed to minimize the aberrational issues at the long end, where viewers are most likely to notice.

While advances in the longer zooms have been remarkable, there has been a simultaneous effort to incorporate wide coverage in the same products. For lens makers, this has been a much tougher road to follow given the exigencies of physics and economy, which entail considerable and—in many cases—obvious compromises.

Every lens exhibits some falloff of illumination from its center outward. High-speed and extreme wide-angle lenses can exhibit this falloff more noticeably.

Some light falloff is evident in even the most sophisticated optics, such as the legendary Carl Zeiss 10-100 T2 workhorse with which I blithely cruised the Amazon jungle and Arctic tundra for many years with National Geographic. At maximum aperture and full wide angle, this fabulous cine lens nevertheless exhibited an obvious vignette, a characteristic we shooters grew to accept in exchange for this lens' otherwise extraordinary performance. (Falloff described as vignetting may be defined as a lens projection impinging into the sensor area. Some falloff or vignetting may be acceptable short of portholing, the more obvious impression of looking through an actual porthole.)

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Today, shooters must regard the new superwide lenses in the same way. Because of the increased curvature of their front elements, the falloff of light from the center of the lens to the edges is more pronounced than most of us are used to. This falloff is exacerbated in high-speed lenses with a wide field of view. It's also more noticeable when shooting with a matte box, as the off-axis light reaching the lens and imager is effectively eliminated.

The superwide lens' greater weight might also increase light falloff. Unless properly supported, a lens might sag and lose proper alignment with the imager and also result in undesired darkening. Adding to this bagful of woe is the growing prevalence of CMOS imagers. Some CMOS imager designs contain recessed photosites akin to tiny buckets, just deep enough to block strongly angled light from reaching the sensor surface at the bottom of the bucket. CCDs do not share this particular shortcoming.

Dave Waddell, veteran marketing manager at Fujinon, says he understands the industry's demand for a superwide ENG lens free of falloff and undue distortion. "Some distortion is inherent to any superwide lens with an extreme field of view," he says. "Fujinon and other manufacturers could certainly produce a flat-field lens with little or no falloff, but it would have to be so large and expensive it would no longer be practical or affordable for ENG applications."

In the halcyon days of my youth, I was once content to use 2x2 filters on my Arriflex 16. With the advent of larger zoom lenses, shooters were compelled to make the leap and purchase more expansive 3x3s. Then as wider-angle zooms gained traction and blossomed in size with the growth of video in the 1990s, the 4x4 filter size became the new standard—that is, until 16:9 and HD joined the fray and the wider 4x5.65 Panavision size emerged as the most practical option for shooters.

Now things have gotten scarier as ENG lenses have grown so large that the Panavision filter size is no longer sufficient to cover the increased field of view. Now we need a set of 5x5, 6x6, or even larger filters to handle the latest superwide bad boys. When will this inflation end?

Regardless of camera, large or small, we love our superwide lenses, especially for sports, as in this case to exaggerate the height of the skateboarder's leap.

For their part, the major filter manufacturers—Tiffen, Format Filters, and Schneider Optics—are trying to address the issue by adopting a "standard" 5.65"x5.65" filter size. But is this even practical for most independent camera people? Consider the initial lens investment of tens of thousands of dollars. Throw in $5,000 more for a matte box and support rods, then a few thousand more for a basic 5.65x5.65 filter set—a polarizer, a few well-chosen gradients, and a clear UV—and we're talking about some real money. Clearly the combined cost is out of reach for the ordinary shooter and news operation for whom, ostensibly, these compact superwide lenses were originally designed.

Some shooters are understandably looking at other options, such as applying filtration in post. For times when only a physical camera filter will do, as in the case of a polarizer that can increase the actual contrast and saturation in a scene, the applicability of a post-camera approach is limited.

For small-format cameras such as the Panasonic AG-HVX200A and the Sony PMW-EX1 with fixed lenses, many shooters have looked to a supplemental adapter to increase wide-angle coverage. These clamp-on or screw-on attachments are not a viable option for many broadcast lenses, owing to the sheer size that would be required—some three to four times the diameter of the primary lens' front element.

"Once a shooter exceeds a 5mm wide-angle, he has effectively surpassed the limit of what is practical with an ordinary matte box and 4x4 filters," says James Lee, technical manager at 16x9, referring specifically to 2/3in.-format lenses. "A single 4x4 may work OK for lenses up to 5mm, but once rotation is desired, as in the case of a polarizer, or a second filter is introduced, then some combination of P-size [Panavision] and/or larger 5x5 filters are required."

Fujinon's Waddell refers to the extra-thin 127mm filters available that screw into the hood of the Fujinon HA13X4.5. The large screw-in filter obviates the need for an expensive matte box and filter set, but it also makes it difficult to manage or rotate a polarizer, for example, owing to the likelihood of the filter itself (or a shooter's fingers) intruding into the frame.

In short, we shooters must decide what we are willing to sacrifice. Depending on the requirements of our storytelling, it may be a degree of performance or the loss of a matte box or filter set. It is important that shooters recognize the inherent limitations and compromises of working with these latest-generation extra-wide lenses.

We all know that wider after a certain point isn't necessarily better. Considering the many options available, the Fujinon HA16X6.3 might be the single best all-purpose ENG lens with a practical and reasonable 6.3mm wide-angle. It might also be why Fujinon and Canon have added a user-selectable preset to prevent their lenses from zooming back too far, just in case we'd like to exercise a modicum of good, old-fashioned common sense.

On the other hand, the latest and greatest extreme wide-angle lens might be exactly what our story requires. It all depends on our point of view, which has everything to do with our field of view.