By Blake McClure
When I started prepping my latest show, the initial conversation was actually about shooting Super 16. Small, intimate, a little rough. That was the instinct. But I pushed the other direction entirely and pitched the largest sensor I could get my hands on, the Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65, which gave us something closer to medium format still photography than traditional 35mm cinematography.
When I started prepping my latest show, the initial conversation was actually about shooting Super 16. Small, intimate, a little rough. That was the instinct. But I pushed the other direction entirely and pitched the largest sensor I could get my hands on, the Blackmagic URSA Cine 17K 65, which gave us something closer to medium format still photography than traditional 35mm cinematography.
That decision changed everything downstream, including the glass.
Large format is a different animal when it comes to lenses. The image circle is enormous, so the first question isn’t what you like. It’s what actually covers the sensor. That immediately narrows the field. When we started Season 1, there were fewer options than there are now. I tested a handful of sets and landed on the Camtec Falcon Full Frame lenses, which are rehoused 1960s Canon K35 and FD still photography glass fitted with modern PL mounts.
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QUICK REFERENCE: CHOOSING LENSES FOR LARGE FORMAT
Creative (60%)
Contrast ratio How does the lens render contrast under your lighting?
Bokeh What does the out-of-focus rendering look like?
Breathing How does the image shift when you pull focus?
Focus fall-off How does sharpness transition from subject to background?
Practical (40%)
Size and weight Will it work on your gimbal or stabilizer?
Consistent stops Are T-stops matched across the set?
Front ring diameter Does it fit your matte box and filters?
Swap speed How fast can you change lenses on set?
Think of the lens as part of a system: glass + filtration + color pipeline.
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The Falcons won for a combination of reasons, and that’s usually how it goes. I never pick a lens for one quality. When I evaluate glass, I’m looking at roughly 60 percent creative characteristics and 40 percent practical ones, and both sides have to work or the lens doesn’t make it onto the truck.
On the creative side, the first thing I evaluate is contrast ratio under my lighting. How the lens renders contrast tells me immediately whether it’s going to fight me or work with me. The Falcons have that organic, vintage quality that comes from the original 1960s optics. They’re inherently softer than modern primes, which was exactly what I wanted. Digital sensors, especially one this sharp, benefit from glass that takes the clinical edge off the image. After contrast, I’m looking at bokeh, the way the lens breathes when you pull focus, and how the focus falls off from sharp to soft. Those things are subjective, but they define the feel of the image more than most people realize.
About 80 percent of HBO’s “Rooster” was shot on the 55mm Falcon. The field of view is similar to a 32mm in Super 35, which just felt right. It gave us beautiful medium shots, which is where we lived most of the season. That particular lens has a soft, swirly background rendering that pulled the actors out of the environment enough to feel photographic without losing the space entirely.
The practical side is just as critical. Size and weight were a major factor on the show because my A camera lives on a Ronin. Any lens that would have thrown us overweight for the gimbal was out. The Falcons are compact for what they are, and Camtec rehoused the full set with uniform 95mm front diameters and matched gear positions, which means fast swaps on set. Consistent T-stops across the set also mattered. I tested the Cooke Thalias as well, and they were actually my second favorite creatively, but they weren’t fast enough for what I needed on this particular show, and the stops were inconsistent across focal lengths, which creates problems when you’re moving quickly. How long does it take to change a lens? Will the front ring diameter match my matte box and filters? Does the weight work on the Ronin? All of that affects the shooting day.
The lens is only one piece of the optical chain, though. I paired the Falcons with a Color-Con 2 filter from Camtec, customized for finer color tuning, and I had it turned up pretty heavily. That gave me a very washed-out, low-contrast RAW file straight out of camera. It looked terrible on its own. That was intentional. We also used a 1/8 pearlescent filter from Tiffen.
Colorist Josh Bohoskey and I built a LUT in DaVinci Resolve Studio that pulled that image back down, crushing the shadows to black and holding the highlights right at 100. What we ended up with was a very rich image with almost no latitude. It felt like Ektachrome film. That was the target from day one: a warm, lush, medium format photography feel for a show set in autumn in Massachusetts, even though we were shooting in the LA summer.
The point is that the lens, the filter and the color pipeline aren’t separate decisions. They’re one system. The Falcons gave me the softness and vintage character I wanted. The Color-Con 2 stripped the contrast out. And the LUT in Resolve put it back in exactly where I wanted it. If any one of those pieces changed, the look would have been different.
For cinematographers trying to figure out their own lens choices, especially on 65mm or large format, I’d say this: don’t start with what’s popular. Start with the story. For “Rooster” I wanted it to feel warm and inviting, with rich color and a shallow depth of field that keeps the viewer close to the actors. That told me the glass needed character, not perfection. A different show would need different glass.
I also think it’s worth testing as many options as you can get your hands on. Cinegear this year had a huge number of new 65mm lens options, which tells you the format is here to stay. The field is growing fast. But the fundamentals of choosing glass don’t change. Find the contrast ratio you like. Look at the bokeh. See how it breathes. Then make sure it’s practical for your show. Sixty-forty.
