Prime vs Zoom

Shocked I never thought to scroll down and find the video section before... I'm new here and a read a lot of post, and just need to seek advice.

Right now I film as a hobby, I want to do professional work but, I need to ehance my skills. I thought about picking up a set of Rokinon Lens because of the manual options and the low cost/high performance. I hear shooting in prime is great, but it takes a lot of time to switch from lens to lens, especially down the road if I'm doing weddings or shoots that arent always situational.

I want to own glass that is high quality, but I don't.... well I can afford to own 5-10 lens as well as purhcase equipment.

If I had to guess I'd say I'd have around $1500 to shop around, right now all I have is the Sigma 17-70mm OS and nifty fifty 1.8mm. But I'd sell those lens to gain around $1800.

That leaves me with either several options, or 1 or 2 depending on what type of glass I go for. I'm shooting with a t3i, so its a crop lens and I'm fine with its video features as of now, I do want to get lens that will be able to use on FF camera incase I make the switch sometime in the future.

So here are the options...

24mm Rokinon Cine T1.5 - $599
35mm Rokinon Cine T1.5 - $499
85mm Rokinon Cine T1.5 - $320
- Total $1418 (over time)

Second Option

17-50mm Tamron 2.8 - $500
50mm Canon 1.4 - $350
85mm Rokinon Cine T1.5 - $320
- Total $1170

The benefit of zoom lenses for video are the same as they are for photo, plus many zoom lenses have IS.

It will be convenient and make framing easier using a zoom. You won't be shooting at f1.4 or f2.8 a huge amount because you will generally want a deeper DOF to keep subjects in focus. F2.8 and faster will usually be used for artistic shots, unless you do a lot of night shooting.

The Tamron nonVC is a very good lens sharpness wise, but there is no VC, and the VC version isn't much more. You can always turn off VC, but you can't turn it on if it doesn't have it...

Obviously the benefit of the cine lenses are the declicked Ap rings, focus gears, smooth focus rings,... but if I were starting out, I would focus on my filming techniques, lighting, camera knowledge/operation, editing, and story telling. All of which make significantly higher impacts on your films than the lens you're using.

BrickR wrote in post #16067602
The benefit of zoom lenses for video are the same as they are for photo, plus many zoom lenses have IS.

It will be convenient and make framing easier using a zoom. You won't be shooting at f1.4 or f2.8 a huge amount because you will generally want a deeper DOF to keep subjects in focus. F2.8 and faster will usually be used for artistic shots, unless you do a lot of night shooting.

The Tamron nonVC is a very good lens sharpness wise, but there is no VC, and the VC version isn't much more. You can always turn off VC, but you can't turn it on if it doesn't have it...

Obviously the benefit of the cine lenses are the declicked Ap rings, focus gears, smooth focus rings,... but if I were starting out, I would focus on my filming techniques, lighting, camera knowledge/operation, editing, and story telling. All of which make significantly higher impacts on your films than the lens you're using.

Thanks for the advice the combination of lens I went with was Sigma 17-70 os Rokinon 35m and Rokinon 85m and saving for a 70-200 f4 IS, hopefully that will do me well. I will def need work on lighting technique, Im diggin deep into that now.