Dream team: pairing Cine Primes with Full Frame sensors

Nicolai was working with a small crew on the Canon EOS C500 Mark II shoot, taking on the DoP and production duties himself and working with just a director and a sound recordist. "I've known Philipp and Moritz Hans for a while," he says, "and we decided to film them in Fontainebleau, France, a popular area for bouldering," a form of rock climbing without ropes or harnesses.

Nicolai's first experience with Canon's cinema prime lenses was about four years ago, when shooting the surface scenes for Listen Close, a short film with free-diver Timo Niessner. But the Hans brothers promo was the first time he'd used them with a full-frame camera. "If I'd had a choice, I would have shot it all on Cine Primes," he says. "But as we were a team of just three, with no focus puller or camera assistant, I ended up using photographic EF lenses and the camera's Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus for shots where we were walking or needed to pull focus. For everything else, we tried to stick with Cine Primes and Sumire Primes.

"We shot a lot of the film using a Canon CN-E24mm T1.5 L F and a Canon CN-E35mm T1.5 L F lens – my go-to focal lengths for full frame. They give such a dramatic perspective when you get close to your subjects. When you're shooting with a full-frame camera, you can get close to someone's face with a 35mm lens, but it's not distorted as it would be if you were using a wider lens to achieve the same angle of view with a Super 35mm sensor."

"The biggest difference between Cine Prime and EF photographic prime lenses is the way they are built, particularly with regard to the manual operability of the Cine Primes," says Ryuhei Kamata. "These lenses offer very precise manual focusing, which is essential for many filmmakers. You don't always have the opportunity to reshoot, so being able to position the focus ring with absolute precision is vital. Repeatability is also very important. No matter how many times you go back and forth on the ring, you can be sure the focus distance will always match the scale on the lens. This level of accuracy requires both design excellence and manufacturing capability."

The consistency in design extends to other aspects of the Canon Cine Prime lens family, ensuring a cohesive look for a project regardless of the mix of focal lengths. "Canon Cine lenses are perfectly aligned in terms of their character," explains Ryuhei. "Not only does this include aspects of image quality such as colour, sharpness and the transition from in-focus to blurred areas, but also the mechanical features of the lenses – especially the prime lenses that are designed to be repeatedly switched back and forth.

"For example, the diameter of each Canon Cine Prime lens is identical, so that film crews don't have to bring multiple front filters or matte boxes on a shoot. The rotation angle and the build quality of the focus ring are also critical. If the torque of the gear were different from one lens to another then the focus puller would have to recalibrate their adjustments each time the lens was changed."