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50 mm in academy ratio - Hitchcock / Ozu with a GH2
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  • I think it's something to do with z-axis distortion.

  • In an interview, the Italian director Pier Paolo Pasolini (Accattone, Decameron, The 120 days of Sodom) said "I would like to shoot an entire film using only a 35 mm lens, like early Charlie Chaplin's films". At first I was a bit confused..I 've thought: "A 35mm lens in Chaplin's film? I remember that his early films in the 30s have a very flat style! A 35 lens is a wide lens...it is impossible". The reason is that a 35 mm lens in Academy 35 1.33 ratio was a "normal" lens, the equivalnet of a 50mm on Full Frame and 25 mm on GH2! You can watch this boy's great video who has a very "chaplinesque" look : he has used 25 mm on GH2 ;)

    When directors like Pier Paolo Pasolini (and of course Jean Luc Godard) who used to shoot their first film in Academy 1.33 in the 50's-60's said the used a 50mm lens, in terms of GH2 (or GF2, which is the same thing, because we are speaking of 4:3, and GF2 is a 4:3 cropped GH2 essentially) it would be a 35-38 mm lens (70-80 equivalent on Full Frame)! Very "long lens to be considered as "normal", however, these directors in the sixties loved to use long lens, flat style...it becomes less evident today because they have shooted in B/W with pretty closed iris (No extreme bohek in Pasolini and Godard ;) These directors used to shoot with longer lens in order to isolate subjects, sensation enhanced by the 4:3 frame. Pasolini used only a 50mm and a 75 mm in his early film, like "Accattone", "Mamma Roma" , to achieve that look you must use 35 mm and 50 mm lens on GH"/GF2.