One of the most frequent questions I get is “what lenses should I buy for filming?” For me the main reason to use a DSLR camera for filming is its great low light performance and shallow depth of field. If you don’t want those two things then you may well be better off using an HD video camera.

With that in mind, I Always recommend prime lenses. They are faster, sharper and generally better preforming then their zoom counter parts. I recommend zooms only to cover ranges that aren’t available in primes, like the Tokina 11-16mm F2.8:


If your on a budget I recommend:

The Sigma 30mm f1.4:

The Canon 50mm f1.4:

Canon 85mm f1.8:

This 3 lenses will cover most of the normal focal lengths you’ll need for filming. If you have plans of upgrading to a 5d mark II in the future you might want to consider changing out that sigma 30mm f1.4 for


The canon 28mm f1.8:

I prefer the sigma 30 to the canon 28, but the sigma is only designed for crop sensor cameras.

One other item to consider is a Normal video camera. Camera’s like the Canon HF s100 have the same sensor as canon’s newer video cameras and can be picked up for under $500 used on ebay. Chances are you’ll need to zoom or use Auto focus at some point and footage from cameras like this will splice in well with your DSLR footage.

Equipment used in this video:
Canon 7d & t2i
Sigma 24mm f1.8
Canon 35mm f1.4
Lilliput field monitor
CPM film tools mounting parts
Sennhieser G2 Wireless mic system

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