We found the Canon Compact-Servo lenses to be solid and easy to use.
One of the first things you will notice when using the new Canon Compact-Servo lenses is the build quality. If you’re a church filmmaker that has used EOS glass like Ultrasonic or even L-series lenses, you’ll notice that these feel a lot more substantial. The casings are metal with rubber grips on the focus rings. It’s very much what you’d expect from a cine lens with a nice, professional feel.
We reviewed these lenses on two evening outdoor shoots for a Christian music video. All of the footage was run-and-gun with mostly hand-held shooting. Shooting outdoors in the evening brought these lenses out of their comfort zone.
The images we got out of this camera-lens combination were incredibly clean. We never noticed any vignetting, aberrations or optical flaws. However, if you’re looking for significant low-light performance, these might not be your best bet. We mostly shot post-sunset for these shoots so flares weren’t really an issue. The backgrounds at T4.4 t look cinematic across most of the focal lengths on these two lenses. They give good separation and avoid having too “clinical” a look.
If you work at a church that uses the same camera system for filmed shoots as well as IMAG, then these Compact-Servo lenses could be a fantastic investment. We can see how these two could easily be put on B and C cameras for live filming and then used throughout the week on testimonials, promos, sermon bumpers and other shoots by church filmmakers.
We found the Canon Compact-Servo lenses to be solid and easy to use. The images are crazy sharp and we were more than pleased with the look we were able to get out of them.
For more detail, and to see footage from our review, click the link.