Creating unique video portraits with Canon cinema zooms

While some cinematographers and directors work principally with prime lenses, the flexibility and convenience of a zoom lens can be a real asset.

As Ukrainian filmmaker Diana Olifirova puts it: "Zooms can be a creative tool as well as a technical one, and they allow you to consider how to use some kind of zoom action as part of the visual language of a film."

Diana, who moved to London in the UK to do a Cinematography MA at the National Film and Television School, is a BAFTA Breakthrough UK 2022 participant and the recipient of the British Society of Cinematographer's Emerging Cinematographer 2017 award. She's worked on a diverse range of productions, including ALL of Me (2017), BAFTA-winning Channel 4 comedy We Are Lady Parts (2021) and Bridgerton season 3 for Netflix.

For her latest film – and directorial debut – called In, Diana employed two fast Super 35mm Canon Flex Zooms. The Canon CN-E14-35mm T1.7 and CN-E31.5-95mm T1.7 lenses blend cinematic image quality with a versatile zoom range – two attributes that Diana was keen to explore in her stylish, stylised short.

These lenses also bring a groundbreaking T1.7 speed and warm colour, all of which Diana appreciated. "It was really pleasant to see the bokeh and the smooth focus roll-off. They also showcase minimal focus breathing when you change the focus from foreground to background."

The two-day production was based at a studio in London. Diana also spent some additional time shooting the time-lapse sequences by herself, using the Canon EOS C70.

Although the shots had been precisely planned, Diana says she didn't want the shoot to be "robotic", but to be free-flowing instead. "As I was both shooting and directing, I'd just keep rolling and try different options as we went," she explains. "There were so many things to orchestrate – the zoom, the focus change, the movement of the camera, maybe a tilt or pan, as well as multiple lighting sources changing, that it was very much a game we were playing and we kept turning over and trying different things."

The nimble nature of the Canon Flex Zooms enabled Diana to react quickly and keep things moving. "Sometimes to save time I would zoom in to capture other things that I thought would be useful for the edit. As I was doing two jobs, it was easy for me to make decisions on the day rather than having to talk to someone else."

Maintaining an industry-leading light transmission of T1.7 throughout their zoom ranges, the Canon CN-E14-35mm T1.7 and the Canon CN-E31.5-95mm T1.7 Flex Zooms are the fastest cinema zoom lenses in their class. It's a feature that Diana was pleased to be able to take advantage of in the studio and on location.

"The fact that the iris goes to T1.7 is amazing for a zoom," she says. "Wide open, the very smooth bokeh gave a very intimate image. So I used T1.7 a lot for the first character, as I wanted it to create a soft, moody morning feel and be quite specific about where the focus is.

"T1.7 also worked really well for some of the late night city sequences, where I was shooting cars passing by. I was going off-focus to capture just the bokeh, and it looked beautiful with the wide-open iris."

The Canon Flex Zooms are designed to deliver an image with warm natural skin tones. This natural base provides a great starting point for finessing the image via third-party filters or during the grade.

"I prefer to use filters for studio work," Diana says, "I like to be able to create the look while I'm shooting because often you just don't have time to micro-manage everything in post. So it's nice to be able to have that option to be able to do it all before then.

"I wanted the first scene to be slightly softer and more moody, so I used a Tiffen Glimmerglass filter. The image looks shimmery and slightly less sharp, and I really liked the look it created."

Used together, the Canon CN-E14-35mm T1.7 and the Canon CN-E31.5-95mm T1.7 offer a convenient range of focal lengths to meet the needs of a diverse variety of productions.

"With the 14-35mm lens, it felt amazing to have that variety of angles as well as being a really comfortable lens to use," Diana says. "If I had to choose one focal length to shoot a film, I would always go to 35mm because it can do a really good portrait and really good detail shot as well as a nice wide. The widest 14mm focal length is amazing too. It almost feels like a fisheye, so you can have quite an impressive wide-angle view.

"With the longer zoom lens," she continues, "31.5mm is still a very good wide, and the other end of the range was more than enough for me to capture things in close-up. We wanted to get a very close shot of an eye, so we used the lens at 95mm with a +3 diopter, and that worked really well and meant we could capture a lot of macro details."

The versatile nature of the Canon Flex Zooms is complemented by their compact construction and quick operation. Diana took advantage of their lightweight design to predominantly shoot handheld.

"The main city scenes were shot on a Canon EOS C300 Mark III and then the time-lapse and night sequences were on the EOS C70," she says. "I only had a little rig, which was handheld. There were a couple of shots from a tripod, but I felt it was so much better to be able to be more flexible.

"It was really easy to move around and capture things as we went, with what was basically a bare camera with a separate wireless focus puller unit for the focus puller who was following me around.

"On the studio day I used a zoom control, but on the city shooting day I had to operate the zoom by hand and adjust exposure on the go. The lenses are the same size and quite easy to operate, so when you change from one to the other you don't really notice a difference in terms of how you work with them, and in terms of balance. I also really appreciated that there's not much movement in the image, in terms of focus breathing and things like that."

As Diana discovered, regardless of whether you're shooting on location or in the studio, the Canon Flex Zooms are fast, flexible and produce a refined cinematic image that holds up beautifully to further adjustments. It's easy to switch between full frame and Super 35mm formats using the Canon relay kits RL-F1 and RL-F2, and combined with the availability of interchangeable EF and PL mounts, the lenses really are ready for anything.