years ago when I started video people even professionals had camcorders. Looking back at those books you see things like a lens with 29mm equivalent is considered wide and then you would want the ability to zoom. Camcorders would have lenses that would go easily 8x. You would then by special lenses like fathom when you needed a wider viewBack in the days you would work with 60 degree lights to cover for 35mm equivalent more or less stretching to 28mm. Now you have 90 to 120 degrees lights and wider lenses like the Nauticam WWL-1 and some people even shoot fisheye.
When I started off with compact camera videos I would shoot reef scenes with a 24mm equivalent and would get a 100 degree wet lens only in special circumstances. Would have never shot 130 degrees video as I did not like the barrel distortion.
Then DSLR and mirrorless came into the mix and it looks like everything is getting wider including of course the coverage of video lights but lenses obviously are not so versatile like camcorders.
I have seen first the 7-14mm being used on the GH4 then the WWL-1 has become more prevalent both lenses have around 104 degrees field of view horizontal versus the 74 of a 24mm equivalent lens. Clearly as there are issues with dome ports at very wide angles the trend has been for wet adapters like the WWL-1 or the WACP however I am not totally convinced all this field of view is needed at all times.
I shoot a Leica 12-60mm for video reef scenes and talking to a fellow wetpixel dreifish we discussed briefly that he had tried the 12-35mm and left it as the zoom was not enough which is a fair comment. But the 12-60mm works well and there are other users here that adopt this lens for video.
At 1 meter the WWL-1 can show a 2.5 meters frame horizontally, now that is pretty big unless you have big animals a 24mm equivalent will cover 1.5 meters that for me is not little for most circumstances, turtles, reefs and any fish that does not come close like sharks. The same 12-60 lens can cover a 9x5 cm frame at one foot when fully zoom this is not macro but good enough for portraits. Obviously as distance increases effectiveness of lights decreases too so this has to be take into account.
The other benefit that I have experienced with the 12-60 f/2.8 lens is that the angle of view is not that wide and you can shoot at wide apertures without excessive blur effectively gaining almost a stop from the WWL-1 situation and finally the WWL-1 is a pain for snorkelling unless you manage to seal the port with water flushing in and out.
I wonder if there are other people out there shooting 24-100 equivalent either on full frame cropped or other formats and how many times do you really need the extra field of view if you don't have large animals
. I didn't feel much need to shoot beyond 35mm -- just get physically closer.
