Best Lenses for the BMPCC 6K

Best Lenses for the BMPCC 6K

The Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K has a lot of lenses available to it, because it uses the Canon EF mount. It’s also compatible with EF-S lenses. Depending on how you count, there are around 200 EF-compatible lenses made by Canon. The number is even more staggering when you count compatible third-party lenses from brands like Sigma. So how can you possibly pick the best lenses for the BMPCC 6K? Well, we’ve dug deep and found some of the best and most popular lenses that you can use on your camera!

Unfortunately for your wallet, these lenses are going to be a little expensive. While the classic Canon 50mm photography lens comes in around $100 or so, a good cinema lens will often cost over $500. But they are definitely worth the investment to capture as good of footage as possible with your BMPCC 6K.

Sigma 18-35mm F/1.8 Art

Sigma 18-35mm F/1.8: Picture 2

Sigma is a brand that makes Canon-compatible lenses, and their 18-35mm F/1.8 Art lens is an excellent choice for your Blackmagic camera. The 18-35mm range is perfect for most shoots, while giving you plenty of versatility in one lens. With a price tag of roughly $700, it’s no small investment. But this is the kind of lens you could easily attach to your camera and never change out! Users note that its standout features are its incredibly fast and quiet autofocus and its beautiful bokeh thanks to the F/1.8 aperture.

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Tokina 11-16mm F/2.8

Tokina ATX-i 11-16mm CF F/2.8 Lens for Canon Digital SLR Cameras

One of the downsides of the Pocket 6K is that it lacks continuous autofocus. This makes sense for a cinema camera, but it’s a downside that you need to keep in mind. This is going to require a lot of manual focus pulling, and makes using a gimbal quite a challenge. But this Tokina lens might help with some of these issues. It has a very wide field of view, at just 11-16mm, so it has an incredibly short focus distance. With this lens, you can set the focus to infinity and use your Pocket 6K on a gimbal without having to worry! The most recent version of the lens comes in at $450, but older revisions can be acquired fairly easily on the used market, as the original came out in 2008.

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Canon EF 24-105mm F/4L IS II USM

Canon 24-105/4 IS II: Picture 1

This Canon 24-105mm lens is great for a wide variety of scenarios, and is a popular one-lens solution. It has 4x optical zoom range and is able to capture wide-angle and short telephoto. It’s a true general-purpose lens, offering a very large focal range. It has excellent image stabilization, making it an ideal pairing for the Blackmagic. The major downside that users have noted is that the brightness drops off as you zoom, so it’s likely best used when not fully zoomed in. Others have complained about bad lens creep.

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Zeiss 35mm T2.1 CP.3

Zeiss 35mm T2.1 CP.3 Compact Prime Cine Lens (Metric) with Canon EF EOS Mount

This one is for the filmmakers who want a lens that will last forever but might want to upgrade their camera more often. Zeiss lenses are expensive (this series goes for between $4000-$6000) but they are full-on cinema lenses with an EF mount. Zeiss was one of the first manufacturers to bring a cinema lens to this consumer-grade mount. The CP.3 series is their most recent series, which includes modern features like readouts of key lens data in real-time. Advanced lens coatings, painted lens rims, and special light traps eliminate glares and flares, and bring out high contrast, rich blacks, and more saturated colors. These lenses are prime lenses, which means you’ll be stuck on one focal length, but the overall look of these lenses will be worth the money. Especially considering how long-lasting they will be in your arsenal.

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DZOFILM Pictor 20-55mm T2.8

This 20-55mm cinema lens is a versatile and gorgeous option. It has a natural softness without compromising on quality. It has a really smooth and clean focus, with minimal breathing effect. It is a parfocal lens, which means it stays in focus even as you change the magnification or focal length. At $2500, it’s affordable as far as cinema lenses go, and does great in a variety of situations.

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View next: Blackmagic LUTs for Colorists

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