p.1 #1 · Which lenses have minimal focus breathing for product photography?
I am starting to do more product photography and would like to use focus stacking. Which of the currently available lenses have minimal focus breathing?
p.1 #2 · Which lenses have minimal focus breathing for product photography?
In general, cinema lenses will be a good choice for this as they are designed to minimize (or even eliminate) focus breathing. They're generally all-manual (no autofocus) but that shouldn't be an issue for product photography.
Be careful of cinema lenses that are simply rehoused stills lenses; often those will still exhibit some breathing. I think this is the case for some of the Sigma cinema lenses for example. If you don't mind using a PL or other adapter, you have a lot more choices than those available natively for e-mount.
Also note that many cinema lenses do not necessarily aim for sharpness, since sharpness is often an undesirable trait in cinema. So you'll need to do some research. Some of the Zeiss cinema lenses would work well here, although they can be super-expensive (generally true for cinema lenses). For what it's worth, the Zeiss Otus line is essentially the same glass as the Supreme cinema line, for a lot less money, and those lenses have minimal breathing. But they are not cheap either.
Many cinema lenses cost $20,000 and up...cinematographers often rent rather than buy them and you might be able to make that work if you aren't doing product photography fulltime.
p.1 #4 · Which lenses have minimal focus breathing for product photography?
saxguy wrote:
I am starting to do more product photography and would like to use focus stacking. Which of the currently available lenses have minimal focus breathing?
First hand:
FE 24-105mm F4 G OSS
Samyang 24mm F2.8
Sigma 45mm is pretty minimal
From reports FE 35mm F1.8, FE FE 24-70mm F4 ZA, FE 24-70mm F2.8 GM, FE 24-240mm OSS, FE PZ 28-135mm F4 G OSS, FE 70-300 G OSS.
Sample variation is a problem for consumer photography. A lens may be designed to have no focus breathing, but what you get will not be perfect. Cinema lenses generally have a backfocus adjustment. Lens Rentals did a recent article about measuring the flange distance variation on E-mount bodies. It is not even just the lenses that vary.
p.1 #5 · Which lenses have minimal focus breathing for product photography?
I tried starting a thread to share results of focus breathing tests here: https://www.fredmiranda.com/forum/topic/1596483/0. My application I tested for wasn't focus stacking, just trying to avoid distracting focus breathing for video of relatively still subjects (e.g. interview subject, documentary of artist at work, etc.).
In tests of lenses I had at the time, the FE 24-105 was great at tested focal lengths, FE 50/1.4 quite good unless making larger changes in focus distance (e.g. 5' to 20').
Of lenses acquired since then, the FE 35/1.8 is the best w/r/t focus breathing of lenses I've owned to date.
