First designed to live between stills zooms and the Optimo series, the Angenieux Type EZ series have ended up in their own league as some of the highest performing and most versatile zoom lenses.

It’s extremely rare for a zoom lens to balance all these advantages at their price point:

• they are the fastest of all Angenieux zooms at T2 in S35 mode
• minimal distortion and no exposure ramping
• lightweight enough for handheld and ENG-style on-the-go documentary shoots
• exceptional close focus
• images that are clean and sharp but with plenty of character

Although they are modern zooms, they are worth testing as a match for vintage primes, since the faster aperture / shallower depth of field in certain conditions can play better with vintage primes than a T4 vintage zoom. They are so well-rounded that we have seen them go out alongside all kinds of spherical lenses.

In Super 35 mode, the EZ-1 has a 30-90mm range and the EZ-2 has a 15-40mm range.

In Full Frame / Vistavision mode, the EZ-1 has a 45-135mm range and the EZ-2 has a 22-60mm range.

When you go to Full Frame, the longer focal lengths give you approximately the same shot sizes from the same camera position, as you would have with the shorter focal lengths on the smaller format. And you lose a little speed going to T3 in exchange for the larger image circle. This mode covers beyond full frame, including ARRI Alexa LF, RED Monstro 8K and Sony Venice.

You could use the 45-135mm FF lens and still shoot S35.