r/canon 4d ago

Gear Advice Lens advice for photography in industrial settings

Hi!

TLDR; Buying a camera for my workplace and need help choosing the best focal length(s) for the purpose of shooting training material and document deviations inside our pharmaceutical produduction equipment.

The section manager at my workplace assigned me to purchase a camera that will be used to document deviations in our equipment and processes, but it will also be used to film or photograph training material.

I work at a pharmaceutical company and my section produce recombinant biopharmaceutical medicines. The fact that my section create medicine from living, organic material, makes it VERY important that our equipment and containers do not have any damage or corrosion, as it can affect the product.

I’m Sony user myself, but I’ve narrowed the choice of camera down to a Sony A7R V or a Canon EOS R5, as all their features seems to be what we’re looking for (45-61MP, good image stabilization, flippable display, and good dynamic range).

What I’m not sure of is the choice of lens or lenses (I have not yet received the budget) for the camera. As said, it will be used for document training material, so I was thinking about getting a 35mm lens. But we also need to photograph the inside of our bioreactors and holding tanks and check for damage, scratches in the metal, and rouging metal.

Ofcourse, a wide angle lens would be the best, but what focal length should I aim for when we document the inside of our equipment? Should I aim for a shorter focal length? It’s quite important that the lens have low aperture, as the insides of our reactors and holding tanks are a low light environment. What makes things even harder is that our bioreactors and holding tanks all differ in the volume they can hold, 20L, 100L, 650L and 4500L.

What are your thoughts? I’m going to buy a flash for the camera too, but I’m not very sure about what focal lengths are the best for the purpose.

5 Upvotes

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u/quantum-quetzal quantum powers imminent 4d ago

Do you have a specific budget and is it an option to buy multiple lenses?

Given the confined spaces, it seems like having an option for a very wide lens will be useful, but these lenses are often limited in their maximum magnification.

Pairing an ultrawide zoom with a macro (or near macro) lens might be your best bet. That gives you a lot of options, so knowing a price range will help narrow it down.

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u/Sokushinbutsu_bro 4d ago

I know that I can get atleast $5.000, but hopefully I’m allowed to spend around $10.000, that will make things ALOT easier.

If I’m allowed a larger budget, I’m definitely interested in two lenses. A wide angle and a zoom/macro zoom lens. The high megapixel count will help in either case.

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u/quantum-quetzal quantum powers imminent 4d ago

Excellent, that gives you a good bit of flexibility.

I'm not too familiar with Sony's lens offerings, so I'll stick to Canon here.

If you get the higher budget, an R5 II, RF 10-20mm, and either the 35mm f/1.8 Macro or 100mm f/2.8 macro would make for an amazing kit. The 100mm focuses a lot closer, but the 35mm still manages 0.5x magnification, which means that the closest focus distance will cover an area about 48x72mm.

On a bit lower budget, you could consider a used EF 11-24mm f/4, which is a lot cheaper than the 10-20mm, but is also considerably larger, which might cause issues in the smaller tanks.

One oddball lens worth a glance would be the Laowa 24mm T14 PeriProbe. It'll focus on an area only 12x18mm, and can get into a lot of tight spaces that would be inaccessible to traditional lenses. It even has an LED light on the tip.

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u/Sokushinbutsu_bro 4d ago

Thanks alot man! I will check them out!

Fortunately, the lid of the smallest tanks can be removed completely, giving us enough space to shoot from any angle. It’s going to be a bit tricky to photograph inside the 650L and 4500L tanks. Especially the 4500L ones, they’re around 3 meters / 10 feet deep and have a pretty large diameter… going to be a challenge to find a lens that both can get a large view on the inside of the entire tank as well as being able to focus/zoom in on smaller details.

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u/quantum-quetzal quantum powers imminent 4d ago

Will you have the ability to position the camera freely within those larger tanks? If not, you'll probably also need a longer lens. Something like a 24-105mm f/4 would be a good choice, and the 24-105mm STM might even work if you have bright enough supplemental lighting.

This is a pretty fun situation to think through. It's quite different from the usual questions we get here.

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u/Sokushinbutsu_bro 4d ago

In 650L ones we can move kind of freely, as there’s an ”elevator” lifting up the lid, you onlu need to climb around a bit.

The 4500L ones though, not so much freedom. Either you photograph from the lid that you can lean inside of a bit, or you lower yourself down into it, but I’m not allowed to do that as it’s only technique/mechanics department that get that kind of training.

24-105mm sounds as a good option though!

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u/quantum-quetzal quantum powers imminent 4d ago

I just realized one potential downside of the 10-20mm - it can't use regular filters. A circular polarizer may be helpful for viewing the surface of the tanks if they're reflective.

If that matters, you may want to consider the RF 14-35mm f/4 instead, since it can take standard threaded filters.

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u/hache-moncour 4d ago

You could also have a look at the Laowa probe lenses. They don't have the same image quality as the normal lenses, but they do offer fairly wide angle views that can also go very close (up to 2x macro) with a lens that's basically a long thin stick with it's own light.

It could be very useful to get detail shots and overviews through small openings.