First, an excerpt from the article Shoot for the Stars:
David Klein added, “The other advantage was putting the Standard Coverage Chameleons on an ARRI LF sensor and realising they would cover! That gave us a sweet fall-off at the edges, depending on the T-stop.”
The combination of the Chameleons and the LFsensor offered a balance of practical and artistic flexibility, enhancing both the visual and spatial possibilities within the Volume.
Klein also noted, “We liked the look of SC Chameleons on the LF sensor, so that was an easy sell. Plus, we wanted to shoot 4K, so we had limited camera choices back when we started to shoot The Mandalorian S3.”
As virtual production technology advances, Klein foresees a growing impact on lens choices.
“The more realistic the Volume content looks, the better. Lenses that give you that freedom of moving around in the limited set space will make that possible, and I personally have yet to find another lens set that will give you that much freedom and flexibility. Choose your lenses wisely.
My takeaway from this excerpt from the Klein/Mainl article: Chameleon SC’s (at least 50mm and up, and possibly the older 40mm SC also) do cover fullframe format (e.g., Arri LF). The fact that there is a falloff toward the edges and corners of the frame when they are used on LF is actually a big advantage when shooting virtual production with an LED wall because moire is reduced. This is due to the “sweet fall-off at the edges” noted by Klein.
An important difference between Chameleon SC and XC is that the XC lenses have less falloff at the edges and corners of the LF format. But, as the Klein/Mainl article dramatically demonstrates, this DOES NOT mean that XC Chameleons are better on LF format than SC Chameleons. In many cases, such as The Mandalorian, the falloff is a good thing.
Just a side note: the 32mm SCUW and 40mm SCUW together with the 150mm SC are a perfect addition – not substitution – to the SC Chameleon set because you now have a full set of 7 SC lenses (32mm SCUW, 40mm SCUW, 50mm SC, 60mm SC, 75mm SC, 100mm SC and 150mm SC) that cover the full range of the LF format with a very nice image rendering. (Note: The 25mm SCUW can’t be included here because it covers S35 and not LF.)