Fossils on film: stepping back in time with the versatile Sumire Primes

When a 12-year-old girl discovered the first dinosaur fossils in cliffs along the English Channel, no-one believed her. Two centuries later, Mary Anning is celebrated as a pioneering palaeontologist. "This was groundbreaking and changed the way we saw the world," says German director of photography Clemens Majunke, who brought this story to the screen, choosing Canon's Sumire Prime lenses to create the vintage look it required.

Sea Dragon is a short film set in 1812, following the budding palaeontologist as she excavates the skeleton of an Ichthyosaurus, which scientists originally dismissed as the remains of a crocodile. The film focuses on Mary and her brother Joseph, as they break into a manor house to reclaim her mysterious find from a nefarious local auctioneer.

Clemens – whose portfolio spans documentaries, TV dramas and series for Warner Bros, Bavaria Film and ITV, as well as commercials for brands including Nike, Porsche and Mercedes Benz – was asked to join the project by the film's director, James Morgan. "As soon as I heard about the story, I was drawn into it," Clemens says. "Initially nobody paid much attention to Mary's discovery, as she was a young girl from a poor background. She wasn't respected until after her death."

Funded by an educational charity, Sea Dragon is to be screened in schools around the UK, to inspire primary school children, especially girls, to pursue a career in science. For his shoot along Britain's coastline and in a candlelit manor house, Clemens chose Canon's Sumire Prime lenses for their cinematic aesthetic.

The production team wanted to capture the character of the film's pre-Victorian setting, without sacrificing any of the detail and refined image that today's lenses and cameras are capable of producing. Vintage lenses wouldn't do the job, as they are not always able to meet the resolution needs of 4K and 8K capture. But Clemens knew that Canon's Sumire Prime lens range would deliver the artistic look that was required.

Sumire Prime lenses have been engineered for a cinematic look, blending beautiful bokeh with a hint of velvety softness that's sympathetic to skin tones. "They have a unique character that you don't see in other modern lenses," says Clemens. "I've always liked the vintage Canon K35 cine lenses, but for this sort of narrative work, you just want a little bit more consistency. We needed modern lenses that would perform well in all circumstances and provide a fast, hassle-free workflow.

Another reason Clemens enjoys the Sumire Prime lenses is that they enable him to shoot in two different styles. "As soon as you open them up wider than about T2.8, the painterly character of the lens really shines," he says. "And if you stop them down a little bit to T8, you get a very crisp, sharp image.

Since Sea Dragon filming ended, Clemens has used Sumire Primes on a number of other projects, including a character-driven short film about mental health which required a lot of night shoots. "I really like the gloomy look the lenses create when you shoot them wide open at night," he says. "It really helps to create a different sense of reality."

For this more recent shoot, Clemens paired the Sumire Primes with a Canon EOS C500 Mark II, and was impressed by the combination. "It gives you a really nice balance between detail and sharpness, and overall it's a really compact, lightweight package that I can use in a gimbal, handheld or rigged into a car," he says. "It is still not easy to find lenses which cover all the new Full Frame sensors, and using Sumire Primes means I don't have to worry about vignetting."

Curious to see how Sumire Prime lenses would perform in a more contemporary setting, Clemens has also worked with them on a commercial shoot, where he was briefed to create a "neon, dark-futuristic" look. "I stopped them down a little bit this time, and they handled that perfectly, still delivering clean images and a nice level of contrast."

That's the thing with Sumire Primes: their unique optical design makes them extremely versatile. Open them up, and it's possible to produce a beautiful, expressive image. Stop them down, and you can achieve a clean, modern look. You could say that they're the perfect lenses to change the way you see the world.