"You Get What You Pay For????"

[Stephen Williams]

It was nothing special to see anyway.

Alexa & Epic were shown.

 

[Fred Salaff]

Optar Illuminas vs Super35 Illuminas

Optar Illuminas vs Super35 Illuminas

To clarify:
Optar Illumina lenses are high speed (All T1.3) Super 16mm lenses built by the Krasnagorsk factory near Moscow. They have been around since 1995.
During the first year or so there were "teething" problems but now they are so well accepted that we are still selling them worldwide.

Super 35mm Illumina lenses are built by the well respected LOMO factory in St. Petersburg. While we have not sold hundreds of sets we have sold a
very respectable amount, mostly in countries outside of the USA where our spectacular price of USD$26,995 for a set of 5 T1.3 lenses (from 18mm to 85mm)
seems to hit a nerve with people who are more into shooting with a really nice set of lenses at an affordable cost than in over analyzing their innards.

Generation 2 S35mm Illuminas will be introduced in October and we have quite a few reservations for these lenses as well. Within a year we hope to introduce
3 additional focal lengths: 10mm, 14mm, and 135mm. Widest aperture has not yet been determined. Also on the drawing boards is a set of anamorphics, especially
viable since LOMO has the experience and know-how.

 

[Matt W.]

f/4

For real? That translates to nearly 300 megapixels of potential resolution on a Super35mm sensor. And yet I believe it. Talk about future proof!

 

[Jeff Coatney]

The cost of these lenses are not an indicator of quality. The Master Primes are among the best engineered and manufactured lenses you can find. But the size of the high-end lens market was much smaller when these lenses were introduced, so the market enabled a price-point that was very high. A small pool of buyers and small production quantities means a high retail price.

The Red Pro Primes entered a market that Red themselves expanded exponentially when they launched the Red One. The process of engineering and manufacturing a Red Lens is fundamentally no different that the process that gives you a Master Prime, but the Red Lens has the benefit of leap-frogging ahead based solely on the fact that other lenses have gone before it. Red is not "copying" great lenses, but they benefit from other lenses existence. Red can see the characteristics that other lenses have, analyze them and learn from them. All lenses in this class.

The other chief reason that Red Pro Primes are cheaper is that they are manufactured in higher volumes. Contrary to most people's perceptions, high volume manufacturing does not necessarily yield inferior quality. Empirical testing and careful comparisons have revealed the Red Pro Primes hold their own against lenses of perceived higher quality. The machines that grind and coat the optics and the milling machines that make the housings can be purchased. This equipment may be identical in quality to that used to make Master Primes.

But Red gets a huge quality boost from the plethora of very sophisticated, high-end computer test equipment like scanners, calipers, industrial x-ray machines and other pieces of quality assurance apparatus that is likely too expensive to employ in a lower volume manufacturing environment. This is gear that can give you automated feedback in millionths of an inch at fairly high speed, performing an automated test regimen that would take an engineer days to conduct using older methods. That's a huge savings.

So Red meets their price/quality goals, and Yours, by:

a. Expanding the market for high end lenses so that they can manufacture in high-volume.

b. Purchase raw material in bulk and take advantage of high-volume cost efficiencies and automated quality assurance.

b. Designing the program to meet known quality goals (derived from studying existing lenses) using CAD simulation software and test the design in the computer without having to make expensive physical prototypes.

There is one critical difference with a Red Pro Prime versus a Master Prime however, The RPP is designed to work with the Mysterium sensor, where the critical plane of focus for RG and B components of the light are hitting a single plane. The Master Prime has to hit those corresponding RGB planes as they occur on film, in emulsion layers of CYM, so they are in fact hitting focusing at three critical planes. Maybe this is a minor concession, but as the sensors begin increasing in resolution, you will see the Master Prime quality begin to deteriorate while the RPP quality will hold up.

 

[Matt W.]

Contrary to most people's perceptions, high volume manufacturing does not necessarily yield inferior quality.

Are you sure? With large format (which I've been dabbling in lately) the difference in quality between lens samples far exceeds the difference in quality between lens types. We're not talking bad manufacturers or cheap lenses here, either. Granted tolerances are terrible in large format in general.

Medium format digital is much worse, despite slightly better tolerances, because the sensors are so dense.

Apparently these much-vaunted lenses:

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/567932-REG/Mamiya_210_603_Normal_80mm_f_2_8_Autofocus.html

http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/672204-USA/Rodenstock_R150120_23mm_f_5_6_HR_Digaron_S.html

...are, well, not so good--unless you get lucky. I always assumed most of the price of Cookes and Master Primes had to do with quality control only possible at very low yields. Not that I've heard anything bad about the Red lenses and I don't want to imply Red's guilty by association.

 

[Dan Hudgins]

"Plate effect"

"Plate effect"

There is one critical difference with a Red Pro Prime versus a Master Prime however, The RPP is designed to work with the Mysterium sensor, where the critical plane of focus for RG and B components of the light are hitting a single plane. The Master Prime has to hit those corresponding RGB planes as they occur on film, in emulsion layers of CYM, so they are in fact hitting focusing at three critical planes. Maybe this is a minor concession, but as the sensors begin increasing in resolution, you will see the Master Prime quality begin to deteriorate while the RPP quality will hold up.

The thickness of the OLPF filter and sensor cover glass may produce negative spherical aberration that depends on the f/ stop being used, they may also cause some curvature of field and CA.

Whether the image is better or worse with the OLPF and sensor cover glass between the lens and the image plane, depends on the Intrinsic aberration of the lens at the f/ stop used and focal distance (and zoom setting for zoom lenses).

If the lens is computed for the OLPF and sensor cover glass then their effect is known, if the lens was not computed for anything but air between the back of the lens and the focal plane, then you can expect some degradation of the image, how much depends on the lens and the f/ stop etc used and the size of the pixel, and thinkness and type of glass used in the "plates".

You can also get f/ stop dependent focus shift in lenses that are not corrected for the plates since the "best focus" can become a little off from the negative spherical aberration etc.

Another matter is if a lens can focus a spot smaller than one pixel (four pixel group in a Bayer sensor), and the OLPF does not block all that fine detail from getting to the sensor the moire issues can increase for a given setting of the OLPF comp and such.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

For real? That translates to nearly 300 megapixels of potential resolution on a Super35mm sensor. And yet I believe it. Talk about future proof!

yep, for real. I tested 14mm, 35mm and 75mm on an Arri MTF machine with all of them peaking between f/4 and f/4.5 with the 14mm beeing the sharpest of them all.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

If the lens is computed for the OLPF and sensor cover glass then their effect is known, if the lens was not computed for anything but air between the back of the lens and the focal plane, then you can expect some degradation of the image, how much depends on the lens and the f/ stop etc used and the size of the pixel, and thinkness and type of glass used in the "plates".

You can also get f/ stop dependent focus shift in lenses that are not corrected for the plates since the "best focus" can become a little off from the negative spherical aberration etc.

Another matter is if a lens can focus a spot smaller than one pixel (four pixel group in a Bayer sensor), and the OLPF does not block all that fine detail from getting to the sensor the moire issues can increase for a given setting of the OLPF comp and such.

The OLPF aberrations would be known in the case of the RPP of course. And like you point out Dan, no Master Prime or any other lens that doesn't take these factors into account can't expect to out-perform a lens that is designed to match the sensor across all f-stops. Well put.

 

[Matt W.]

yep, for real. I tested 14mm, 35mm and 75mm on an Arri MTF machine with all of them peaking between f/4 and f/4.5 with the 14mm beeing the sharpest of them all.

That's very impressive, wow. There are rumors that the (inexpensive) 55mm f2.8 Micro Nikkor is diffraction-limited somewhere between f2.8 and f5.6, but for a whole range of fully corrected fast primes to perform like that is incredible.

Of course, an mtf machine doesn't take into account all the variables mentioned above (anti-aliasing filters, film layers and flatness relative to focal plane) so it's not "real world"--but that's just so cool, nonetheless, so far exceeding what's necessary.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

The OLPF aberrations would be known in the case of the RPP of course. And like you point out Dan, no Master Prime or any other lens that doesn't take these factors into account can't expect to out-perform a lens that is designed to match the sensor across all f-stops. Well put.

Jeff, not sure why it is well put. Do you have any examples/tests/anything to suggest the above statement has any merit at all? All the experience I had shooting RPPs and MPs indicates the opposite to be true.

Have you shot with both RPPs and MPs and compared the two or are you shooting from the hip? :sneaky2:

 

[Pawel Achtel]

...but as the sensors begin increasing in resolution, you will see the Master Prime quality begin to deteriorate while the RPP quality will hold up.

again, please show how.

Sure, RPPs are good value for money and we love them, no doubt about that, but I think it makes a lot of damage to this forum to make statements like yours.

To my modest experience shooting both, MPs have significantly higher contrast, significantly higher MTF, significantly less distortion, significantly more even, flatter illumination, less flare, less ghosting, less comma and are in every single way better than RPPs. I tested on MTF machine, on R1, on Canon DSLR and on a lens projector at ARRI facility in Sydney. I shot Red Primes too, with the same camera in the same place. You can clearly see the difference between them when inter-cutting the shots and the only thing I can confirm is the opposite to what you are saying.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

again, please show how.

Sure, RPPs are good value for money and we love them, no doubt about that, but I think it makes a lot of damage to this forum to make statements like yours.

To my modest experience shooting both, MPs have significantly higher contrast, significantly higher MTF, significantly less distortion, significantly more even, flatter illumination, less flare, less ghosting, less comma and are in every single way better than RPPs. I tested on MTF machine, on R1, on Canon DSLR and on a lens projector at ARRI facility in Sydney. I shot Red Primes too, with the same camera in the same place. You can clearly see the difference between them when inter-cutting the shots and the only thing I can confirm is the opposite to what you are saying.

Hi, Pawel. Refer to Dan's post to get more info on what I'm talking about. Basically the theory is: As sensors increase in resolution relative to what would be the "film gate" or the image plane, the lens that was designed for a film camera (pre-digital) would hit a point where its ability to resolve the image will be exceeded by the number of photosites and the clarity of the focused image would break down or reveal aberrations not previously detectable on the lens.

If it sounds like I'm trashing the Master Primes here, I'm not. Just trying to make the point that while everyone regards Master Primes as having a higher intrinsic quality than the RPP, the fact is that they weren't designed specifically for the Mysterium sensor (where you have an OLPF, etc.), they were designed for a film camera ( Where there is nothing but air between the back of the lens and the image plane, which is dye layers). The thrust of this thread is the cost / performance of lenses-- and while the RPP's are cheap, there is no reason to suspect that they can't be comparable to or exceed the performance of "higher quality" lenses when used on a Mysterium equipped Red One only.

As for being damaging, I take your criticism to mean it would be detrimental to the reputation of Master Primes as highest quality optics to use on a Red One? I make no subjective judgements of what is the best lens. Nor should anyone infer from My opinions which one is best. Perhaps we need a thread where specific Lenses are reviewed?

I do however, believe that just because the RPP's cost less and are manufactured in higher quantities, they are not intrinsically inferior to any other lens one may choose. I've encountered many people who were unfairly critical of the RPP's without even trying them out because they had prejudiced them based solely on price. The long debates about lenses here on Red User have revealed really only one premise: Most Lens characteristics can be objectively measured, but there are many characteristics that are and always will be subjectively judged, as you point out in your post.

 

[Barend Onneweer]

Basically the theory is:

...

That's the point isn't it? I wouldn't suggest that the MP's are 'deteriorating' in image quality beyond a certain resolution digital sensor unless you've got pictures...

 

[Jeff Coatney]

Jeff, not sure why it is well put. Do you have any examples/tests/anything to suggest the above statement has any merit at all? All the experience I had shooting RPPs and MPs indicates the opposite to be true.

Have you shot with both RPPs and MPs and compared the two or are you shooting from the hip? :sneaky2:

Sorry, missed this one. Obviously I was "shooting from hip" because I didn't have a series of charts to prove or explain every nuance of what I was trying to communicate. Of course I can't prove it. That's the entire point. I've seen how ruffled everyone's feathers gets when someone even mentions that maybe Master Primes were not divinely hewn by the right hand of God. LOL!

But in all seriousness, I like and respect you and your work, Pawel. I'll take your counterpoint like a Man!

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Only (more or less) 1 out of 10 Mp's makes it through quality control. That's one reason for their cost. I don't think that RPP's have the same quality control. I don't think RED can justify that cost, when manufacturing in higher quantity.

 

[Fredrik Callinggard]

Sorry, missed this one. Obviously I was "shooting from hip" because I didn't have a series of charts to prove or explain every nuance of what I was trying to communicate. Of course I can't prove it. That's the entire point. I've seen how ruffled everyone's feathers gets when someone even mentions that maybe Master Primes were not divinely hewn by the right hand of God. LOL!

But in all seriousness, I like and respect you and your work, Pawel. I'll take your counterpoint like a Man!

I think he means personal experience

 

[Jeff Coatney]

...

That's the point isn't it? I wouldn't suggest that the MP's are 'deteriorating' in image quality beyond a certain resolution digital sensor unless you've got pictures...

Yes, I will concede that I chose my words poorly. Should I edit the original post?

 

[Jeff Coatney]

I think he means personal experience

That I have. But my subjective criteria and yours is never going to match.

 

[Jeff Coatney]

I've seen how ruffled everyone's feathers gets when someone even mentions that maybe Master Primes were not divinely hewn by the right hand of God. LOL!

This one really stoked the boiler, eh?

 

[Stephen Williams]

The OLPF aberrations would be known in the case of the RPP of course. .

IIRC the OLPF was moved (and upgraded ?) in RED one so it's quite possible that the design was started before the current OLPH became standard..........