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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Birger Lens Mount Reservations

More Canon Shots

More Canon Shots

All shot yesterday at 2.8 using the new 36 compression. Given the bright background the lenses uniformly had little if no flare. This shoot impressed me. No doubt in my mind now that feature work with Birger and Canon is going to be every bit as good as the most expensive cine lenses.
 
I have to say I am happy to take a gamble on the Birger. i am not sure that it will work 100% but for the money it's not a bad risk. If the backfocus is tight and solid I will be happy.

The worst thing that can happen in my opinion is for the quality to suffer due to a rushed manufacturing product. So what I an saying is I am willing to wait but I just hope that it all works in the end.

I guess it's easy for me as I have a high number red :-)
 
Breathing

Breathing

I will be posting breathing tests soon. The wider lenses breath the most. But some of the lenses do not breath. There will be a number of Canon lens options for doing a rack focus with little to NO breathing.
 
artbeatsart said:
From the optical point, possible, from the mechanical point (breathing, pulling focus, ASO): NO!
Click to expand...

Why do you say this? As far as breathing as Sheltie guy says some breathe a fair amount - some not at all. This is true in Cine lenses as well - apparently the RED zoom breathes quite a bit. I think breathing has been sold as a bit more of a bugaboo than it really is. I watched Jaws the other night and was paying attention to that stuff and many of the lenses in that era breath quite a bit. There simply weren't any shots where it would have had an effect - even though there were several scenes with multiple people around a table, reaction shots etc. where a rack focus could be used but they simply changed the shot from one to the other.

As far as smooth focusing, given the extreme precision of the focusing motors in modern EF USM lenses I expect them to be capable of focusing just as smoothly and precisely as cinema lenses. The limiting factor will be the smoothness of the encoder. I anticipate that smoothness of focus will be good right from the start but even if not, it seems like it would be upgradable in the future as Birger or someone else figures out the encoder.

It may vary because as Erik posted many moons ago the lenses have a different number of steps and presumably the more steps the more precision possible. It seems to me anything over a thousand steps would allow a lot of precision - and most of the better lenses have 1500 to 3000.


Here is the list as I have it:

ENS NAME: #STEPS

CANON ZOOM LENS EF-S 10-22mm 1:3.5-4.5 USM: 1185
CANON ZOOM LENS EF 70-200mm 1:2.8L IS USM: 2512
CANON ZOOM LENS 16-35mm 1:2.8L USM: 1566

CANON MACRO LENS EF 100mm 1:2.8 USM: 2535
CANON MACRO LENS EF-S 60mm 1:2.8 USM: 3298

CANON LENS EF 50mm 1:1.4 USM: 660
CANON LENS EF 14mm 1:2.8L USM: 1398
CANON ZOOM LENS 16-35mm 1:2.8L USM: 1566
CANON LENS EF 100mm 1:2 USM: 1687
CANON LENS EF 28mm 1:1.8 USM: 1800
CANON ZOOM LENS EF 28-105mm 1:3.5-4.5 USM: 1900
CANON LENS EF 200mm 1:2.8L USM: 2098
CANON ZOOM LENS EF 28-135mm 1:3.5-5.6 IS USM: 2276
CANON ZOOM LENS EF 70-200mm 1:2.8L IS USM: 2512
CANON LENS EF 35mm 1:1.4L USM: 2517
CANON LENS EF 24mm 1:1.4L USM: 2521
CANON MACRO LENS EF 100mm 1:2.8 USM: 2535
CANON MACRO LENS EF-S 60mm 1:2.8 USM: 3298
CANON LENS EF 200mm 1:1.8L USM: 3706
CANON LENS EF 85mm 1:1.2L USM: 4212


Sheltie Guy said:
I will be posting breathing tests soon. The wider lenses breath the most. But some of the lenses do not breath. There will be a number of Canon lens options for doing a rack focus with little to NO breathing.
Click to expand...
 
AquaVideoRed206 said:
Why do you say this? As far as breathing as Sheltie guy says some breathe a fair amount - some not at all.
Click to expand...
Yes some canon zooms breathe very little at some focal lengths,
but can you name a stills prime lens that doesn't breathe? Cine primes breathe very little or not at all.
some of the canon Primes are really bad. A 16-35,17-40 or 18-50 2.8 EFS performs better. Take a look at some of the beloved Leicas or Zeiss ZF. Possible worse still.
 
Canon lens breathing test shots:

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=7463

Really... not that bad. Not right for every project, or every scene within a given project, but certainly "acceptable" for a lot of projects / shots.

I will be shooting a feature this year with the Birger / Canon combo.

-Thor
 
planetearth said:
AquaVideo,

Any list on steps for Nikon lenses?
Click to expand...

I've never seen one. Remember Canon "smart" control is something Birger has had for several years - which is why I have some confidence that the RED version will be realized soon.

Nikon "smart" control has been in the works but was never fully completed on either the industrial or RED side, so I think there is a lot less of that data known.

Thor Wixom said:
Michael,

Red sent me the tracking numbers for my camera last night, so I hope the next test (primes) is on the Red One!

Now where did I put that Birger mount?

-Thor
Click to expand...

It's under the bed.

I think we need to send Erik a starbucks gift card, (crystal meth is probably inappropriate) so he can stay up all night.:biggrin:

shiny said:
Canon has published its “Lens Work” book over the years, detailing design, specification and usage of its entire lens line. It’s well worth reading at least once, and is a good reference. Now Canon has posted updated electronic material (11 PDF files) available in multiple languages, though certain lenses like the EF 14/2.8L II are not covered.
http://www.canon-europe.com/Support/Documents/digital_slr_educational_tools/ef_lens_work_iii.asp

PDFs 3, 4, 5 cover Canon EF primes, zooms and EF-S lenses respectively. This is an excellent way to investigate your next lens choice.

Perhaps most useful to to the widest audience (and not just Canon shooters), is book #7 The Basics of Interchangeable Lenses & Correspondence of EF Lenses to Digital Photography, which offers an excellent explanation (and graphics) of how lenses work on a camera, angle of view, sensor size cropping, depth of field, perspective and digital imaging. Even those with previous experience will find this book interesting. PDF 8 Photo Techniques discusses various types of picture taking (portraits, landscape, etc), and is an excellent introduction for beginning photographers.

PDF 9 EF Lens Technology covers Canon lens design, and PDF 10 Optical Terminology are well worth reading if you want to understand lens performance—design challenges, compromises, MTF, lens aberrations, etc. It also has MTF charts for all Canon lenses. Finally, PDF 11 contains design specifications and tables for Canon lenses and accessories.
Click to expand...

BTW Somebody asked about breathing compensation and whether it would be in initial software. Short answer is no because it is not just software. Remember breathing compensation requires a zoom lens and motors to actuate the zoom very minutely to offset the breathing that occurs. These lenses don't have zoom motors so it will have to work in conjunction with external zoom motors. The lens data does give accurate zoom position so this gives us a future capability that doesn't exist in a lot of cine lenses (just those with Arri LDS or Cooke I implemented)
 
So, from what I've heard - the Canon Birger mounts should be shipping by the week of the 24th (of March.) Any guesstimate on the Nikons?
 
mind-refreshin' quotes: Try and make heads or tails...lol

mind-refreshin' quotes: Try and make heads or tails...lol

Erik Widding quotes:

1) Breathing compensation is one of many features on a list for later. Once we either release our own zoom motor, or have integrated with the RED motor, we will look at implementing this. The real issue is the production of the calibration data.

We have ways to do this automagically... but that will require our auto-interactive focus module that we will not be announcing for some time...
________________________________________________________________

Evin Grant on how LBC(lens breathing compensation) would work:

1)It's fairly simple, they bench test a bunch of different SLR zoom lenses and create a data base that corresponds to the amount of zooming that's needed to counteract the breathing. This won't work at the very ends of the zoom but should be fine. There could also be a plug-in to FCP/Red cine that could use the same info to do the same thing in post. We're only talking about 2-4% punch in so it won't be visable form a quality stand point.

2)Well if you're pulling from close to far, your image will need to be zoomed slightly in to compensate, if you're at 70mm on a 28-70mm zoom, this can't be done, so you would need to zoom out slightly to allow for the correction. The same would apply in reverse at the wide end.
______________________________________________________________
Curt Von Bandinsky quote:
1)We may be starting on lens breathing compensation before you guys for our remote. We are going to build an automated test stand towards the middle of January and will make the data publicly available. By then we should have a good idea of the control scheme as well and we could probably share it with you.

2)Our thoughts were that when you're using lens breathing compensation (LBC) mode it would limit the zoom to positions that can be compensated for. If you need that extra range then you'd have to turn off the LBC mode

3)You press the button on a motor and it finds the limits. Just to clarify, all of the compensation is done in the remote/receiver... so basically the receiver would look up the current lens data and not command the motor to go further than the database allows for that particular lens (if in LBC mode). we are going to have a serial port as well so we may be able to tap directly into Eriks mount and issue move commands. This all depends on who gets to it first
 
If Erik can coordinate with Curt, there might be mutual benefit in getting complementary products to market quicker!
 
BTW, breathing compensation, as you may have already inferred, only applies to ZOOMs. So, if you have a prime that breaths like a motherEffer, I've heard from Evin that it's fairly easy to compensate in post; Although I've never actually tried that, so I don't know how it's done, or how good the results are.
 
birgerEngineer said:
first 50 units should be rolling off the production line next week. Knobs might not be available until the following week.
Click to expand...

To my knowledge, this was Erik's most recent update, about two weeks ago. Any new word on when the first reservations will start shipping?
 
I spoke to Erik last week, and he said they were running a week behind. The first batch of mounts are supposed to be rolling off the belt this week. I'm #140 in line (ordered at the end of November), and when I spoke to him, he told me to expect my mount to ship in two to three weeks (from last week). If you take that estimate and triple it, you've got yourself a safe estimate ;-)
 
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