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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 :)

Lenses for 2/3" Scarlet?

lenses were used on "Slumdog Millionaire (2008)"

lenses were used on "Slumdog Millionaire (2008)"

brainburst said:
To resolve 2k on Scarlet's 2/3" (10mm wide) sensor requires glass to pass a min 100 lp/mm.
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As I mentioned in some of my other posts you can get lenses that are said to be 120lp/mm for less than $500 each from companies in Japan that make industral optics, see the links to the data sheets.

Does anyone know what lenses were used on "Slumdog Millionaire (2008)" since the SI-2K mini seems to also use 2/3" optics?
 
As I mentioned in some of my other posts you can get lenses that are said to be 120lp/mm
Click to expand...

That is advertising. Get the lenses and do some mtf tests. There's a reason why glass is expensive. How many super 16 shoots have you seen that use this wonderful industrial glass? Now consider that the 2/3" sensor has an effective higher pixel density....
 
Pig in a Poke?

Pig in a Poke?

brainburst said:
That is advertising. Get the lenses and do some mtf tests. There's a reason why glass is expensive. How many super 16 shoots have you seen that use this wonderful industrial glass? Now consider that the 2/3" sensor has an effective higher pixel density....
Click to expand...

I do have some lenses and I am testing them, next year I hope to have some better cameras that will have pixel size closer to Scarlet's sensor.

Scarlet will have a heavy OLPF to reduce the aliasing and chroma moire so it will not resolve at single pixel at high MTF without over sharpening.

It would cost too much to purchase every lens and compare them all, some MFG will loan lenses for testing, so it should be possable to post lens tests for all the good lenses here in due course.

As for anything being better than the industral lenses, they are of recent design, most of the movie lenses are made from designs that are almost 50 years old, the newer designs may be better optimised and made using more modern equipment.

Who is making Zeiss lens elements now? Who is making Cooke lens elements now? Where are they made?

Anyway, does anyone know which lenses were used to shoot" Slumdog Millionaire (2008)" on the SI-2K mini?

There is a bigger issue with shooting on the 2/3" format the one of not being able to stop the lens down as much as when shooting S35mm size. For the most part you are limited to shooting at f/4 and f/5.6 to get full resolution in the red wavelengths. Many of the 120lp/mm industrial lenses are f/2.8 full open, and you don't use lenses wide open for shooting if you can avoid it. If you stop down to f/8 the image starts to go soft, so you just get two stops to use. Maybe with better lenses you can shoot at f/2.3 and f/2.8 but the DOF is very shallow so most of the image will be too out of focus to be at >2K resolution.

You cannot use 16mm DOF tables since they are more for SD resolution, the DOF at 2K to 3K will be much smaller.

The Super16 frame is larger than many 2/3" lenses would cover, so you would not use 2/3" lenses to shoot Super16. Also these new industral 5 Megapixel and super resolution C mount lenses are new products that were not around when 16mm film was being shot. Also the Megapixel wide angle lenses stick back into the camera and will not work on film cameras, they are desigined to have a shorter backfocus in order to increase the lens resolution. Film lenses desigined for reflex cameras are "crippled" in their design limits by the need for greater backfocus distance to clear the shutter, digital lens desiginers have greater latatude to let their computers compute a better design since they are not limited to desigins that can work with a camera that has a mirror shutter.

Lenses designed to cover a smaller 2/3" image circle would be sharper than a Super16 image circle lens all other things being equal.
 
Dan Hudgins said:
Anyway, does anyone know which lenses were used to shoot" Slumdog Millionaire (2008)" on the SI-2K mini?
Click to expand...

According to the December issue of American Cinematographer, p. 52, "9.5 and 12mm Zeiss Distagons, a 5.9mm Angenieux, a 6mm Century, an 8mm Zeiss, a Cooke 9-50mm zoom, a set of Zeiss Planar primes and a 200mm Canon. When longer lenses were necessary, Dod Mantle used Zeiss Ultra Primes and an Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm zoom. ... He used a set of extremely small Linos C-mount lenses on the mini 'when we had to be especially discreet or if there was ridiculously little space to work in.' "
 
Dan Hudgins said:
Film lenses desigined for reflex cameras are "crippled" in their design limits by the need for greater backfocus distance to clear the shutter, digital lens desiginers have greater latatude to let their computers compute a better design since they are not limited to desigins that can work with a camera that has a mirror shutter.
Click to expand...

That's what I am looking forward to. FF35 21mm f/1.4, etc.
 
but the DOF is very shallow so most of the image will be too out of focus to be at >2K resolution.

You cannot use 16mm DOF tables since they are more for SD resolution, the DOF at 2K to 3K will be much smaller.
Click to expand...

One of the other easons I would have preferred a 4/3 system

Also these new industral 5 Megapixel and super resolution C mount lenses are new products that were not around when 16mm film was being shot.
Click to expand...

I tried a couple of these industrial megapixel lenses incl Toshiba for a system using a 2/3"" iidc camera (1340 x 1092) I ended up having to buy a more expensive component Navitar lens assembly.

Lenses designed to cover a smaller 2/3" image circle would be sharper than a Super16 image circle lens all other things being equal.
Click to expand...

For HD they certainly need to be. They should be. But that isn't always true.

Its instructive to checkout the Edmund Optics website spec a lens that supposedly suits a hi res 2/3" sensor. Then look at the expected MTF responses.
 
Thanks for info, link to Linos C-mount lenses...

Thanks for info, link to Linos C-mount lenses...

Erik Bien said:
According to the December issue of American Cinematographer, p. 52, "9.5 and 12mm Zeiss Distagons, a 5.9mm Angenieux, a 6mm Century, an 8mm Zeiss, a Cooke 9-50mm zoom, a set of Zeiss Planar primes and a 200mm Canon. When longer lenses were necessary, Dod Mantle used Zeiss Ultra Primes and an Angenieux Optimo 24-290mm zoom. ... He used a set of extremely small Linos C-mount lenses on the mini 'when we had to be especially discreet or if there was ridiculously little space to work in.' "
Click to expand...

Thanks for the info. Here is a link to the Linos C-mount lenses, they have MTF spec sheets with 80lp/mm lines on them. They say the lenses are good up to "200 lines per mm" which should say 100lp/mm. Kowa claims 120lp/mm but does not say if that is 40% MTF or 20%MTF etc.

http://www.linos.com/pages/no_cache...ne-vision-lenses/?sid=13516&cHash=c8b0deb937#

CLick on their "downloads" tab to get the pdf files for data sheets.

I was wondering what the super wide lens was they used, if it was the old Angenieux 5.9 that's interesting, since those were daylight shots they might have been at f/5.6+ or something.
 
Navitar?

Navitar?

brainburst said:
I tried a couple of these industrial megapixel lenses incl Toshiba for a system using a 2/3"" iidc camera (1340 x 1092) I ended up having to buy a more expensive component Navitar lens assembly.
...

Its instructive to checkout the Edmund Optics website spec a lens that supposedly suits a hi res 2/3" sensor. Then look at the expected MTF responses.
Click to expand...

I think Navitar was an American optics company in the 50's and 60's, did someone with Asian optics shops purchase the trade mark?

I wonder what low bidder makes the lenses labled for Edmund?

I think as time goes on, and more cameras have megapixels there will be improved lenses to use on them. For movie use some better 16mm lenses were sharper than film could record, but with Kodachrome being more like a black and white micro-film some of what was getting through could be seen on the camera original projected. The lenses in 16mm projectors would probably not get high MTF at 30lp/mm let alone 100lp/mm.

With the small pixel sizes of sensors now for C-mount cameras, film standards of resolution may not enough to reach the potental of digital recording.

Has anyone looked at lenses for the Panasonic DMC G1? Are they better than 120lp/mm? It might be possable to make a mount for them to use on Scarlet?
 
Most of these 5 megapixel rated lenses are f1.4 and some are f0.95.

Would the 1" lenses safely cover the 2/3" format of Scarlet?

The current Red zooms, 18-50 & 50-150 are probably rehoused Sigma stills lenses that are far from the MTF specs of the stratospheric Zeiss glass. And guess what: a lot of people are using them and there are not too many complaints.
 
Last I looked at Edmund, some lenses were said to be of their own design and manufacture, though there were some by Schneider. Looking at the Linos pages, it looks though they are part of Rodenstock. None of these companies are in the business of making bottle-bottoms.
Just because a firm isn't in the cine-glass business is no reason to dismiss them, though some cine-snobs may.
 
1" on 2/3"

1" on 2/3"

Valeriu Campan said:
Would the 1" lenses safely cover the 2/3" format of Scarlet?
Click to expand...

2/3" is not the size of the sensor, it is a odd way of measuring the active area based on old tube TV camera's target, the sensor is Scarlet is about 10mm wide, about like normal 16mm and smaller than Super16mm.

1" lenses cover a larger area, so may be sharper in the corners and a little less sharp in the center of the frame. Older TV lenses that were used for Super16 were 1" and could be a bit soft, newer Megapixel 1" lenses might be OK for some focal lengths on a 2/3" camera.

I have a 1/2" sensor lens that seems to cover or rather illuminate 2/3" wide open, but would probably be soft in the corners, but at f/1.2 if you frame so nothing is in focus in the corners, like for a head shot it might work and the eyes would be sharp near the center of the frame, like an old portrait lens.

Some SLR lenses are also almost good enough to use since they can get to maybe 80lp/mm, even though they cover a much larger area, it depends on how good the center resolution is.
 
Dan Hudgins said:
...

Does anyone know what lenses were used on "Slumdog Millionaire (2008)" since the SI-2K mini seems to also use 2/3" optics?
Click to expand...

from IMDB:
Silicon Imaging SI-2K MINI, Zeiss, Angenieux, Century, Canon, Cooke and Linos Lenses
 
If the Red Mini primes take too long to ship or prove to be too expensive you will probably want to look towards c-mount 2/3 inch size machine vision lenses. It will take a bit of experimenting to find the worthy ones.

I think newer super-16mm lenses are a bit price inappropriate with the body ( if you are spending $10,000 on a lens why not just buy a larger format scarlet ? ) , Vintage 16mm in most cases will not hack it quality wise.

Take note that the otherwise excellent Switar and Kern, Bolex RX lenses are corrected for use with a prism so will perform poorly on the Scarlet. Non RX versions should be good.


Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com
 
RX Scarlet?

RX Scarlet?

Thanks for the lens info link about the LINOS lenses.

I wonder if the sensor would be close enough to the face of the Scarlet so that you could take the prism out of an old Bolex and mount it inside a C mount for the Scarlet, adjust the backfocus and mount a reflex optical finder onto the Scarlet. You could take the viewfinder optics out of the old Bolex so you would not need to design anything, just remount it?

You could swap Scarlet mounts to go back to normal (non-RX) C-mount lenses...
 
The thing I keep thinking about RE: machine vision lenses is....they won't come with gear teath in the focus rings. So if you want to use a FF, then you'll have to use one of those funny rings that the 35mm adapter people make. And what's the chance of them fitting the rather small dia of MV lenses?
 
Follow focus gears for C-mount lenses.

Follow focus gears for C-mount lenses.

David Swan said:
The thing I keep thinking about RE: machine vision lenses is....they won't come with gear teath in the focus rings. So if you want to use a FF, then you'll have to use one of those funny rings that the 35mm adapter people make. And what's the chance of them fitting the rather small dia of MV lenses?
Click to expand...

The link given above shows gears fitted to LINOS lenses, i.e.,

http://www.pstechnik.de/en/optics-c-mount.php

You can also purchase a small lathe used or new and make collars out of PVC plastic it is easy to machine. I have machined stock gears to fit lomo lenses before it just takes a half hour or so. You may find a used lathe for $500 or less (guys die and their wife sells their shop stuff cheep), we got one for "free" once on Craigslist.org.

If you do want to machine collars, a local machine shop could make one out of Brass, PVC or some other plastic with set screws, it should take less than an hour charge at their rate.

Some brands of Machine Vision lenses do not have focus marks in feet and meters or f/ stop or T/ stop marks for the iris. On a digital cinema camera with a electronic viewfinder you do not really need them, you can set the follow focus marks using the viewfinder in zoom mode, and adjust the exposure using the histogram etc. in the viewfinder. If you want to use a tape measure to set the focus you would need to mark the side of the follow focus gear with numbers.

With older cinema lenses the focus marks may be off a little at larger stops because of the "plate effect" caused by the sensor cover glass and OLPF anyway, so its best to check the focus in zoom mode on the electronic viewfinder to be sure you are "megapixel" sharp.
 
the red mini primes don't appear to have teeth on them for follow focus gears.
 
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