Red 18mm-85mm Zoom

[Florian Stadler]

I just got mine in and started playing with it (thanks to a Reduser who sold me his). It is a beautiful lens. Extremely well and precisely built, sharp, even illumination, creamy focus fall off, minimal breathing. I am really impressed by this lens and if Red's primes are anything like this they will be a force to be reckoned with in the Lens market. I projected the lens at Duclos and it tracked dead on. Wide open it exhibited some flaring in the 25-40mm range which made it seem less contrasty/sharp in that range. This went away at T4. In a real life scenario I can't detect that flaw though.

On the negative side: It will not fit a standard Heden motor with a regular gear. You have to use an oversized gear to make it work, the spacing doesn't work out.

 

[Chris Bell]

How does it compare to your Zeiss Std. Primes?

 

[Yean Loon]

Hi Florian,

What serial are you?

yean

 

[Matt Uhry]

It's interesting, the sample I tested also had some visible shortcomings in the 25-40mm range when wide open. We thought it might be a QC issue on that lens.

the test: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=19957

Anyone else seeing this ?

Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com

 

[Mark Pedersen]

It's interesting, the sample I tested also had some visible shortcomings in the 25-40mm range when wide open. We thought it might be a QC issue on that lens.

the test: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=19957

Anyone else seeing this ?

Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com

Matt,

We tested ours and it held focus throughout the zoom. Marks were bang on for the full range. We tested it against our UPs to confirm after re-adjusting the back focus.

Mark

 

[Paul Leeming]

Florian's right, this lens is sensational for the price!

If anyone else wants one right now instead of waiting however long it takes for Red to clear the backorder, you can see this thread for one I'm selling.

I dearly want to keep this lens, but we are looking to buy some others and have decided to sell it for now and maybe buy one again later when we have more need for a zoom compared to primes which we use much more often....

Here's a still capture from it to show the bokeh, taken at InterBEE 2008:

HTH!

Paul

 

[Florian Stadler]

To clear up Matt and Mark's misunderstanding. The lens tracks center and focus PERFECTLY FLAWLESS throughout the zoom range. It exhibits slight flaring in the 25-40mm range when projected wide open. This flaring makes it appear less contrasty - thus less sharp in that range. In a real life image this has not become apparent to me yet and I don't think it's a big issue. I will try to take some time to do side by side with Zeiss standards, Cooke S2/3 and Cooke 25-250 soon.