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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 :)

Bausch&Lomb CinemaScope Baltars.

Bjorn, Spinning the lens with the glass elements inside is certainly a nail-biting move!

Be careful with those babies! I'm loving where you are going with this!


One thought to consider, I wonder if the "Mumps" could be corrected out of these lenses with a modification to the lens design. Mostly they was achieved with a moving set of anamorphic elements that were tied to the movement of the spherical lens' focus.

Have you opened up a housing yet? Would love to see more of the insides of these!

Keep it up!
 
Hi Christopher !

I'm restoring a 50mm and 75mm Series E , which have additional corrective elements for the mumps. I'm here in LA, so would love to meet with you sometime and show you my CinemaScope Baltar collection and talk anamorphic.

I've also digitally corrected the mumps on some tests with non series-E Cinemascope Baltar75mm with a 12% additional horizontal compression which I found to look quite good overall.

My mounts are slightly different than Bjorn's I think - I'll post about them soon.

Should also have something really crazy cool to share around April 22nd or so that I think a lot of people may like...

Will keep you guys posted !
 
Last edited:
Christopher Probst said:
Bjorn, Spinning the lens with the glass elements inside is certainly a nail-biting move!

Be careful with those babies! I'm loving where you are going with this!


One thought to consider, I wonder if the "Mumps" could be corrected out of these lenses with a modification to the lens design. Mostly they was achieved with a moving set of anamorphic elements that were tied to the movement of the spherical lens' focus.

Have you opened up a housing yet? Would love to see more of the insides of these!

Keep it up!
Click to expand...

Dan Kanes said:
Hi Christopher !

I'm restoring a 50mm and 75mm Series E , which have additional corrective elements for the mumps. I'm here in LA, so would love to meet with you sometime and show you my CinemaScope Baltar collection and talk anamorphic.

I've also digitally corrected the mumps on some tests with non series-E Cinemascope Baltar75mm with a 12% additional horizontal compression which I found to look quite good overall.

My mounts are slightly different than Bjorn's I think - I'll post about them soon.

Should also have something really crazy cool to share around April 22nd or so that I think a lot of people may like...

Will keep you guys posted !
Click to expand...


As Dan writes the E series ha less Mumps, apparently same kind of optic trick that was the foundation of panavision. I´m not sure about this as I only done some breif testing and have have not shot any grids or such. But at this day and age it seams like something that could be more easily corrected digitally than optically.

Personally I kind of like the idea of lenses having less elements and by login so get a brighter clearer image and leave some of the tricky stuff for post. Simply we got so much pixels and oversampling these days so part of the distortion and such could easily be taking care of in that process. Sure these lenses are not LDS or such and the parameters change with the focus and iris setting. But in general such approach would in most cases win over trying to sort it all with glas. Cooke are on a good path with that I think, still not done but their anamorphics are far from mathematically straight shooting but they leave em like that, some call that character and some wants it gone, some wants it only had gone etc. So they build up system that per frame use the meta data so the material can be rectified, bring down aromatic aboration etc in post. With look up tables for it all for each lens at every possible setting. Think think that approach is cool. Or I´m just in love with these babies :)

But my 100mm that comes today has the E fix on it. So I guess that one will be different.
 
PastedGraphic-2 by Björn Benckert, on Flickr


Above the 50mm wide open. Now with it´s PL mount and is collimated correctly. smacking beautiful. click to see in flickr / full res.

And I just seen the Cinemascope Mumps phenomena for the first time. Basically when pulling focus on this 50mm scale Y differ about 10% between infinite and near limit. I understand that back in the day that was not an easy thing to fix. Today is a different thing. if using the THC or using known focus it can be counter steered to perfection but even without any real data on it its pretty easy to see and estimate how far away focus is and scale accordingly. Like nothing on infinite and 10% on close focus range.

Here is a little film showing the issias. :)

https://vimeo.com/210630415


And here is some more first picture stuff... Bear with me I was running around with that thing like a bazooka with my front hand as lens suport as that one is not done yet. Also I have not totally fixated the pl flange roll yet, so some more rolling shutter than normal. need to get the lens leveled and put a pin rough the flange into the body to make fixated perfectly straight which was not done yet but will be tomorrow.

Here is my machinist acting as the evil cinemascope monster not when focus is on the far distance round things in the front is round:

https://vimeo.com/210630478



But when as here focus is set to 5 feet than shit is not round any more. Me looking like I got hit by the Mumps :)

https://vimeo.com/210630497


Me in an attempt to carry the camera with the lens mounted and set exposure at the same time, not that easy. :)

https://vimeo.com/210631377

A full res still of freddy Kruger.

A001_C113_03289J by Björn Benckert, on Flickr


Love the blooming on this one and what ever goes on in the doffed out far backs. have not seen that circular dof on anas before, love it. 50 wide open focus at 5 feet.

A001_C113_03289J by Björn Benckert, on Flickr
 
Soooo Cool!
 
Newly milled PL flange get tuned to the right collimatation. Did them like 0.250 mm short and shimmed them with a brass ring. That way I hope I can back filter the lenses and just adjust the collimation with shiming to keep the focus marks correct. Thinking of buying a set of DJI hero ND´s and take them to the optrician to make them fit in the back of the lens in a filter holder. Anyone knows if the DJI filters are some what color constant? Only seen them on their web page does not cost much so I figure it´s worth a try. If it´s not consistent then I try something more costly. But figure they looked thin / small enough and had a good spread.

So with a bit of luck the UV filter and the ND´s has the same braking index, then as long as there is a filter in the back of the lens focus marks will be consistent.

https://vimeo.com/210654086

 
Dan Kanes said:
Hi Christopher !

I'm restoring a 50mm and 75mm Series E , which have additional corrective elements for the mumps. I'm here in LA, so would love to meet with you sometime and show you my CinemaScope Baltar collection and talk anamorphic.

I've also digitally corrected the mumps on some tests with non series-E Cinemascope Baltar75mm with a 12% additional horizontal compression which I found to look quite good overall.

My mounts are slightly different than Bjorn's I think - I'll post about them soon.

Should also have something really crazy cool to share around April 22nd or so that I think a lot of people may like...

Will keep you guys posted !
Click to expand...

Dan PM me your contact info, we'll set up a time!
 
Bjorn,

AWESOME. I love the look of these. I do agree that a post correction could take care of the mumps for sure. I just may need to use these on some epic feature some time!
 
Christopher Probst said:
Bjorn,

AWESOME. I love the look of these. I do agree that a post correction could take care of the mumps for sure. I just may need to use these on some epic feature some time!
Click to expand...

I make sure I have them ready in time :)
 
A new day a new delivery. The 100mm came trough the door. This is from the Series-E and has mumps correction from looking into it and pulling focus it´s a big sled that carries an element in the opposite direction of the front element. Must have been a tricky one to make right for sure. The lens itself is in excellent condition but got a little bit of fungus inside so just as the rest of the lot it needs to be deassembled and cleaned. but first it will get it´s pl mount.

It also came with a little bonus. It has a 15mm rod lens suport bracket which is nice, for when taking this beast on smaller setups, the lens weight in just below 10kg... :)

17630140_10154706970758043_7611007554902808996_n by Björn Benckert, on Flickr
 
Love this solution the newly baked focus wheels will be black hard-eloxated when all is set and done.

My OCD brain ofcourse want to sand off that text on the DJI motor. As text can not simply be upside down like that :) But nice that we could fit it with the connector going backwards. Was first thinking I would just make a 90 deg rod from the rods infront of the wheel but that means long tangled cables and it makes swaping lenses much more cumbersome. With this little 19mm rod mounted on the red Quickplate going sideways. The lenses simply moves out and most likely the next lens has the same distance to it´s focus wheel. As it looks most of them have the wheel in exact same distance from the mount.

Also this slick horisontal kind of motor mount makes it so that the focus dial is not covered.

DSC_0084 by Björn Benckert, on Flickr

Making the gears took some time to say the least.

Anders my man on the mill used some a few ugly words in different combinations every time the the mill broke of it´s tooling but after half a day he managed to make one that was only sharp on two sides and that worked much better.

DSC_0083 by Björn Benckert, on Flickr

DSC_0082 by Björn Benckert, on Flickr

DSC_0081 by Björn Benckert, on Flickr


Here is a picture of all 8 PL mounts. And the ring tool that is used for shimming / collimate them. Super happy that we could make such a simple mount, hate mount mods made with a buch of small screws and such shit. These ones are just a flange and then the tubing works as the fixating ring as it´s threaded on the inside and fits on the thread of the old mounts.

DSC_0080 by Björn Benckert, on Flickr
 
Roy always has a kind of supernatural look to his films, which is a bit retro and modern at the same time. I can see how these lenses would fit into his style.
 
C. Burkhart said:
Roy always has a kind of supernatural look to his films, which is a bit retro and modern at the same time. I can see how these lenses would fit into his style.
Click to expand...

I might walk overe there when they are all done and leave one of the 40 mm and 35mm at his studio just to see if he picks it up. Hes always shooting 18mm ultra prime. But I think his films would look smacking beatiful on the wide ones of these. But his studio is rather square so maybe 1.85 is more his bag.
 
The 100mm is now ready to rock. PL mounted, and focus geared. We are still working on the lens suport. Will be a modified tilta 19mm lens suport but as of now the old red one rod mount and some spacers holds it in place.

100mm BFG... by Björn Benckert, on Flickr
 
Also got 4 more babies today and they all came in their original cases... So now I got 6 of those wooden leather boxes so more than enough for one set. Think that I might refurbish the interior and have laser cut foam made for them. As a real vintage lens kind of need a case to go with it no?

lens cases by Björn Benckert, on Flickr

So all together I now got 1.6 sets or 8 lenses out of 2 x 5 sets. Really would love to find another 100 and another 50 as that would make two complete kits.

40 35 25 75 4 more by Björn Benckert, on Flickr

These are going to the metal shop 6 o'clock tomorrow morning. Looks like I might get them all moded before easter. Which would be lovely as I then got 4 days with no work so I could take them out and test shoot bit.
 
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