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Century Conversion?

J

John Logan

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While looking for lenses, I've seen a lot of the foloowing:

"Century", "Century 2000", "Century Conversion", and "Century re-housing"

Would anyone like to elaborate on what this means? I assume it's a company that takes old lenses and re-houses them, improving on their mechanics, etc.

But I'd like to know a little more about what such a conversion means in terms of desirability, performance improvements, value, etc.

I'd particularly like to learn more about the Cooke S2/S3 primes that have been converted by Century.

Thanks all!
 
Cooke Speed Panchros were prized by shooters for their lovely, flattering look as compared to the hard reality of Zeiss primes. They were usually found in Arri Standard mount, and actually had very crude focussing mechanisms, so that the aluminum barrels had to rotate, or spin, against the ports in cameras of the day, usually Arri 35BLs and Arri 2Cs and IIIs. I remember that a certain amount of light grease was needed for them to operate, and they often had enough play or wear in the mounts that pulling focus would cause the image to jump.

Sometime around the mid-Eighties, Century announced that they had re-housed some sets of the version III Speed Panchros, if I remember correctly, with excellent modern housings, in PL mount.

If you are looking for a "lively" optical look, as opposed to a clean/antiseptic one, or a softer performance for portraits, these should be excellent, if you can find them.
 
Thanks Douglas, that's exactly what I was looking for.

In my opinion, the Red is already somewhat antiseptic and clean, do you think that Speed Panchros would help mitigate that a little more than Zeiss lenses?

Also. can you recommend, or refer me to any films shot with S2/S3's? I know they're old lenses, from the 50's, so I'm sure there's a million. Also, I'm only assuming that rehousing them would do little to affect their actual optical quality.

Thanks Douglas!
 
I remember that I checked out a 35BL1 for a director named Jerry Cotts. It was his personal camera and he had a set of Speed Panchros, and he had just shot a music video of Dylan, and it was gorgeous. An associate came and asked him if he knew of anyone with a set of Speed Panchros that he could borrow for his shoot, while I was standing next to him. Even though I was young and, well, inexperienced, I somehow had presence of mind to keep my mouth shut as Jerry told the guy that he didn't have any such lenses. So, even in 1985, they were hard to come by and hoarded.

Don't know of any features that were shot with them but there must be many. I think they were also available in BNCR mount, probably adapted.

And like the posts about using older Angenieux zooms to alter the clean look of the RED, I would think the Speed Panchros would be even better. I've sold a bunch of OCT-19 lens mounts for the RED for folks using Lomo spherical and especially scope lenses for the same reason.

The rehousing would be the very best way to use Speed Panchros because the original mounts were just awful and everything I've ever seen by Century is superb, but I bet these sets are super duper rare.

I recently saw a post to a set of Zeiss Superspeeds that had some of the coatings removed, available for rental!
 
Century also converted certain still lenses to PL mount for use on motion picture cameras. Most notably Nikon and Canon Telephotos and the Canon 17-35mm T3 short zoom. I personally own a 200mm T2 Nikkor with a Century conversion.

The lens...
200mmNikkor.jpg

Frame Grab...
Emilia200.jpg
 
Douglas Underdahl said:
I recently saw a post to a set of Zeiss Superspeeds that had some of the coatings removed, available for rental!
Click to expand...

Interesting read, your post! Thanks.

Vantage in Germany are renting superspeeds with removed coatings. They lose a stop or so. Interesting approach, espically if we talk about flares. The flare of the Superspeeds is one of the nicest anyway.

They also build lenses. They are famous for their Hawk anarmorphotics. If you want to spend a fortune call them.

Hans
 
Panavision have lenses without coatings for rent also.
 
Logan said:
While looking for lenses, I've seen a lot of the foloowing:

"Century", "Century 2000", "Century Conversion", and "Century re-housing"

Would anyone like to elaborate on what this means? I assume it's a company that takes old lenses and re-houses them, improving on their mechanics, etc.

But I'd like to know a little more about what such a conversion means in terms of desirability, performance improvements, value, etc.

I'd particularly like to learn more about the Cooke S2/S3 primes that have been converted by Century.

I have set of Century 2000 cookes, laso hereis a link to a feature we are shooting using them, there is mixed footage on here because we also used re-housed Leicas, but i think you can tell which lenses were used for which shots, see if you can!!

www.myspace.com/rrflfilm

here is a pic of the lens set



Thanks all!
Click to expand...

I have set of Century 2000 cookes, here is a link to a feature we are shooting using them, there is mixed footage on here because we also used re-housed Leicas, but i think you can tell which lenses were used for which shots, see if you can!! we also used a 14mm UP

www.myspace.com/rrflfilm

here is a pic of the lens set
 
SII/III's were used for the close ups of MR & MRS Smith, wide shots used S4's.
 
XiaoSu Han said:
btw, a set of 25, 32, 40, 50, 75 was just sold on ebay for roughly 3300 usd, but at least two had spots inside...
Click to expand...

Not a re-housed set, in standard mount maybe, when century were re-housing the lenses it cost between $5-10,000 per lens.hey can be picked up quite cheaply per lens in standard mount sometimes a couple of hundred dollars.
 
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