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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 :)

DEC 10 LENS SHOOTOUT

Ok, here come my notes, taken as I went!

Firstly, though, what a FABULOUS test! I am nervous and excited to find out the answers. I liked at least a few on each test, so if at least one set got the thumbs up from me at each station, I am a lucky man! Thanks so very much again and I look forward to getting all anal in the details of everyone's reviews.

Keep in mind, these are my own personal shorthand notes:

TEST 1

Set 1 - MODERATELY GLAD TO OWN. Nice but Bokeh wierd. 8 blade iris? Seems soft on wider lenses, mild breathing Nice Color

Set 2. NO! Wides = Splashy, bloom... Small focus rotation? Bokeh is nice. Longer lenses NICE. Longer lens, 8 blade iris. Weird edge flares

Set 3, NOT REALLY. soft wide, breathing, color just OK. Bokeh not so bad, despite 7 blades. Longer lenses sharp. Cold colors. Wide Open Soft. One long lens, wide open, white bloom

Set 4 - GLAD TO OWN Sharp Wide 5.6, nice warmness, no breathing, mids sharp, long 8 blade iris but NICE, all very sharp, no breathing, WIDE OPEN longs are still very sharp! Consistent colors, My FAV so far, though 1 is nice too.Wow! Comparitibvley very sharp wide open on wides!

Set 5,GLAD TO OWN Not bad at all WIde Open - kind of classic looking, no breathing sharp wide open.Nice bokeh throughout, even 5.8 longs. Relaly growing on me, though def has a LOOK to it.SLIGHT color inconsistancy in mid length vs long and shorts? not bad one though

Set 6,GLAD TO OWN. soft wides WIDE OPEN, nice color, no breathing, nice Bokeh, 5.6 - Nice LOOK without too much of a look. Nice bokeh, a little contrasty but not too much. Glad to own

Set 7, MODERATLEY GLAD TO OWN pretty OK color. WIdes sharp. Nice look. More than A LITTLE breathing. Bokeh Nice color consistant, contrasty but less than a problem, STILL SHARP wide open on wides.





TEST 2

Set 8 - Wide Open psychedelic flares, very "lensy". 5.6 not bad at all for flares. No opinion sharpness for face. Color Cold. A bit aqua.Bad barrel reflections.Was the flaring shot IN FOCUS on this, but not others?

Set 9 - GLAD TO OWN. Nice face color. Very bloomy wide open flares, but not psychedelic. Kind of a FIREFLY look...More flares at 5.6 than previous, but kind of pleasing still.Nice sharpness wide and 5.6 on face

Set 10 - MODERATELY GLAD TO OWN.LOVE FLARES, not sharpness wide open. Wide Open a bit softer, OK colors. Spielbergian Flaring, nice soft, rather cosistant from wide to 5.6. CLASSIC flaring.No Barrel reflections."romantic" flares. Soft.

Set 11 - MODERATLEY GLAD, love sharpness, not flares. Sharp wide and 5.6. Coolish but not bad.Some lenses colder wide than 5.6? Still sharp Wide open and 5.6. Lots of elements for little flare dots. Kind ofa lame imitator for the Spielbergian Flares of 10.Gets the concentric rings going on wider lenses.

Set 12 – GLAD TO OWN (if careful on flares wide) Pretty good suppression 5.6, but wide gets concentric crazy. Nice sharpness and color consistency. Nice look.

Set 13 - GLAD TO OWN. Nice flare suppression, especially 5.6. Existing flares not distracting. COnsistant color and sharpness on face wide and 5.6

Set 14 - Very color jump wide to 5.6. Cool wide, warm 5.6. Kind of saturated pink / aqua look. though kind of classic look.Psychedelic flares and barrel problems WIDE, 5.6 a lot of elements but not bad.Wide is crazy though.Pitted elements?





TEST 3

Set 15 - PRETTY GLAD TO OWN. Color not consitant. Nice look, no breathing.

Set 16 - GLAD TO OWN (though not in love or anything) a little coolish / aqua. Color consitant. No Breathing

Set 17 - GLAD TO OWN! Colors nice, very consistant. a "Non-Look" that is very flexible. No breathing.

Set 18 - Consistent color, a little cool, not aqua. No breathing. A little SOFT.
¬
Set 19 - Color consistant but rather GREEN, breathing noticable

Set 20 - GLAD TO OWN. Very consistant. pinkish? but not too bad. light breathing. realistic look.

Set 21 - Moderately GLAD TO OWN. Not a fan of LOOK. non-contrasty, slight up in saturation, consistant color, no bad breathing.
 
Really? No one else sat through and watched every frame of the 1 1/2 hours of footage?

lol

I am actually tempted to watch it again, I like it so much. But hey, whatever rocks your boats.
 
Jeffrey, I've watched setups 1 and 3, still need to do 2. It's funny, even though I helped shoot #3 I dont know which is which (since they are so close and Ryan randomized them).

My notes are similar to yours, though on setup 3 lens set 20 I thought the edge bluriness was unpleasant, I marked lens set 20 down, whichever one that is.

On setup 1 I really liked the creamy spill nature of lens 3 and thought it performed well WFO. Though the rack focuses on lens set 3 are really jerky, I dont know if that was induced by that lens or not. I found lens sets 4-7 to be frighteningly similar, with only very minor diffs. I think lens set 5 was my favorite, some spill but an okay amount with pleasing rack focuses and nice wfo performance. Though frankly, 4-7 are almost the same thing. I'd be happy with any of those. Lens set 1 and 2 were my only 'i dont want that'.
 
Jeffrey T. Morgan said:
Really? No one else sat through and watched every frame of the 1 1/2 hours of footage?

lol

I am actually tempted to watch it again, I like it so much. But hey, whatever rocks your boats.
Click to expand...

You will have to, when the real results are fully released, in order to properly compare the lenses.
 
I know this is from Vimeo compression and the big results will really tell more, but for fun....

From Round 1, I liked 1, 4 and 3 in that order. The rest did look really close to each other.

1 and 4 I liked because they were warmer... very similar in warmth, might I add. I prefer that over the blue-ish nature most of the others offered. It's a more pleasing default for me. Number 2 was very soft wide open and not more impressive than any other lens set when closed down. Seemed like a decent set stopped down, but didn't surpass really anything else. 4 was a good performer. Warm, consistent. I liked 3 for the same reason Shawn did, was quite beautiful in that particular shot. However the highlight blooming "spill" happened off of a zone 8 (or so) exposure when wide open... which makes this lens way too prone to flaring than I would want in a lens for some applications. It's still in my top three sets, but if you didn't want that bleeding highllight reducing your contrast, it seems like it would be very hard to keep bright objects in frame from doing so. This lens, albeit beautiful, is much to prone to contrast reduction by bright objects in frame. I don't think lens set 1 looked soft wide open. Especially not compared to other sets. The roaming focus on the really wide lenses was unecessary and often made me think a lens was soft, but then I could see it was going to thebackground or coming back. Set 7 looked great, but overall was too everywhere for my liking. They looked good at T/5.6 but really got in my dislike area wide open. Got super blue, washed out, contrast reduction prone, inconsistent and some abberation was apparent on the long lenses wide open. Those lenses had the longest screen time running about 5 minutes but the whole time I felt like I was watching a smorgasbord board of lenses. Solid beginning though. What I liked about Set 7 at 5.6, is they looked warmer more like 1 and 4. Set 5 and 6 really looked very similar to me except obviously one lens set had many more iris blades than the other, so if super round bokeh when stopped down is something you absolutely must have, that may make a difference. 5 behaved much like 7, but for some reason I like 5 more. When I say the same, I mean it looks similar to looking good at 5.6 and pretty different wide open.


Many lenses really behaved quite different stopped down and wide open. Was surprised to see the amount of difference, as I of course know to expect certain differences in a way a lens works wide open and closed down; such as contrast reduction, and etc.

Call it seeing what I want to see, but going back and comparing lenses wide open and T/5.6... it seems 1 and 4 did not change as much as the others did. Many of the others (3, 5, 6, 7) seemed to have highlights brighten, change color temp, vulnerable to contrast reduction via bright objects. Those lens sets had more of a difference in characteristics when open and when closed down.


Those were my thoughts. Can't wait to see what is what and the R3D's where the bleeding resolution should reveal much more.
 
Shawn Nelson said:
Jeffrey, I've watched setups 1 and 3, still need to do 2. It's funny, even though I helped shoot #3 I dont know which is which (since they are so close and Ryan randomized them).

My notes are similar to yours, though on setup 3 lens set 20 I thought the edge bluriness was unpleasant, I marked lens set 20 down, whichever one that is.

On setup 1 I really liked the creamy spill nature of lens 3 and thought it performed well WFO. Though the rack focuses on lens set 3 are really jerky, I dont know if that was induced by that lens or not. I found lens sets 4-7 to be frighteningly similar, with only very minor diffs. I think lens set 5 was my favorite, some spill but an okay amount with pleasing rack focuses and nice wfo performance. Though frankly, 4-7 are almost the same thing. I'd be happy with any of those. Lens set 1 and 2 were my only 'i dont want that'.
Click to expand...

Interesting, Shawn! I hadn't noticed the edge blurriness. I am sure I will be watching these again with fresh eyes.

There were some that really did seem identical to others. Test 2 had some moments where I would doubt it was a new set even though it was (I think staring at flares makes you question reality, anyway). It starts to feel like some lenses are "imitations" of other lenses.

It's really too bad they lost the Ultra Primes for this test, but I saw a LOT of lenses I would love to own in each test. Which is exciting.



A few people from the test have said that all the lenses had strengths and weaknesses, but all were worthy. I felt a couple really weren't. BUT the cool thing about this test is I don't know if what I liked or disliked will carry through the tests. It's almost a silly game show to find out which lens sets got thumbs up from me in all three categories. Like "HERE"S YOUR FAVORITE!" and it will be something I wasn't considering. haha.




I think it's also subjective. Being a colorist I have different needs than someone who wants the look all set during production. So it's great hearing other peoples take on these tests.
 
Thanks for doing this!

ITtwould be great to have some side by sides in the videos, as I seemed to jump back and forth a lot to compare lenses. I didn't have to time to watch them all but I will... 2 was disgusting wide open
 
Ryan Lalonde said:
Thanks for doing this!

ITtwould be great to have some side by sides in the videos, as I seemed to jump back and forth a lot to compare lenses. I didn't have to time to watch them all but I will... 2 was disgusting wide open
Click to expand...

Yeah I totally agree, would be great to see the same focal length quickly cut between or side by side across lenses, for an easier compare.
 
I really hope number 2 wasn't the illuminas, lol.

The only thing I am really afraid of otherwise is which set are the Duclos Leica set. I don't want the "best" set to be a set I have to piece together on ebay and then have modded.
 
Shawn Nelson said:
Yeah I totally agree, would be great to see the same focal length quickly cut between or side by side across lenses, for an easier compare.
Click to expand...

There were a 1,000 of way to edit this all together. At the day of the test, it was agreed upon to put up the results in a blind fashion and allow people to choose what they like based off of that. So I put it together in such a away to allow that to happen. The final videos will have all of the lenses arranged from wide to long, and all 03 tests will be in the same order. That way you can watch each of the tests at the same time and see the different facets of the lens. I know no matter what is done people are going to be unhappy, and have a "better" way of doing it. And that is why the R3D's will be available. You can then edit them however you like at that point, and everyone can be happy. :)
 
Heaven forbid we have to think for ourselves while watching all of this valuable free information! lol

Do you guys have a release date for the final videos? Excited!
 
Jeffrey T. Morgan said:
Heaven forbid we have to think for ourselves while watching all of this valuable free information! lol
Click to expand...

How true! :)

Jeffrey T. Morgan said:
Do you guys have a release date for the final videos? Excited!
Click to expand...

One week from the original post date of the videos on this thread. So that would make it the 22nd. A detailed write up will also accompany the videos. Call it an early christmas present. :)
 
Merry Christmas indeed! Thanks
 
Ryan, I dont think anyone, myself or Jeffrey included, was the least bit unhappy with what we have at all, just musing about what might be nice later on after they have been revealed. And as you have pointed out, others can cut them together. Thanks for your work, everyone greatly appreciates it.
 
THE RESULTS ARE IN:

THE RESULTS ARE IN:

Here is the complete write up with R3D's:
http://www.ryanewalters.com/Videos/Tests/tests.html

The videos have been replaced. The order they are now in is not the same as the original video. They have been rearranged in a more friendly manner. For those of you keeping track at home, here are the answers to the tests:

Test 01:
01- Cooke
02- Illumina
03- Leica
04- Red
05- Schneider
06- Unique
07- Zeiss

Test 02:
08- Schneider
09- Unique
10- Zeiss
11- Cooke
12- Red
13- Leica
14- Illumina

Test 03:
15- Zeiss
16- Unique
17- Schneider
18- Red
19- Leica
20- Illumina
21- Cooke
 
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