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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 :)

First Look - Schneider Xenon FF-Prime Lenses

The CA looks not so good, however, that's a fairly large stress test for a lens. I didn't see this exhibited on the set I shot with a week ago, however, I wasn't dealing withing anything near this contrast ratio.
 
Beautiful shots Rob. Thanks for sharing. The 2K quicktime is gorgeous.

The only noticeable CA to me is in the Vegas and Mandalay Bay signs. There are plenty of other high contrast shots (such as particle snow spray against a dark horse) which do not suffer from similar purple fringing. Strange.

Overall the images are lovely with very attractive bokeh and flare characteristics.
 
Phil Holland said:
The CA looks not so good, however, that's a fairly large stress test for a lens. I didn't see this exhibited on the set I shot with a week ago, however, I wasn't dealing withing anything near this contrast ratio.
Click to expand...

The fringe seems to rear its head when we cross over a certain contrast threshold and regardless of T stop. I'm very conflicted about these lenses right now. They are sharp, but not as sharp as the RPP's. They have very neutral color rendition, also similar to the RPP's and Ultras. The bokeh and flaring and overall optical texture of the Xenons is very pleasing. I love the star-burst flaring with subtle chromatic separations / rainbows in the flare streaks. I think for controlled light situations, the Xenons could be very nice lenses. My two biggest concerns are that with the ever-increasing DR available to our cameras, such as we're seeing with Dragon, it's easy to overstep the contrast limits of these optics and their coatings. My icky drain pipe image was not over or under exposed and exhibited a fair amount of the fringing aberrations. I have several other shots that show the fringing far more prominently than this. I have one, shot at T8 no less, looking through some tree branches at blue sky beyond and the branches have purple and yellow halos all over them. For dynamic lighting conditions, EFP style production or other situations where we may encounter light out of our control, I don't think these lenses are going to be a good choice.

Like I said, I'm very conflicted and I don't have to try very hard to "break" the image. Fringing and CA that shows on these Xenons disappears completely when I swap to an RPP, Ultra Prime or Optimo zoom. So as of right now, I'm very inclined to send them back. I'm going to see what I can learn from Schneider after things settle from the holidays and people actually go back to work.

Most of my work is corporate and EFP type production. Dynamic and unpredictable lighting is often how I roll. We are overcast and cloudy here today and I'm not encountering any CA in my tests outdoors. But everything is just flat and boring. I have been able to mitigate some of the CA with a polarizer. IR filtration seems to have no effect. The CA is present and the same between Dragon and MX sensors. I will be testing on a couple other cameras this coming week.

I'm a bit puzzled by Rob Anderson's footage. Of course it's only at 2K, but doesn't seem to exhibit the level of CA or fringing that I'm seeing under what would appear to be similar lighting conditions. I suppose I can hope that I just have a dud set of primes… Although, if there's that level of inconsistency, then Schneider might have a problem.
 
Interesting. I won't have a chance to shoot with them "for real" until next year when my set arrives. What you're saying is a bit of a concern to me. The RPPs are a tremendous value in reality in terms of price versus performance. I've always said that. I don't expect these to actually out perform those. On the projector resolving-wise they were on par or exceeded similarly prices FF35 glass. Coatings though need to be looked at carefully.

My set should be coming my way in January.
 
Phil Holland said:
Interesting. I won't have a chance to shoot with them "for real" until next year when my set arrives. What you're saying is a bit of a concern to me. The RPPs are a tremendous value in reality in terms of price versus performance. I've always said that. I don't expect these to actually out perform those. On the projector resolving-wise they were on par or exceeded similarly prices FF35 glass. Coatings though need to be looked at carefully.

My set should be coming my way in January.
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Hi Phil,

Offer still stands... If you want to borrow my Schneider set, let me know. CFD wait near three months...

Thank you very much

Fury
 
downloaded the rusty pipe shot and have to say that all things considered there is just too much CA....that shot is at 5.6? realistically that should be the sweet spot and there should not be any CA at all....
i wish we could see some raw files from rob's nevada horse shoot...if there is a CA problem with the lenses, the backlit manes should show it....
i was really excited about these lenses, always loved schneider glass...i see a little of the beautiful characteristics i remember from my medium and large format schneider glass in the horse clips but it is hard to judge from that....
i am finding that CA can be a real problem with sensors getting higher and higher pixel density....just tried an older nikon lens on my epic and the CA wide open was so bad i could see it on the 5" touch screen....
 
paul schefz said:
i am finding that CA can be a real problem with sensors getting higher and higher pixel density....just tried an older nikon lens on my epic and the CA wide open was so bad i could see it on the 5" touch screen....
Click to expand...

Agreed.

Xenons aside the effect you are seeing is more or less a magnification of the aberrations due to the increase in resolution. Optics right now and over the next 3 years are going to be stressed hard by newer sensors and various optical elements involved in the light path, like OLPFs for instance. My Cine-Xenars for instance look rather different now than on the earlier prototypes of Dragon and the good news is they look better on the production models. Zeiss is moving forward with a new coating scheme, although they won't admit it :) It's clear though they are doing it on their newer lenses.

This magnification of aberrations mostly has two effects for me. One, weak glass reveals itself quickly. Two, the general character and flavor of lens is more pronounced. In fact I would say "character" in general has more importance now that we can see more of it clearly.

One of the more interesting things for me personally was testing out all of these lenses on Dragon and seeing more than I've ever seen with them before. Both in coverage and aberrations. The top tier glass really shows its worth at 6K. The value essentially holds or becomes more apparent on the expense of those lenses. There's even some side tests I did for my own info regarding how lenses flare at these new stressed coverage levels that has produced some interesting results.

The worst bit is when testing older sets honestly. Lenses are like jewels. And example. No two sets of K35s I've seen have been the same both in look and aberration. There's many reasons for this and it can be frustrating, at least from my perspective. The same rings true for more modern sets especially when faced with various states of misalignment, wear on coatings, and other chaos.

This is more or less why the top tier DPs have their own boxes of filters and know exactly which sets of glass to get from a house when needed. A bit of searching sometimes yields positive and wonderful results. My Cine-Xenar III primes are example of that as they were selected from a great deal of individual lenses and are perfectly color matched.

When possible I attempt to test out multiple same lengths from a series to see where quality control and manufacturing tolerances fall. Less expensive lenses are essentially a mixed bag most of the time.
 
It would be great to see how Xenons perform against new generation Zeiss 55mm f1.4 in critical situations.
 
Jeff, I wonder if you somehow got a bad set? On the Blackwood Cinema thread Rob wrote:

Rob Anderson said:
After a few sessions with these lenses, we're happy to say, the Schneider Xenon FF-Primes are now the Blackwood Cinema glass of choice. Great quality lenses with sharp characteristics and a nice contrast. Good weight, decent speeds, great prices. All around, we're thrilled.
Click to expand...

http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...a)-Las-Vegas&p=1302733&viewfull=1#post1302733

His Vegas night footage did exhibit some purple fringing but nothing as curious as Jeff's pipe shot. All of his daylight footage looked pretty damn good, similar to the Schneider Xenon Demo video:

http://vimeo.com/66943295

Jeff and Rob, perhaps you could shoot something similar, like a naked light bulb from 20' away, and compare the results?
 
Alex Boothby said:
Jeff and Rob, perhaps you could shoot something similar, like a naked light bulb from 20' away, and compare the results?
Click to expand...
Good idea. I'm down.


Just posted these photos in another thread but they seem relevant here. Letting them tell the story. Schneider Xenon FF-Primes, 35mm and 50mm. 2.1/f wide open. Dragon sensor. 96fps RC 14:1 with 128 GB REDMAGs.

schneider_fireworks01.jpg


schneider_fireworks03.jpg


schneider_fireworks04.jpg


1:1 crop frame above image framing:
schneider_fireworks02.jpg


schneider_fireworks05.jpg


schneider_fireworks06.jpg
 
Did discussion on this thread go elsewhere in the forum? Eagerly awaiting updates on the issues identified by the early receivers of the lenses and any responses from Schneider. I'd expect Schneider would race to respond/clarify/address. Thanks!
 
Nikhil Kamkolkar said:
Did discussion on this thread go elsewhere in the forum? Eagerly awaiting updates on the issues identified by the early receivers of the lenses and any responses from Schneider. I'd expect Schneider would race to respond/clarify/address. Thanks!
Click to expand...

My guess is that people are in holiday mode until next week.
 
So much talk about them and still no video test to be seen. Would be good to see them against Canon CNE Primes and Zeiss 55mm f1.4.
Lets have this Full Frame shoot out ...Schneider vs Zeiss CP2 vs Canon CNE.
 
love the detail. The dragon surely helps in these kind of images.
 
Illya Friedman wrote a positive and informative review of the Xenon's on the CML glass list. I wonder if he would mind sharing his comments here?
 
Samples look nice. LOTS of detail; moderate contrast; the lenses seem fairly susceptible to veiling flare, but they veil nicely; sadly they seem to have very ordinary CA handling (especially considering most of the shots we're seeing are stopped down considerably), but on the whole, they look like a very suitable option for the price point, I really like the big clear markings for 1/3-stop aperture increments, and the changeable lens mounts is a great feature - they look like another solid option in line with the CP.2s and the CN-Es.
 
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