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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

So these are T5.6 lenses?
Really feel sorry for you guys....my old Nikkors do not do that.
 
Wow that is simply awful! Glad I saw this as I was sooooo close to buying a set this week. I have never seen CA that horrible. Crazy
 
I'm literally minutes away from transferring money over for a set of these.. To the people that LOVE these lenses.. Has Anton just been extremely unlucky and received a dud set or does everyones Xenons on this thread display CA this bad? Or is this just common and what to expect for low budget cine glass? As filmmaking is 90% a hobby for me i have to be smart with my lens choice....

Thanks

Owen
 
Lens look great! I love mine, just eh CA is horrible and the lenes are really only useable at t4 or higher. I'm talking to their Rep Ryan whom i bought mine from to see if i just have a bad batch as well.
 
That kind of Chromatic Aberration, Purple Fringing shown is not normal, despite all that one company can do to insure QC (quality control) when dealing with lenses like the Xenon's sold at such low price, one needs to step back a second and understand that the level of quality QC found in lenses costing 5+ times can't happen, so this situations can indeed happen.

I absolutely strongly advise for Anton, to contact his rep and arrange for his lens/es to be swapped, do to the extreme artifact showing in his pictures.

We had 3 sets of them and none of them have had any of such extreme showing of CA and PF, but it is no doubt to understand that this lenses because of the incredible price they are set at, while been of absolutely great Build, good control of breathing, color matched across the set and very good focus markings, that one can not expect them to be at par with Master Primes...

You don't need to shoot at T4 and above to consider them good lenses, but can't expect to shoot them Wide Open either with great results across, so in order to diminish or some times eliminate as much as possible CA and any other artifacts such you must take the lenses when in extreme situations and stop them down at list to T2.8, and make use of Filtration as this will aid you greatly against CA.
 
I bought mine from bhphotovideo. I've sent the 50mm and 75mm to germany to be checked out and repaired free of charge. If you look at my other posts in this thread, I've had some other problems with those two lenses besides CA. I've got a really small production company so I can't send all my lenses out at once, and in most conditions the CA isn't apparent, just on extremely high contrast regions. I've attached a 4k shot taken with the 50mm at T2.8 and there's still a tiny amount of CA (the 5d in his hand has a lot of purple in it) but it's more in line with what I expect from a lens with "bad CA", and the shot is rather contrasty.

For the other problems I've had it seems to have just been bad luck. I've stated in this thread that I regret buying these instead of CP2's, we'll see how I feel when my lenses come back from Schneider Germany.
 

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Mine don't exhibit anything remotely like that. They look great, including wide open. I have to think that Anton (and maybe Jacob) have some coating issues with their specific lenses.
 
There's a lot of CA trash talking going on here. I'd love to see some of these test shot with with an "A" "B" comparison. Show me something in a similar price range that doesn't exhibit similar results (preferably something with proper exposure...)

On a related note - I keep a set of Xenon FF Primes (35, 50, and 75mm) at my shop just for demo. If anyone in the LA area wants to come by to mount these (or any other lens for that matter) feel free to Schedule a Demo with us and get a first hand idea of what these lenses are like. It's the equivalent of reading about a car in a magazine versus going out and driving one.
 
I don't see how it's trash talk when it seems to be true in the case of the ops who have the problem. It's their reality. Even more so when their canon and nikon counterparts which are considerably less money do not exhibit this. Some users have come out and said that is not normal for their sets which indicates there may be QC probs. Hopefully the ops with the issues will get their lenses exchanged.
 
Really... a black silhouette against two thirds of the frame five stops overexposed would need a one to one comparison with similar priced lenses...

Reminds me of criticism on the Red Pro Primes (which I consider, by far, the best possible lenses for the price)... ends up in subjective opinions that wouldn´t bear a blind test... What would be "some CA" in a brand starting with Z, becomes "horrible CA" in a less prestigious name.
After over 30 years in this business I laugh on this... but I recognize these opinions tend to generalize easily and are really harmful.
Guido
 
I can tell you that my Zeiss ZE lenses don't exhibit anything like this, granted some of them are F2.8, and those are about half the price or so. I Can post comparisons between my Zeiss 21mm and the Schneider 35mm later this week if people are interested. I can also compare with a $90 Canon 50mm that doesn't have anywhere near this CA. It was also my whole set of lenses, not just one, that had this problem. This isn't trash talking, it's a serious issue, especially if some sets of lenses are completely fine. That's a huge risk for potential buyers to have to sort through.

Before I posted anything here I compared with my canon and ziess lenses at similar apertures since something seemed 'off' about the CA, and I can tell you it's a large flaw in the Schneider lenses which I received that doesn't exist in my other lenses, and people have made similar complaints in this thread.
 
Matthew Duclos said:
There's a lot of CA trash talking going on here. I'd love to see some of these test shot with with an "A" "B" comparison. Show me something in a similar price range that doesn't exhibit similar results (preferably something with proper exposure...)
Click to expand...

My RPP's at T2.1 have almost no CA (very slight green edge on super hard back lighting) My Xenon's at T2.1 have super speeds level of CA. Very heavy purple fringing even in not super heavy contrast situations.
 
Just when I was about to place an order, this PF issue comes up. Now worried about receiving a dud...

Think I might just wait for the whole set to be available since the 100mm isn't being pushed out at full speed yet.
 
I've been working with a vendor that happens to have a 100mm in stock. I ask if they would take a few test shots wide open (since they are on the other side of the country). I figure'd I'd share the result. The first two images (while a little soft) do not seem to have any CA issues. The third image (attached) only has slight CA on the car trim in the foreground, but only noticeable when zoom in. Thoughts?

My plan is to find a 100mm in stock, and then work backwards from there. I shoot on a lot of different cameras, so a set of lenses which are full frame and mount switchable is key. I do a lot of two camera interview / studio set ups, so a prime kit makes more sense then one zoom. Right now thats pretty much leaves only the Xenon and the CP2s, and I just have never been a fan of the CP2s. I shot a lot of doc so shooting wide open is really important.
 

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This is true, but currently only available through Duclos with switchable mounts, right? And a bit more pricy when that mount is factored in.
 
Okay. I've been watching this thread for a while and pretty much what Matt Duclos said is spot on.

A few things that need to be understood about Chromatic Aberrations and Lens Aperture. You are entirely at the mercy of a few things like Scene Contrast Ratio, Lens Design, Lens Coatings, etc...

That first one is the big one and seems to be the thing that many people are either confused about or don't understand that shooting in high contrast ratios is what truly reveals CA the most.

So with special thanks to Matt Duclos I zipped down to Duclos Lenses and grabbed a few lenses to test out some common lenses at T2.1 so you guys can literally see an A/B/C/D comparison. I have done a dirty setup with some extreme contrast and clipped the highlights which will reveal the subtle differences between these lenses the most. Though as you'll see all are "in a wheelhouse" of general performance.

If you click any of these images you'll load up a 2560x800 pixel version so you can really inspect these 100% crops from Epic Dragon 6K WS.

For this test setup we had the Zeiss Ultra Prime 32mm T1.9, Schneider Xenon FF-Prime 35mm T2.1, Zeiss CP.2 35mm T2.1, and Canon CN-E 35mm T1.5.

To point out explicitly the Zeiss Ultra Prime and Canon CN-E are stopped down to T2.1 so you can see how all of these lenses behave at the widest aperture available on the Schneider Xenon FF-Primes.










So again, we literally have an Ultra Prime here and also some of the direct price competitors to the Schneider Xenon FF-Primes. I chose the 35mm because that's what I hear the most "chatter" about. I think the one thing that is particularly noticeable from an aesthetic perspective is much earlier in this thread I said that these lenses had a "classic yet modern look". If you look at the foil crops you can see that slight haliation/glow on the specular highlights that attributes to that characteristic. It's subtle, but certainly is a nice and welcomed effect for those thinking about using a filter to get a similar effect.

Another observation I made as I rolled through various apertures on additional lenses like a Zeiss Standard Speed 32mm T2.1 and a Cooke MiniS4 32mm T2.8 was the Schneider Xenon-FF Primes are a bit less contrasty until stopped down in the T4-5.6 range in comparison to these other lenses.

I saw Red Pro Primes mentioned. They are more in line with Ultra Prime-like performance FYI. They are a very good value and horrifically underrated among cinema lenses, but they do have difficulty covering larger formats of course. More of what I think should be useful here is looking at the Canon, Zeiss, and Schneider images as you are looking at lenses designed for FF35 and that's the actual thing going on here.

Hope this clears up a few things.
 
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