Welcome to our community

Be a part of something great, join today!

Log in
  • 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 :)

Foton zoom lens F = 37 - 140 mm / 3.5 with front anamorphic attachment. Any users?

K

Kip Kubin

Well-known member
Joined
Nov 25, 2008
Messages
195
Reaction score
0
Points
0
I'm considering rounding out my Square Front Primes with a Zoom from the same era.

Before I spend the $$$ on one... I was wondering if anyone was using this lens.

Foton-A zoom lens F = 37 - 140 mm / 3.5 .In set front anamorphic attachment

And their experiences with it and the Red.

Easy to use??? Easy to attach the Anamorphic attachment.
Anyone using the diopter(s)?

Any examples of footage or screen grabs would be great.

Thanks
 
I only have lens without anamorphic attachment and I can say at T8 to T16 it is workable. At wider apertures it get soft, bloomy, corners fall off and everything else you can expect from a cheap lens. Bokeh is strange, with lots of double lines.
 
Sander, I was wondering how many line pairs we are talking about. Did you make any test or have you got any picture for evaluation about resolution and costrast? Or, what's your overall impression on a scale 0-10, considering the cost, and also regardless of cost?
Thank you very much!
 
Line pairs...? Resolution tests...? This is a lens you want to do a music video on, or if you need a soft, bloomy effect. For serious work it is unusable so you have to decide for yourself it is worth the money.

Have to see if I can get some stills online but it might take a couple of days.
 
mmm, too late. I bought one last week. It has not arrived yet. I knew I should not expect big performance, but I'm curious and would like to give it a try. It could be useful. Any lens could, so "any" includes this one certainly. It was quite cheap.
Actually I'm not very interested in a comparison between it and products like Optimos, I know it is in a different class. I only need to know if the image is hopelessly awful in any condition, or not.

The Foton series is not workable at all.
Click to expand...

Nice.

if it's ergonomically decent, it could be more then enough indeed for music videos and some other things. If what Sander is right - that it is workable at T8-T16 - It may just be a good buy. If it happens to be completely useless - but I wonder what they made it for, then - I think I can always resell it.
Being workable at T8-T16 is not bad for a lens that costs the same as a clamp of a top zoom. what about using it as a luxury spare body cup, which also works as an instantly ready zoom? For a toy, it looks like a nice one.
would the resulting quality of Red+Foton at various apertures worse then MiniDV+top cine zoom? I guess MiniDV was never intended for big screen release.
How would the couple compare to "28 days later" image quality?

I am very much interested in seeing the Foton's contrast. Is it very mild?
Thank you very much.
 
Okay, I managed to do a quick test of my neighbours gate. In order: 37mm at T4.2 (wide open), 100% crop from the corner, 75mm at T4.2, 75mm at T16, and then three 140mm at T4.2 Upped the contrast a bit in REDcine. All 4k 16x9.

I think the message is quite clear: not for professional productions. However, if you like that cheap LOMO look - and there's lots of people who do - than why not? Up the contrast and saturation a lot and there you are!
 
I used one back at school on a big (I mean BIG) kinor. It was so soft compared to the lomo 20-120. (Recently, I bought one, broken, and still didn't use it on Red, too bad, anyone has spare ?)

If I remember well, Foton is the Lomo zoom compact serie. Or to be accurate, the Foton I've seen were much smaller. maybe there is more ?

I think it's a serie, i've seen (back at school again) there were different kind (i guess now I know Lomo's lens, it's a matter of year)
 
Sander, I am very grateful that you made these tests.
I enjoyed the samples and made some speculation.

At T16 and 1024x576 true resolution - that should not be a completely useless, being probably better than true, consumer HDV - the still is very sharp and clean.
I wonder if 1920x1080, or 120x720, may retain any extra resolution, compared to 1024x576.
And I'd be curious to see what's the T16 limiting resolution factor, in the 4k original...

At 140mm at T4.2 (the fence) has a strange mix of softness, bokeh nad chromaric aberration that is just perfect cor the case.
But it's not very good with the fine geometrical patterns in the gates pictures.

The 100% crop is no doubt awful, but it's also the worst ever condition: high details with little contrast, on one side of the frame (also mid-low), wide angle at maximum aperture. And we know compact zooms do not usually like edges.

The leaves close-up (140mm at T4.2) is fantastic. Beautifull still, never delete it. A sort of very transparent mist.
The softness also makes the high lights not so umpleasant as a very clean and high definition image would probably make.

All right, this lens is not good for ordinary landscapes unless at close aperture, geometrical patterns and many other things, but I suspect it is just fine for messy close-ups, abstract things, dream sequences clichès,... flesh???
 
Hi Tetsuo, send me a pm with your email address and I will send you 4k jpegs.
 
Hi Texasmfp,
I know it's umbelievable, but I haven't received the lens yet!

The only 2 reasons I am a bit reluctant to take any action of any kind, are that I have already bought from the same seller and it was fine, and I know he takes ages anyway, both at sending things and at ansering to emails.
Also, with another lens, he discovered the item came back to his old home because they were not able to deliver it (bad spelling of my address is what I think), just after he moved to another city. What an odyssey for a small package. Sometimes apparently simplest things are so out of our control...
I've written to him for an answer, now I'll wait some more.
But I still think this seller is quite honest, afterall, although difficult.
Anythink could happen to a package nowadays: millions of packages on land, sea, air, delivery storage and custom storage, all over the planet every day.
I need more info in order to change my mind.

I'll try to remember to give you an answer if/when I finally receive it. But if you don't hear from me, it may be because I would have forgotten about this thread, so if you would like any info about the lens, please feel free to contact me.
In the mean time, if you want, I can send you Sander's pictures sent me.

Anyway, with the test pictures that Sander Kamp so kindly made for me, I was quite satisfied, at least considering the price of the lens.
For a toy, it can certainly be used. But, as Sander said, not for things like professional movies.

Know what? recently I bought a Lomo Lenar (second version), for more or less the same price, and it's fantastic. Incredibly good optics.
We used it with no problem at all, made some test pictures and, now I know many will not believe me, but this is what we found: at T8-T16, compared with Arri superspeed mk3, it's almost as good looking if not better. I mean more pleasant, with a little more dynamic range, that is more natural.
And it's a zoom, and it's 37 years old.
Of corse, wide open and it is very bad. Possibly not as bad as the Foton, but still not seriously usable.
but it gets better quickly as you stop it down.
(if you can call T8 and T16... "at hand". But please consider that the maximum aperture is T5.0)

Very difficult if not impossible to use the Lenar 2 with dim light.
But it was just perfect for action on a bright day with all the sky covered with white clouds.

Not that I'm afraid of a big visible sun, even wit direct rays on a lens...

Reflections not a big concern for me, it's just the normal behaviour of a lens (it's the correction that's unnatural, if we want to discuss about this. Why should I pretend that a movie comes from a human eye lens made of cells instead of a camera zoom lens made of glass? What has to be unconvenient about admitting that light just passed through a glass lens, if the glass is good and the image is realistic? Hey we also see any kind of flare and sometimes even a sort of "oil moving on a window" effect when we stare at the sun at a certain angle... so fuck, you fake perfectionists! I say, why don't you rather look at the shit you are filming instead of playing a physical professor?)
But hearing the uncurable fears of some so called professionals who only really seem to try to protect their jobs with overrated statements, makes me think I'm lucky and free and with nothing to blabla about, because I have noone but God above me in the economic chain (and actually He is out of that shit completely).

Hey, I think it gives a uncomparably relaxed pleasure to state - for what it's worth - that I can do the fucking everything I what with my camera and my lenses, including spit on the lenses of some payd hour by hour, wannabe snobs / image labor workers.

Aren't those claiming that only a handful of lenses (from zeiss or cook or angenieux) are good enough to make films, just like those claiming that contemporary music can only be made with a Juno and a 909? oh, those ones are really laughable persons.
Don't get me wrong, I have Zeiss superspeeds and Angenieux zooms and love them the most. My new purchase is a Canon K-35 macro zoom. Its great.
Now the new Red primes are going to come to market in 2009, they seem very promising... mmm..
I'm happy.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top