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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 :)

Introducing new wide zoom!!!!

Well, I like the 14-24mm Nikon and all and I would have bought it recently had a Tokina 11-16 not come back in stock, but I'm sort of glad I didn't now because of this. That 14-24mm needs to be a manual lens, I'm sorry, Nikon dropped the ball bigtime on that one. Can't wait to check this out! =)
 
Mark Olsen said:
IMHO that's a whole lot of money for just rehousing a still US$1,800.00 lens
Click to expand...

In times when there wasn't such a pressure on the lens market 10k for a proper cine conversion would not have been considered to be much, on the contrary.

I find the the range of 14-24mm very nice. As soon as I get the confirmation that Stuart's lens is on par with the big 3 when is comes to mechanics and maintainability I'm in the market. Optically I have now doubt that it's great glas.

The problem are the mechanics. I've seen quite a few rehoused lenses and most of them where not so great in this regard. Hence why an Optimo 15-40 is way above 30k.

Hopefully Focus Optics will pull this off - "just" rehousing a lens is just not "just".


Hans
 
RE-Housing Comments

RE-Housing Comments

Mark Olsen said:
:sifone:

:crying:

IMHO that's a whole lot of money for just rehousing a still US$1,800.00 lens
Click to expand...

It may seem like a big premium, but "re-housing" is an umbrella term for many things. I feel compelled to defend my colleague (and to some extent, competitor), because I know a bit about the man and the engineering he did on this "re-housed" lens.

Stuart has been one of the country's best independent film/video optical techs for over a dozen years (19 to be exact). Before that, he paid his dues in the biggest rental houses in Hollywood. He has also designed lens modifications before, specifically the 8mm Nikon and several telephotos. He is lens technician, machinist, CAD/CAM CNC programmer and, as I understand, a pretty fair cook.

I can tell you from recent conversations with Stuart that he as sweated blood to wring every last bit of performance out of this lens. Lens performance in the field comes from three things: optical design, optical build and mechanical build. All three have to be masterful to yield a good motion picture lens. Still lenses simply don't have the same demands placed on them as film/video lenses. Almost universally, the makers are happy doing a fine job on the first two items above, and let the last one slide a bit. Most stills lenses have focus & iris marks that are too closely spaced for motion picture work and fragile mechanisms that struggle holding focus and image position when either focus or focal length change.

Please believe me when I state that Stuart did not just tack a PL mount on an off-the-shelf still lens and call it good. As stunning as the optics in the base lens are, it is still a mass-produced item for the consumer market. He created an entirely new precision heavy duty housing, and stabilized the internal movement of the lens so it would hold focus without stray image movement throughout its range. This meant substantially re-engineering it's zoom mechanism. Not a job for backyard engineers or the faint-hearted.
Century/Clairmont were awarded an Academy technical & scientific Oscar for doing more or less the same thing to the venerable old Canon 150-600mm varifocal lens which they turned into a true zoom.

Will he make a decent profit on the end result ? I certainly hope so. Don't you think he's earned it ?

Respectfully,
 
SirGear said:
It may seem like a big premium, but "re-housing" is an umbrella term for many things. I feel compelled to defend my colleague (and to some extent, competitor), because I know a bit about the man and the engineering he did on this "re-housed" lens.

Stuart has been one of the country's best independent film/video optical techs for over a dozen years. Before that, he paid his dues in the biggest rental houses in Hollywood. He has also designed lens modifications before, specifically the 8mm Nikon and several telephotos. He is lens technician, machinist, CAD/CAM CNC programmer and, as I understand, a pretty fair cook.

I can tell you from recent conversations with Stuart that he as sweated blood to wring every last bit of performance out of this lens. Lens performance in the field comes from three things: optical design, optical build and mechanical build. All three have to be masterful to yield a good motion picture lens. Still lenses simply don't have the same demands placed on them as film/video lenses. Almost universally, the makers are happy doing a fine job on the first two items above, and let the last one slide a bit. Most stills lenses have focus & iris marks that are too closely spaced for motion picture work and fragile mechanisms that struggle holding focus and image position when either focus or focal length change.

Please believe me when I state that Stuart did not just tack a PL mount on an off-the-shelf still lens and call it good. As stunning as the optics in the base lens are, it is still a mass-produced item for the consumer market. He created an entirely new precision heavy duty housing, and stabilized the internal movement of the lens so it would hold focus without stray image movement throughout its range. This meant substantially re-engineering it's zoom mechanism. Not a job for backyard engineers or the faint-hearted.
Century/Clairmont were awarded an Academy technical & scientific Oscar for doing more or less the same thing to the venerable old Canon 150-600mm varifocal lens which they turned into a true zoom.

Will he make a decent profit on the end result ? I certainly hope so. Don't you think he's earned it ?

Respectfully,
Click to expand...
I'm so glad he chose to work with this particular lens. I'm sure Stewart's work is of the utmost quality and I'm definitely getting this lens. . Thanks for your post.
 
Zack Birlew said:
Well, I like the 14-24mm Nikon and all and I would have bought it recently had a Tokina 11-16 not come back in stock, but I'm sort of glad I didn't now because of this. That 14-24mm needs to be a manual lens, I'm sorry, Nikon dropped the ball bigtime on that one. Can't wait to check this out! =)
Click to expand...


I with you, it should have been manual...
 
Doing a full cine rehouse is Hard and Expensive ! Stuarts price is very reasonable.

If you want to complain about prices, complain about "re-skinned" lenses, pretty metal on the outside, with sloppy plastic mechanics inside.

On the Tokina 11-16 f2.8 we felt that the mechanism was already pretty good. And that you could live with the focus rotation being more "still" than "cine" on a lens where the long end is 16mm and it's not very hard to keep in focus. Hence the $3250 -ish price instead of something more like Stuarts $10k.

Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com
 
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