Lens Mounts and the future. Where do we go from here?

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

The inside port diameter of the PL mount is quite large, so it will accommodate big rear element glass, sort of what Jasek said, just in another way. The future? Few PL lenses have electronic features, and those that do such as the Cooke i lenses only provide data info, not control such as internal focus and iris motors as found with Canon still lenses. I think Red will probably pioneer and therefore by defacto standardize the contact location and pin assignments for the rest of the "soon and later to come" PL's.

Perceptive and pretty much what I was going to say; electronics are going to be a major factor in future lens mounts.

At a REDucation event last summer I had a chance to ask Jim a question, and the question I chose to ask was 'is the RED electronic mount going to be a PL mount with additional electronic connectors, or a completely fresh design?' He replied that it was a new design from the ground up, unrelated to PL.

Now of course everything changes... I personally feel there's a lot to be said for the PL mount, mechanically, and it shouldn't be beyond the wit of man to add connectors in such a way that electronic and non-electronic PL lenses & camera bodies can be used interchangeably. Works fine in the 35mm stills world. Perfect example: Nikon F mount. You can use thirty year old glass in full manual mode on the latest D3, and you can use the latest glass (so long as it's not G series with no manual iris!) on ancient film bodies.

I think the way to go is to avoid having a multiplicity of connectors and keep it to just four; two as big as necessary for power, and two perhaps smaller for a lens data bus, data & ground. With a fast enough speed and a documented protocol for communications - data from the lens, and commands to the lens - iris, focus, and yes why not power zoom? All built in to a standard PL mount, for the reasons given above. Swapping mounts is painless on EPIC, but why do it at all unless you have to?

It's interesting that an utter silence has descended over the RED electronic mount & lenses; nothing has been heard about them for a very long time. In the later part of last year, Jim mentioned RED anamorphics were on the way, but nothing about electronics. Not sure what that bodes; I think they have plenty on their plates to deal with already.

Mike

 

[Roberto Lequeux]

Where do we go from here? ...to infinity! AND BEYOND!

 

[Tom Gleeson]

Slash the Flange

Slash the Flange

The issue with PL mount is not coverage but that it sits a standard 52mm away from the sensor/film plane. This was necessary when you had a spinning mirror shutter between the lens and film plane. This distance makes it harder to design lenses so they cost more money. If there is going to be a new Red mount why not have a short flange depth allowing much cheaper glass. This trend is already beginning to challenge the DSLR market check out:

Trey Ratcliff

The modular design of the Epic lens mount is going to allow them to be shooting with these new systems in the future while other cameras will be left behind.

 

[Ron Reddick]

`interesting thread,

I have recently play with my epic in several different configurations, one is with my bellows bag on my Toyo View camera rails and lens mount (in theory could support an sensor up to 11x14 inches with the right lenses), can we talk 40K or higher. It was interesting and I know several others on this forum have done the same, and there is some very good glass for the format, but does not support follow focus, is bellows focus, etc.

The more interesting thing is reusing my RZ Pro Glass, all supports 6x7 cm, very nice, and fast glass. Problem is the mount and focus, which on the camera is a rack based focus separate from the lens, is actually part of the camera body. I am working on an adapter to handle the glass and will have geared focus that will mate with a normal FF solution. Still in design stage on the CAD software, but it does look promising as there is plenty of throw distance from the mount to the Sensor.

The other question i have is do we need a larger sensor or do we need a higher density/resolving sensor in the FF35 format. I would prefer that, reuse PL glass, but would be nice to have a 8K sensor in the FF35 size format, just more pixel density and data, like a nice fine grained negative such as the old Kodak Technical Pan film.

Ron

 

[Tom Gleeson]

My preference is for a larger sensor preferably 20x36. This would accommodate anamorphic and full frame lenses at 16x9 including the upcoming Canon EOS Cinema glass and hopefully Reds new lenses. A larger sensor with sufficient density can always be windowed to your days shooting requirements. So if you had a gig that needed S35 glass you would simply select this in your menu. If it was 4K at S35 I would be more than happy. In three years of shooting Red One nobody has complained about the lack of resolution at 4k. This arrangement creates flexibility and also a point of difference to offer clients who have moved almost exclusively to Alexa.