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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 :)

Lens shopping...

Our FF35 DSMC lenses will be a hybrid cine/stills design. That's all I can say right now.

Jim

Some of the Hasselblad “V” series lenses used floating elements (e.g. Distagon T*4/50) to help improve image quality. It also incorporated an extra manual ring that had three settings depending of what basic distance range you were shooting to separately control one set of floating elements. So I could imagine that there is the possibility of a mechano-optical hybrid between Cinematic Primes and Stills lenses, rather than just having extra f numbers printed on a cinematic prime.

Would be very interested to see how the radial distortion curves work out for these new primes, and how they compare to other retrofocal lenses of same focal length?
 
Is there any word on what mount will come with the Scarlets?
 
This is interesting.

According to Pawel Achtel's tests [link], the Master Primes have these image circles:

75mm: about 37mm diameter
35mm: 31mm diameter
14mm: 31.1mm diameter

How are these things measured? Is there a hard edge outside 31mm (on the 35mm lens), or is it where vignetting starts, or?

These were measured on a lens projector. The diameter was measured of the "sharp" and crisp image circle right up to where vignetting starts. These lenses cover larger image circle with some loss of resolution and slight vignetting. I can say that all MPs will be fine for full 5k sensor and certainly crisp and sharp corner to corner on 2:1 and 2.35:1 aspect ratios. Nice one! :)
 
I think this is a coded message. He could tell us what it means but then he would have to kill us.

lol, don't you just love the worldly language barrier.
 
...EPIC 5K is accomplished with a 32mm image circle. The new RED Pro Primes are designed to accommodate that. Those lenses that only do a 30mm image circle (standard S35) will only cover 4K on the new EPIC S35 brain....
Jim
Thanks for the heads up Jim.

Later when the FF35 sensors (36mm x 24mm) will come out, can we simply use the Epic/Scarlet S35 mount and all our S35 glass on the FF35 brains

or

Buy your new hybrid cine/still lenses with it's dedicated mount to get full 6K

or

swap this mount for a nikon/canon mount and use their nikon/canon lenses to also cover 6K.

D
 
Floating elements have been around for a while now both in primes and zooms for cine and still camera use. Here is one of my favorites...

http://www.pebbleplace.com/Personal/Contax_28mm_F2_Distagon.html

For sure, but the way the floating elements are used in stills lenses and the way floating elements are used in Cinematic primes are quite different. In cinematic primes one of the main reasons for using floating elements is to control “breathing” and to maintain an effective constant optical length , whereas floating elements are used in retrofocal stills lenses for many different reasons except for the purpose of controlling breathing.

For example in the Zeiss ZF Makro-Planar T*2/50 the floating elements are used to enable close up “macro” shooting of subjects at 2:1 and yet one is still be able to focus to infinity. [Normally if you took a standard 50mm lens you would need a extension tube that is much longer than the Makro-Planar T* 2/50 body].

The Hasselblad/Zeiss 4/50/Fle/Cfi is a little bit unusual in that it gives the user an extra ring to physically adjust these floating elements (by hand) relative to the main set [the settings are 0.5 to 0.8 m, 0.8 to 1.2m, 4m to infinity]. In the use of this lens I have found that the floating element ring seems to reduce breathing somewhat compared to other 50mm stills lenses but not as much as for example a high end cinematic prime. In the Hasselblad 4/50 lens there is still a large displacement needed to move all of the elements for focusing and the manual control of the floating elements at the front of the lens are an additional movement on top of that. In contrast for example the ARRI Ultra primes keep most of the elements static so there is not this big displacement of heavy glass but instead move only a few lighter elements in a coordinated and precise fashion for true internal focusing without breathing (an amazing piece of engineering).

So the speculation is that given that stills and cinematic primes use floating elements in markedly different ways, it may be that what JIM is alluding to may indeed be a unique “hybrid” of the two methodologies. I.e The lens maintains a constant length by virtue of the lens casing, there may indeed be more translation of heavy glass than an ARRI Master Prime, but through novel floating elements design breathing might be well controlled for most practical purposes and certainly much better than a regular stills lens.

I agree also that the Zeiss/Contax Yashica lenses were really fantastic and I am really sorry that they stopped manufacturing them as they would be absolutely brilliant for many technical applications that we have. I really liked the fact that they seemed to be a half way house between 35mm and medium format in terms of flange focal length which is very helpful if you need to get very accurate alignments of a 35mm sensor/camera with a lens as you have more room to engineer precision mounts between standard fittings.

[I'm also thinking of the Contax 645 a good half way house between 6x6 and 35 mm. It seems that Leica's half way house between the formats (the S2) has lost ground. I think for digital this format is nearly perfect, some one just needs to make the lenses for it, (hint, hint...)]

Cheers,
Eric
 
Can someone from RED also confirm how much of the imager the 18-50mm lense will see (or do we just assume it is 4.5k)?

Please, can someone from RED confirm, that we can record 5k with the RED Pro 18-85mm zoom as well.
 
I can say that all MPs will be fine for full 5k sensor and certainly crisp and sharp corner to corner on 2:1 and 2.35:1 aspect ratios. Nice one! :)

Thanks Pawel. Wish I had a set of Master Primes, so I could now be relieved that I didn't have to throw them away.
 
So as far as cine lenses go, aside from the Red primes, only Master Primes will cover 5k? How about S4s or Ultra Primes? Or the Angie DP zooms?
 
That's a good question, Phil... I'd love to know the image circle size of the APS-C (DX, EF-S) lenses specifically. I know this has been discussed, but I don't feel like I've heard definitively whether my DX zooms will be usable on an S35.
 
A completely unrelated question, but if all lenses create image circles, then why are sensors rectangular?

Because pixels are on a Cartesian plane and not on fractals.

Although we could sync to 3.58 MHz for better color. ;)

Rosco to the rescue
 
Image Circle

Image Circle

You would measure the image circle by determining the relative illumination you could live with in the corners. Rule of thumb is anything under 40% you will perceive. 50%-60% will look very uniform.

This is aperture dependent obviously. A lens at T/2.0 will roll off to 40% faster than the Same lens at T/2.8, 5/6, etc.

Maybe you can live with 30% ish in the corner in an extreme case since you can possible beef up the exposere a bit after the fact.
 
I expect most current manufactured lenses by either Zeiss, Angenieux, or Cooke which is intended for ANSI S35 or Full aperture will work with this new 5K sensor size. Most of this glass covers more than the 24.9mm x 18.7mm apertures. If we do the math this puts the minimum image circle @ 31.14mm and in practice I can't think of any specific lenses which are vignetting this image area?
 
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