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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 Test, can you see the difference?

JanneJansson said:
Ok, This is a major pice of info regerding lenses. A very, very expensive cine glass will be less good, then a much cheeper DSLR lens.
Click to expand...

Hi,

Actually they are very cheap & old cine glass that nobody wanted 5 years ago. You could not give them away, a set for $8000 would sit on the shelf for years, then RED came along and a bubble was born. Once Zeiss came out with the Ultra Primes, they seemed very old, useful for handheld but that's about it. I am sure some owners will tell you I am wrong, those same people who said they don't porthole I would guess.

Stephen

FWIW Stopped down to T4 they are fine, 50 & 85mm fine wide open
About 2 1/2 years ago somebody on Ebay was selling New in a Box Standards, he was asking $2400 per lens, those lenses took a very long time to sell! It was a genuine auction as I know somebody who bought 1 lens.
 
Stephen Williams said:
Hi,

Actually they are very cheap & old cine glass that nobody wanted 5 years ago. You could not give them away, a set for $8000 would sit on the shelf for years, then RED came along and a bubble was born. Once Zeiss came out with the Ultra Primes, they seemed very old, useful for handheld but thats about it. I am sure some owners will tell you I am wrong, those same people who said they don't porthole I would guess.

Stephen

FWIW Stopped down to T4 they are fine, 50 & 85mm fine wide open
About 2 1/2 years ago somebody on Ebay was selling New in a Box Standards, he was asking $2400 per lens, those lenses took a very long time to sell!
Click to expand...

Stephen

I don't think he is talking about standard speeds but telectricity and cine lenses in general... taken from the article you posted the link to..

M
 
Michael Lindsay said:
Stephen

I don't think he is talking about standard speeds but telectricity and cine lenses in general... taken from the article you posted the link to..

M
Click to expand...

Hi,

The link was posted as an explanation. Sorry for any confusion.

Stephen
 
Hey Michael!

Thanks for the good wishes, it's going to be tough but what isn't nowadays :)

I don't like the S4 flares because they are kinda indistinctive. If you want to photoshop-like flare take the High Speeds, they give a very classical lens flare, we want those classical 70s flares of old lenses which give a nice smear over the whole picture, so we take Standards, but with Cookes, I don't see a purpose yet :)

Yeah, we also don't really use flares so often, our film also does not require it, but at times, especially in winter, when the sun is low and we want a nice backlit picture, I'd rather have the flare than it blocked, especially if the flare has the "smearing" effect ofter the picture.

We panned through the light actually, if interest is here I can also convert them down and upload them for reference.

Janne, I think the high cine-lens prices are totally justified, having worked with photo lenses over a few years now, I'd take cine-lenses every time over photo lenses, it's just so much more suited for the work you have to do when shooting a movie. Also they are handmade (Cookes at least afaik and produced in such a low volume), I don't even want to know how many Nikon 50mm 1.4s have been sold.

Stephen, I was told the same thing by ARRI, they almost didn't want to give us the Standard Speeds :), what's interesting is, they have lots and lots of sets of BNCR Moviecam lenses, rehoused Olympus lenses that cover full 35mm, it's a set of 11 lenses I think (14, 17, 20, 24, 28, 35, 50, 85, 100, 135, 180), very similar to this: http://www.filmstarrentals.com/ccp0-prodshow/CANONk35PrimeLenses.html

I don't even want to start on the lens prices, I got offered a set of MK3 superspeeds for 60k USD, can you believe that??

They are not convertable though, but with a BNCR mount... the cost of the whole set is the same as a set of Zeiss HS for a day, but for a week! They could make a fortune out of that as soon as the FF35 cameras are rolling out...

Thanks for the comments so far! I'll post stills from the project :)
 
If you want some really beautiful organic flaring, try to find a set of ole Cooke Speed Panchros (aka Series 2 & 3). They were rehoused by a number of different companies and are very pretty glass even after the better part of a century.

I did a test with a Phantom for a show that was considering the camera for 24fps work as well as high speed, and the DP wanted to see how his rehoused Panchros worked with the camera. He did heavily backlit shots out doors in daylight and scenes lit with nothing but a single candle. Just gorgeous.

(The movie didn't shoot with Phantom for eveything for political reasons, but that's another story not for a public forum.)
 
Mitch Gross said:
If you want some really beautiful organic flaring, try to find a set of ole Cooke Speed Panchros (aka Series 2 & 3). They were rehoused by a number of different companies and are very pretty glass even after the better part of a century.

I did a test with a Phantom for a show that was considering the camera for 24fps work as well as high speed, and the DP wanted to see how his rehoused Panchros worked with the camera. He did heavily backlit shots out doors in daylight and scenes lit with nothing but a single candle. Just gorgeous.

(The movie didn't shoot with Phantom for eveything for political reasons, but that's another story not for a public forum.)
Click to expand...

I have a set of Cooke SERII/III re-housed y century, your right mitch they are just gorgeous....1950,s glass. Many great films shot using this glass, they were good enough for Kubrik on spartacus.
 
I have a set of these lenses for rental in NYC. Cooke S2/3 series 18, 25, 32, 40, 50, 75, 100, 135mm. All Century converted with 80mm fronts, focus & iris gears and PL mounted. Absolutely beautiful. the wider ones do porthole though. Some like it, some don't.
 
mine are in the UK and..for hire..all century re-housed Pl mount.
 
I have never had my zeiss standards porthole, even the widest angle (16mm). Did I get freakishly lucky with my set or are the older standard speeds performing better than the new?

(r)yan
 
it's porthole madness....people keep telling me how my Cookes porthole aswell, but i have yet to see it?...amazing. I ask myself this question, have any of these people got a set of century cookes and have they had them on the RED, i woud like to see some frame grabs :detective2:
 
I had a customer take the cookes and was shooting subjects against an all white backround. He called saying that the lenses had chromatic abberation. What he was seeing was the porthole effect on the wider lenses. He switched to the MK3 Superspeeds and those didn't do it. I saw the image and the corners were darkening and was changing to a magenta color which is why he thought they were chromatic abberation.
 
s816mm35mm said:
I had a customer take the cookes and was shooting subjects against an all white backround. He called saying that the lenses had chromatic abberation. What he was seeing was the porthole effect on the wider lenses. He switched to the MK3 Superspeeds and those didn't do it. I saw the image and the corners were darkening and was changing to a magenta color which is why he thought they were chromatic abberation.
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I think on an all white background - worst case scenario - you might start to see some darkening, i will shoot some tests tomorrow and post some grabs of my 18mm.
 
Mine are standard mount standard speeds with PL adapters. Never seen a porthploe on a white background...I have very slightly with the cooke 18
 
(r)yan said:
Mine are standard mount standard speeds with PL adapters. Never seen a porthploe on a white background...I have very slightly with the cooke 18
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Hi,

You need to be wide open to see the problem & at T4 they are fine. Only the 3 wider lenses of a standatd set have the issue.

Stephen
 
JanneJansson said:
Ok, This is a major pice of info regerding lenses. A very, very expensive cine glass will be less good, then a much cheeper DSLR lens.
Click to expand...

Hi,

FWIW the Nikon 18-70 that was packaged with my D70 portholes very badly.

Stephen
 
Still not seeing it even on the 16. I will have to put them through their paces just a bit more, but hell for under four grand, still can't beat that price.

(r)yan
 
The standards were designed for film, film does not care how the light hits the surface of the film, unlike a digital sensor. Lenses for digital should be telecentric,
Click to expand...

Were't the Arri superspeed and Cooke S4s made for film too?
I agree that a technical reason can be the lack of telecentricity in the Standards, but since all these lenses were all made for film, not sensors, then I don't know why they decided to make a telecentric design on the superspeeds and the Cookes, if we can say so.
mmm, I'm not totally satisfied with the explanation.

All Cooke S4 prime lenses are colour balanced to a specification within parameters approved by Kodak.
Click to expand...
http://www.cookeoptics.com/cooke.nsf/secondary/s4prime

Aso the Arri were made a long time before Red and S35 sensors.
 
The small rear element is the problem.

What sort of explanation would satisfy you?

Tetsuo said:
Were't the Arri superspeed and Cooke S4s made for film too?
I agree that a technical reason can be the lack of telecentricity in the Standards, but since all these lenses were all made for film, not sensors, then I don't know why they decided to make a telecentric design on the superspeeds and the Cookes, if we can say so.
mmm, I'm not totally satisfied with the explanation.


http://www.cookeoptics.com/cooke.nsf/secondary/s4prime

Aso the Arri were made a long time before Red and S35 sensors.
Click to expand...
 
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