Master Primes Vs S4

[Michael Lindsay]

In my limited experience:

Close focus performance with UP and MP is better than superspeeds. If you shoot stuff close this should be factored in..

Also I was very interested in Evins 2 lens comment... I felt this as well and posted this as a thought...

When looking at lenses I may look at all the bellow before ‘out right’ resolution:

Resistance to flare... Ability to flare in the right way... Out of focus quality... movement from in-focus to out of focus... Speed.. Quality of lens across apertures (Super Speeds always feel like 2 lenses in one where S4s are very consistent) .. Minimum focus... quality when focused at min... Consistent dimensions.. Consistent resolution…

(I must add I have no experience with Super Speeds on Red)

I don't like this 2 lens quality. Under pressure I don't want the extra hassle..

Thinking about the low light ext wide where you need the extra stop. I feel with modern stocks or digital cameras MP is the best way to achieve this.

But as Hans said 'It's all up to one taste'

regards

Michael

 

[Hans von Sonntag]

Yes,

closed focus is not as close as with Ultra Primes or Master Primes. You need a diopter for real close shots.

All my experiences with lenses is not with RED. Master Primes seems to be the thing to go nowadays and are in fact the successor of the Super Speeds. To own them privately is slightly out of reach for most.

In this regard I find the Master Primes a class of their own.

Hans

 

[bellaing]

My very tiny experience is only with S4 (a 50 mm) we used today in a test with the RED. If interested, you can find a 2000 pixel wide jpeg here : http://yanjin.deviantart.com/art/RED-test-77287077

Well. I did not work with film for ages and it's really a pleasure for me to work with the RED. I found back the old habits So basically, I quite agree with the idea that the audience is not going to watch charts and tests but a film with actors and movement And roughly, I would say that the choice of the lens "focusing power" is not that important in the final product.

 

[Irri]

I managed to get a set of Master Primes and S4s on a projector at Arri today. The Master Primes certainly keep a sharp image further out from the centre. On the down side: they are a little large (as mentioned before) and the do have a little less depth of field (or sharper falloff). I like them though.

 

[Nova Invicta]

Getting what you pay for

Getting what you pay for

Firstly a CMOS sensor is not film and the lenses both Zeiss & Cookes were designed to suit film with a contrast ratio that is very different. The MP are very sharp but overall most DOPs prefer the Cooke S4s because they have a more natural fall off wide open (actually the law of physics should dictate that all lenses at the same focal lenght and T-stop should have the same apparent depth of field)
The Red has a rolling shutter and this could also contribute to slight differences as opposed to CCD cameras with global shutters although corner sharpness is more likely down to the lenses. Lens choices are a very personal thing but irrespective these lenses far outperform anything available in the stills market contary to what is often posted here. We have been testing and using stills lenses for over 25 years if they really were as good as Zeiss or Cookes we certainly would not have bought these products the fact is they are a professional tool that need to work with motorised focus controls repeatedly, stay sharp and not fall apart there simply is no alternatives at the feature film or commercials end of the market for serious players.

 

[Stephen Williams]

(actually the law of physics should dictate that all lenses at the same focal lenght and T-stop should have the same apparent depth of field)

Hi

Depth of field is calculated by 'F' stop, not 'T' stop.

Stephen

 

[laguun]

I think its pretty important to understand, that actual photo lenses are surpassing the best cineoptics when it comes to resolution/sharpness/absence of CA.

On the other hand, photolenses have ergonomics, versatility etc. Especially many photozooms are quite problematic (ramping, -massive- breathing etc)

So far we have only been using and offering cinelenses from the usual suspects (angenieux, cooke, zeiss etc) but i have to admit that i am considering buying some photooptics for these special shots which cant get enough quality (as VFX/motion control/greenscreen) more and more etc.

Lets face it: Neither Arri MP or Cookes or Angenieux perform flawless at 4k, its a choice of (minor) shortcomings between the manufacturers and their different series.

 

[Steve Sanacore]

My concern would be with CA. Sharpness is very important, but I think it's more important for the images to be consistent throughout a project. A bit of softness is wonderful for some subjects, which is why I love minimal diffusion filters on my video images.

Can't wait to do some tests myself and see what I personally prefer. But I also think different subjects will demand different looks.

 

[Andrew M.]

Lagun, do you have access to 14mm MP, the new one?
I tested 16 mm Master Prime and I have to tell you in terms of sharpness and CA it is not much better then 14mm Canon that I have here. I will get my Canon mount next week or so and I am very curious what precision and repeatability I get on these Canon 14mm lenses.
Maybe MP has almost 360 deg focus through but Birger mount can have 3600 focus through if you program it this way, but all depends how precise the stepper motor is inside the Canon 14mm.
I have seen in medical surgeries equipment example where not expensive electronic control tool outperform very expensive mechanical control manipulators.
Didn’t we have this happened with the Swiss Watches once?
Hey, you can still buy tourbillion watch for 100K or so but it is not more precise then good electronic watch. People buy these watches from sentiment and other not relevant reasons.

I think this will be the future of good Cine Lenses.
Less expensive fully electronically controlled lenses will replace the traditional once, what do you think?

 

[laguun]

Lagun, do you have access to 14mm MP, the new one?

No,
iirc we had the 35 and the 50 shooting test charts.

I think this will be the future of good Cine Lenses.
Less expensive fully electronically controlled lenses will replace the traditional once, what do you think?

I have to admit that i am not sure.
I have not enough qualification regarding top-top-end still photo lenses.

On the one hand it is great that red now clearly wipes away the "talk" which so far surrounded actual prime lenses - we can exactly see where the limits of the lenses are, and they all are compromises in 4K.

On the other hand i think its pretty impossible to predict what cooke, angenieux, zeiss (or arri if you want so), opticar etc will offer within the next years.

I suppose its safe to predict that several productions will use excellent photoglass instead of cinelenses and achieve excellent results - not only in the "bourne identity" style, but beautyshots etc.

Also, electronic compensation for vignetting/ca etc will certainly become more popular, especially once the lensdata of the red finds its first 3hrd party software offers.

But beyond that i suppose it would be specualtion to try to predict what will come next. Red has changed the landscape of shooting quite a bit. Until now, the typical $250.000 setup (a hdcam with a angenieux/zeiss zoom, or a 35mm -mechanical- with cooke/arris primes) was the best image quality one would use before going exotic (65mm/dalsa 4k).

Now a lowprice setup with a red an photolenses can produce images of better quality. I think the industry will take quite some time to really understand the implications of this.

And finally, if we speak about future developments - i fully expect Nikon 999$ digital photo cameras to record 4K and up at >60P within some few years from here.

 

[Nikolai Pigarev]

Master primes back focus issue

Master primes back focus issue

Sorry if it is slightly off topic, we have been shooting today using a set of just calibrated lenses and we noticed that MASTER PRIMES are off the marks at 6m focus marks show 5m. The wider the lens the more noticeable it is. 100mm is almost spot on but a 32, 40 are off.

First i thought that REDs back focus needed adjustment but i have checked using ULTRA PRIMES and COOKE S4 and they all were spot on with marks.

Anyone can explain this strange observation apparently i am not the only one with MASTER PRIMES and this problem - but found no explanation so far

 

[Mitch Gross]

The wider the lens the less forgiving the backfocus. Set everything using a very wide lens at the biggest aperture -- in other words, your widest Master Prime -- and then everything else should fall into place.

 

[Tim Whitcomb]

OR. you can tell a REALLY good story. and nobody will care what lens you use. (well save these super smart people on these boards)

Case in point. Slumdog. Im one of the few on here that thought it deserved an Oscar for Best Cinematography... (because to me the latter is about manipulating light and color and movement, to tell a story)

for me, its not about grain, focus, bokeh, CA, etc on some lens chart. or a super crisply shot Dark Knight... to me, that should have been shot on RED, it was too pristine.

its all SUBJECTIVE... read these threads. some love their Cookes others their SS, UP's and MP's.

cheers!

 

[David Mullen ASC]

When I rented some Master Primes from The Camera House for "Stay Cool" for a few days (we were using Ultra Primes), I was told by my AC that for some reason, the rental house said that the Master Primes had to be adjusted for the RED cameras because the back-focus was off otherwise. Seems odd that the back-focus would be any different than with the Ultra Primes.

 

[Evin Grant]

Master Primes were designed to "Dig in" to the film emulsion a bit at T1.3. This is a good idea on a film camera but the Red's sensor is considerably thinner, and less tolerant of depth of focus (not field) differences. This is why a Red needs to be specifically collimated to the MAster primes if they are to be used. If you plan on mixing Master Primes with other lenses I suggest you get two bodies (If you can rent MP's you can afford it) and dedicate one specifically collimated to the MPs.

Tim, I personally think Benjamin Button deserved the Cinematography oscar, Slumdog was an incredible story and the shooting did fit, but it didn't move the art forward the way BB did. Claudio M. can make the Viper sing like the proverbial snake charmer and that movie was just breathtaking visually in every sense. Slumdog was the better movie and had all the momentum.

 

[Stephen Williams]

Master Primes were designed to "Dig in" to the film emulsion a bit at T1.3. .

Hi,

Normally PL mounted film cameras are depth set shorter than 52mm, (about 51.98 depending on model) to dig into the emulsion.

Stephen

 

[Nikolai Pigarev]

Thanks for the info... we are mixing MP with UP, so adjusting the RED would not work - but the DOP agreed on swapping MP for Cooke. See in Russia everyone is hell bend fanatic about optics - but they still shoot crap footage with it I had a hard time with the RED being one of the first people to get one over here - most still call it some sort of a digital camera like HD... and believe that something thats costs so little can't work... and same goes for lenses.

I was told it is partially because line producers sit on percentage from the budget so they prefer to blow it up. But since the crisis hit most of the industry welcomed RED.

 

[Lenny Manfred]

one thing that has to be mentioned about the MPs, they are sensitive, they can be damaged very easily, more so than the UPs, and need more maintenance. i had a bad experience with an MP from a rental house, where they charged me to send the lens to germany for repair, and i know, i am sure, that lens was not miss treated in any way. so that left a bad taste in my mouth. and apparently, i am not alone on this perception. they are exceptional lenses, but, because of those really tight tolerances, they can be fragile, and have to be handled with EXTREME care.

personally, i plan to purchase UPs instead, for me.

 

[Pawel Achtel]

Master primes are great but still have to abide by the laws of phisics.
Under most situations the UPs match the MPs.

Yes and no. Longer focal length UPs are just as sharp as MPs. Wider MPs do not have any equivalents I would be aware of. Intrestingly, on MTF machine and on the projector the 14mm MP measured sharper than 35mm MP and this was corner to corner fully opened and outresolved 4k in the entire field by miles, which seems to defy the laws of physics...:wink:

 

[Pawel Achtel]

When I rented some Master Primes from The Camera House for "Stay Cool" for a few days (we were using Ultra Primes), I was told by my AC that for some reason, the rental house said that the Master Primes had to be adjusted for the RED cameras because the back-focus was off otherwise. Seems odd that the back-focus would be any different than with the Ultra Primes.

I can not confirm this. I had my MPs calibrated on the Zeiss MTF machine and they all colimate on Red One factory adjusted mount (which I have every reason to believe was adjusted to the right back focus distance). The Red 300mm was tiny bit off, but all the MPs were spot on the marks.