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Raven Lens Milvus vs L series

Steve DiMaggio

Steve DiMaggio

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I am gonna be trying out a raven as a b cam to my epic-w, currently I use leica r's in nikon mount on my epic-w and a milvus lens. If I do end up pushing the buy button on the raven I am going to need grab some lenses. I never used a canon L series lens but they seem to be well thought of. Do any one of you have any experience with both lenses on a raven or any dragon sensor? Not interested in sigma art

steve
 
The Milvus primes will indeed have "more flavor" than the Sigmas in practical terms. A lot of the Canon L series is a bit dated, but the key comparisons are going to be on a focal length by focal length basis.

I will say the Milvus are a bit better for motion work due to hard stops and if you go the Nikon to EF adapter route you get manual iris. My Otus glass is EF mount and I personally like the electronic iris in this case.

Milvus has a few brand new designed focal lengths in there, so if you want expanded thoughts:

Zeiss Milvus Line-up
- New Optical Designs = 18mm f/2.8, 35mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.4, and 85mm f/1.4
- Rather "banging" glass from before previous gen = 15mm f/2.8mm, 21mm f/2.8, and 135mm f/2.
- The 50mm f/2 Macro and 100mm f/2 were already "good".

Just a note, this is also reflected in the CP.3 primes as they are essentially all the new glass and best glass deployed into the newer smaller primes with the addition of the 28mm in there as it's pretty beloved.

More or less a lot of this series is now closer to Otus quality, but still has some flavor optically.
 
I'm gonna see how I like the raven and then have to do some soul searching, part of me wants to just move up to the scarlet w, but we already have a scarlet unit, I wanted to be able to offer an cheaper raven unit for the slow months, hmm, the lens mount thing is the real question for me, I love the 120fps with no crop on the raven

steve
 
Phil Holland said:
The Milvus primes will indeed have "more flavor" than the Sigmas in practical terms. A lot of the Canon L series is a bit dated, but the key comparisons are going to be on a focal length by focal length basis.

I will say the Milvus are a bit better for motion work due to hard stops and if you go the Nikon to EF adapter route you get manual iris. My Otus glass is EF mount and I personally like the electronic iris in this case.

Milvus has a few brand new designed focal lengths in there, so if you want expanded thoughts:

Zeiss Milvus Line-up
- New Optical Designs = 18mm f/2.8, 35mm f/1.4, 50mm f/1.4, and 85mm f/1.4
- Rather "banging" glass from before previous gen = 15mm f/2.8mm, 21mm f/2.8, and 135mm f/2.
- The 50mm f/2 Macro and 100mm f/2 were already "good".

Just a note, this is also reflected in the CP.3 primes as they are essentially all the new glass and best glass deployed into the newer smaller primes with the addition of the 28mm in there as it's pretty beloved.

More or less a lot of this series is now closer to Otus quality, but still has some flavor optically.
Click to expand...

yeah the 35 and 85 would be my next purchases for sure, I already own the old 35 so could be a good 2 camera match

steve
 
Steve DiMaggio said:
I am gonna be trying out a raven as a b cam to my epic-w, currently I use leica r's in nikon mount on my epic-w and a milvus lens. If I do end up pushing the buy button on the raven I am going to need grab some lenses. I never used a canon L series lens but they seem to be well thought of. Do any one of you have any experience with both lenses on a raven or any dragon sensor? Not interested in sigma art

steve
Click to expand...

Hi Steve, you could just get a few Nikon to Canon adaptors so that you could use your Leica R's on the Raven? I use Novaflex adaptors and find them very good.
I have Zeiss CP.2's which I personally prefer over Canon. I also have a Contax Zeiss zoom 28-85 which I find easy to focus, very handy for doco work and I personally prefer over a Canon zoom.
In terms of Raven vs Scarlet W
The Raven has a native aspect ratio that is in-between 16:9 and widescreen, 1.85:1
If you mainly shoot 16:9 you may decide that Scarlet W plus freedom of interchangeable mount is worth it.
I personally like the more widescreen aspect ratio of the Raven and dont mind the EF mount restriction.
cheers Richard
 
I shoot full frame on epic-w and then go down to 4000x2160 or whatever the number is, I didn't even consider the ratio aspect

steve
 
Of-course, any photo Zeiss will be better than any Canon (Milvus are concidered now as "the best still lenses in 35mm world"), simply because of buid quality. Build-quality wise i'd state Zeiss Milvus is 1st, Sigma ART is 2nd, and Canon L-series 3rd.

Optically-wise, the Canon L-series makes a superior job for a photo lens right out of the box, but they tend to loose their sharpness over time - especially medium range zoom lenses. This also may appear in a fixed lens, depending on a case.

If you can't decide wich set to pick - don't trust lens tests, go and try out a set of each brand in a rental-company. Ask for the age of lenses, ideally try ones which are in a year-long use. You'll see what you really get after some time of use. Casual lens tests are almost always made on a new picked from the box lens (in photo world).

Be sure to test the infinity focus if you decide to go the adapter route. Some lenses may end up not coming even close to an infinity.
 
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Yes currently my milvus does not focus properly to infinity when using a speedbooster, I think I'll go native if I go the raven route

steve
 
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