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Arthur Woo

Arthur Woo

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Hi All,

After trying out GMD Three's Canon Cinema lenses the other night, it made me think about stepping up from stills to cinema lenses. Mechanics aside (I fell in love with manual aperture), the 24mm Canon CN-E looked slightly sharper and contrasty than my 24mm L II (had 2 scarlets w/ the same settings side by side pointing at the same subject).

My main concern is that I'm starting to do work that will be shown on larger formats than web (TV/projectors up to 50", NOT cinema screens) and want to get lenses that will help the image remain as sharp as possible when blown up. Right now the L lenses are fine when on something small like vimeo/youtube, but when they get blown up to a larger screen the quality diminishes a little bit.

I'm going to rent a few different brands before I put some money down on owning, but I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for which brands to try out, if my idea is to own eventually? Do Duclos modded lenses compare, image quality wise? Right now the budget is $5k or below (for a single lens) which will limit my options, but thought I'd get some feedback from you guys before I start spending money on rentals.
 
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I like how my compact primes look... although I know not everybody is a fan of those.
 
I Have Canon L-series, Tris Samyang Cine and Zeiss Contax C/Y.
I had RED zoom and some Zeiss standard speed MarkII. All sold
I did make Set Zeiss Contax by GL, excellent construction, looks nice, low low cost.
Is it okay for you and rental for low budget film.

Canon L are ok for the big screen. (only the mechanics of focus not optimal for video)
 
Arthur Woo said:
Hi All,

After trying out GMD Three's Canon Cinema lenses the other night, it made me think about stepping up from stills to cinema lenses. Mechanics aside (I fell in love with manual aperture), the 24mm Canon CN-E looked slightly sharper and contrasty than my 24mm L II (had 2 scarlets w/ the same settings side by side pointing at the same subject).

My main concern is that I'm starting to do work that will be shown on larger formats than web (TV/projectors up to 50", NOT cinema screens) and want to get lenses that will help the image remain as sharp as possible when blown up. Right now the L lenses are fine when on something small like vimeo/youtube, but when they get blown up to a larger screen the quality diminishes a little bit.

I'm going to rent a few different brands before I put some money down on owning, but I was wondering if anyone had any recommendations for which brands to try out, if my idea is to own eventually? Do Duclos modded lenses compare, image quality wise? Right now the budget is $5k or below (for a single lens) which will limit my options, but thought I'd get some feedback from you guys before I start spending money on rentals.
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sorry Artur but that's just nonsense.
Unless you have a bad copy of the Canon L lens they are just as good cine lenses optically.
Aside of the fact that they have to resolve a lot more than the cine lenses for stills I have tested thousands of lenses over the years and can tell you that that is true.
If you see the difference it's an anomaly.
Mechanically we can argue until the cows come home :) but optically there is absolutely no advantage-I would even venture to say the opposite...
 
Arthur - in Red class, we used Canon L lenses on Scarlets and it was blown up to like 50 feet and still looked sharp I'm not debating that the cine lenses may be nicer, but if you are going to a 50" screen I believe the Canon L series are fine.

I love manual aperture control too.
 
Jacek Zakowicz said:
sorry Artur but that's just nonsense.
Unless you have a bad copy of the Canon L lens they are just as good cine lenses optically.
Aside of the fact that they have to resolve a lot more than the cine lenses for stills I have tested thousands of lenses over the years and can tell you that that is true.
If you see the difference it's an anomaly.
Mechanically we can argue until the cows come home :) but optically there is absolutely no advantage-I would even venture to say the opposite...
Click to expand...

Eh?

So when you have a grip of high end still lenses that resolve 120-140 lp/mm center and down to 75-120 lp/mm across field and you have high end cinema glass that resolve 200+-140 lp/mm center and 200-140 lp/mm across field you're saying there's no visual difference?

I'll agree that Canon and Zeiss still designs compete well against older cinema optics through as recently as the 90s, but I don't agree with how it goes up against modern cinema optics.
 
I don't know where you got these numbers Phil.... But there are inaccurate.
And irrelevant since the resolution you need for Scarlet, Epic is under 100- and that with a very strong OLFP that RED uses that brings the MTF to (near) zero at that frequency to minimize the aliasing - as per official Red statements...
And yes I have tested all these lenses in projection- many, many times- probably more times than you ever will...
 
Jacek Zakowicz said:
I don't know where you got these numbers Phil.... But there are inaccurate.
And irrelevant since the resolution you need for Scarlet, Epic is under 100- and that with a very strong OLFP that RED uses that brings the MTF to (near) zero at that frequency to minimize the aliasing - as per official Red statements...
And yes I have tested all these lenses in projection- many, many times- probably more times than you ever will...
Click to expand...

Ah. Gotcha. I just wanted to understand your point of view.

Now I know where you and I disagree :)

I'm sure you have more lens projection experience than I do. I guarantee I have more "lenses on camera" experience than you do though :)
 
I find with stills glass, from lens to lens the quality can vary substantially. I'm currently borrowing (from another REDuser) a Nikkor 50 1.2 that I *assumed* would be soft/glowy wide open but it resolves ridiculously well... It's actually making me second guess all my other Nikkor glass (which is f2.0). At f4 I'm seeing pores in wide shots, which is pretty far away from the subject (it's a 50mm on 4k/s35 remember, so we're talking ~3m/10ft+). Same with Rokinon/Samyang's 35 and 85 -- unfortunately wide open they have noticeable CA - purple/green fringing - but damn are they sharp even at 1.4.

That said, from my understanding, a lot of the ~$4k-5k Cine Lenses are essentially just the company's stills glass with cine mechanics. Particularly the CP2s and CN-Es. I'm not sure about the Xenons-Schenidnerdasdfs and/or Sony's new T2 glass and/or whomever else is in the $4k-5k price range... If that's the case (that they are, in fact, rehoused stills glass) than spending the additional money isn't worth it in my opinion... It becomes doubly plausible for glass that covers FF35 and has changeable mount (EOS and PL).

Tough call. At this point in time buying glass that doesn't cover FF35 is probably not a good long-term investment. Being that most of the (affordable) FF35-coverage Cine-lenses could potentially be rehoused stills glass, it's not worth the additional $3k PER LENS unless you absolutely need those mechanics. Because of that, I'm starting to lean towards those cheapy cine-versions from traditional stills manufacturers (Rokinons and the upcoming Tokinas), until I can afford a set of Master Primes...

... yeaahh... Alright, I guess Super Speeds MKIIs would suffice (they don't cover FF35, but t1.3? Yowza).
 
Jacek Zakowicz said:
sorry Artur but that's just nonsense.
Unless you have a bad copy of the Canon L lens they are just as good cine lenses optically.
Aside of the fact that they have to resolve a lot more than the cine lenses for stills I have tested thousands of lenses over the years and can tell you that that is true.
If you see the difference it's an anomaly.
Mechanically we can argue until the cows come home :) but optically there is absolutely no advantage-I would even venture to say the opposite...
Click to expand...

I don't really know if there's any other way to explain it, but they looked different, it was a small difference, but there was something. I even had another operator look at the image and he came to the same conclusion. I don't disbelieve people when they say they have used still lenses for large screens, but doing our little unscientific test leads me to think there's something else there besides the mechanics.

As for L lenses, what would your experience say regarding what aperture is ideal to shoot at? If I remember correctly we were shooting at f/4.
 
Arthur Woo said:
I don't really know if there's any other way to explain it, but they looked different, it was a small difference, but there was something....
Click to expand...

This has been gone over and once more over... by the planet 5D lens test brigades and here you go.
__________

Watch this lens battle! Canon Cinema Primes vs. Canon L Series by Jon Yi
___________

In the freeze frame, you can see the cleaner bokeh of the Cine lens. This look is what has typically separated cinema and higher quality lenses from stills and lower cost lenses. Other than that however, we didn’t see much difference in the image quality. Both 50mm lenses had the same slight distortion on the edges of the frame. The bokeh circles on the edges become slightly squished, but it looks like they distort in the same way on both the L Series and the Cine Lens.
Click to expand...

Canon L Series Lens vs. Cine Series Lens Test
 
Guy Staley said:


Well, based on this lens test, I can definitely say that I prefer the images produced by the Canon cinema glass! ;)
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Yeah there is that subtle difference. For me $5k is a lot for 1 lens as an owner/operator; however I do a lot of my own personal shoots too and renting (mostly the time going back and forth to the rental house) would be annoying enough for me to say screw it and get the lens
 
I'm amazed how similar the lenses look, seems they really are probably identical glass just with different aperture shapes and very different mechanics. Never really liked the Canon lens look much, I guess it works for stills though. Unless you are crazy about needing round apertures or sturdy mechanics and better focuspulling, I wouldn't think the Canon Cine lense would be a great upgrade on a budget.

Personally I'm quite happy with my Sigma zoom lenses :)

With any lenses made by still lens manufacturers, there can be a lot of variation in designs and generations of lenses and different copies can perform quite differently, so I'd recommend testing a bunch out of course :)
 
Noah Yuan-Vogel said:
I'm amazed how similar the lenses look, seems they really are probably identical glass just with different aperture shapes and very different mechanics. Never really liked the Canon lens look much, I guess it works for stills though. Unless you are crazy about needing round apertures or sturdy mechanics and better focuspulling, I wouldn't think the Canon Cine lense would be a great upgrade on a budget.

Personally I'm quite happy with my Sigma zoom lenses :)

With any lenses made by still lens manufacturers, there can be a lot of variation in designs and generations of lenses and different copies can perform quite differently, so I'd recommend testing a bunch out of course :)
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Which Sigmas are you using? I had a 17-50mm a year ago, it was a great lens. I upgraded to a 24-105 when I got a 5d Mark III and sold it
 
Noah Yuan-Vogel said:
I'm amazed how similar the lenses look, seems they really are probably identical glass just with different aperture shapes and very different mechanics.
Click to expand...

Pretty much the same except for different coatings, which probably is creating the variation in color and contrast. When I tested these side by side with the stills version the highlight roll off at the very top end looks different. It's small, but noticeable.
 
Phil Holland said:
Pretty much the same except for different coatings, which probably is creating the variation in color and contrast. When I tested these side by side with the stills version the highlight roll off at the very top end looks different. It's small, but noticeable.
Click to expand...

Phil, I recently read that you upgraded to a set of cinema primes. Congrats! I'm still in the exploratory phase. How long did you hold out until you realized you started needing cinema mechanics?
 
Arthur Woo said:
Phil, I recently read that you upgraded to a set of cinema primes. Congrats! I'm still in the exploratory phase. How long did you hold out until you realized you started needing cinema mechanics?
Click to expand...


(short answer)

About 10 years :)


(**warning, incoming long answer)

Truthfully I've been using both still lenses and cinema lenses for a long time, even before the Red One. The primary difference for so long was that I owned the still glass and I cine-modded them the best I could for motion use. Old manual lenses, Canon EF lenses, etc...

Productions rented PL or more commonly for me, Panavision glass. For myself and my "business plan" combined with the desire to have cinema glass that I enjoy using and hits certain technical marks makes a lot of sense for me at this point. It came down to really what my clients and myself wanted from the images I shoot. Also, some personal compromises I'm no longer interesting in making. Specifically when it comes to image shift and breathing, breathing being a fairly personal opinion as other have varying opinions on the matter. Image shift however sucks. Especially if you are making slight pulls during takes.

I fully intend on using my still glass still, but I'm pretty much focused on using PL cinema glass for a great deal of my shooting. I'd say over 95%.

I'll just add to that that I'm looking at completing a set of zooms, standard-ish, fast primes, and a couple telephoto lenses. Similar to my still glass collection and coverage, but in a cinema glass form. I've been working towards this moment for a long, long time.

Advice on purchasing cinema glass? Don't go this route unless you are deadly serious about what you're doing. If you are going this route, test fully until you are very comfortable with your purchasing decision. It took me about two months of brain work and testing. I don't have many things in my life that have cost as much as lenses at this point. Not even my cameras.

If there's any doubt, rent when you want explore this end of things.

That all said I have very real images comparing side by side a good range of cinema glass against still glass and there's usually a few major differences. Off the top of my head: rendering, resolving power, relative color neutrality, contrast levels, micro contrast, various aberration correction, breathing, image shift correction, mechanics, perspective compression across the range, focus throw, gears, uniform size or not, bokeh/out of focus rendering/iris blades, color and look consistency across a set of lenses and at various apertures, also light consistency across T-Stops. That's not to mention the advantages of a solid PL mount in there.

All of this add up to create the general "character" of a lens.

Basically what I'm saying is there's a lot of variables. Resolving power is one thing. A combination of all of the above can make certain lenses sing and have unique feel both in images captured and how the lenses are used on a day to day basis.
 
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