I'm just back from the L.A. Red User Group hosted by Kappa studios. The parts I checked out in detail were the Red Prime Demo and Jacek's room full of his Optitek products.
1. Red Prime Demo. ( only 35mm Lens )
Ted ( from Red ) started out with a discussion about some of Red's lens program's history and talked about how they thought the Red prime was in league with the best cine lenses, yet at a fraction of the cost.
There was a short demo comparing the Red 18-50 and the Red 35mm lens visually on a camera. Both lenses looked fine on the monitor, as one would expect - both being able to make a nice 720p image.
Then we were allowed a little bit of hands on with the Red Prime - build quality looked to be very good. The size and weight of this lens are not fully apparent when you see the pictures - It's a bit bigger and heavier than Ultraprimes or Cooke S4's. Size and weight wise made me think of the Cooke 15-40 T2. The 35mm was made with an internal floating focus element, a design which I believe should bring really good close focus performance.
Then there was a few minutes of unguided playtime with the lens. It looked to be very high resolution, mechanically excellent very good flare resistance, low distortion, moderate breathing, basically everything looked really good. If the 35mm is a good indication of the rest of the lenses and you are looking to buy a PL prime set: it's a no-brainer.
The only weird thing about the Red primes is how Red is marketing them. The talking points are more about 5k coverage than optical design philosophy or serviceability. The NAB demo and Red User Group seemed to run away from the only meaningful tests I can think of: Put them up directly against Ultra Primes, Master Primes and S4's and look at the pictures. Real world images, not on a projector.
2. Jacek from Optitek had his Pro Nikon mount on display. It uses a locking ring driven system to pull the lens snug to the mount. The Iris on G series lenses can be adjusted with a simple external ring. He had a Nikon 14-24 on it and it worked well. It's a vast improvement on the stock Nikon camera mount - highly recommended if you are shooting with Nikons.
3. Jacek also had the prototype of the Optimator a flange focal depth checking device for the Red and other PL mount cameras. It works by projecting a focus pattern onto the cameras cmos sensor. You rack the mount's adjustment ring back and forth until you can see the highest number on the scale. It's a bit better in theory than the IBE Null Lens because you can use it anywhere - you don't need an infinity target, it gives a readable numeric scale to judge your accuracy, and the Optimator has a provision to see the sides of the frame also which lets you know that your mount / sensor are not askew in some other way. It's self powered with an internal battery or by a cable.
I want to have a look at Uniq optics Diascope and see what's up with that. Probably next week.
Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com
1. Red Prime Demo. ( only 35mm Lens )
Ted ( from Red ) started out with a discussion about some of Red's lens program's history and talked about how they thought the Red prime was in league with the best cine lenses, yet at a fraction of the cost.
There was a short demo comparing the Red 18-50 and the Red 35mm lens visually on a camera. Both lenses looked fine on the monitor, as one would expect - both being able to make a nice 720p image.
Then we were allowed a little bit of hands on with the Red Prime - build quality looked to be very good. The size and weight of this lens are not fully apparent when you see the pictures - It's a bit bigger and heavier than Ultraprimes or Cooke S4's. Size and weight wise made me think of the Cooke 15-40 T2. The 35mm was made with an internal floating focus element, a design which I believe should bring really good close focus performance.
Then there was a few minutes of unguided playtime with the lens. It looked to be very high resolution, mechanically excellent very good flare resistance, low distortion, moderate breathing, basically everything looked really good. If the 35mm is a good indication of the rest of the lenses and you are looking to buy a PL prime set: it's a no-brainer.
The only weird thing about the Red primes is how Red is marketing them. The talking points are more about 5k coverage than optical design philosophy or serviceability. The NAB demo and Red User Group seemed to run away from the only meaningful tests I can think of: Put them up directly against Ultra Primes, Master Primes and S4's and look at the pictures. Real world images, not on a projector.
2. Jacek from Optitek had his Pro Nikon mount on display. It uses a locking ring driven system to pull the lens snug to the mount. The Iris on G series lenses can be adjusted with a simple external ring. He had a Nikon 14-24 on it and it worked well. It's a vast improvement on the stock Nikon camera mount - highly recommended if you are shooting with Nikons.
3. Jacek also had the prototype of the Optimator a flange focal depth checking device for the Red and other PL mount cameras. It works by projecting a focus pattern onto the cameras cmos sensor. You rack the mount's adjustment ring back and forth until you can see the highest number on the scale. It's a bit better in theory than the IBE Null Lens because you can use it anywhere - you don't need an infinity target, it gives a readable numeric scale to judge your accuracy, and the Optimator has a provision to see the sides of the frame also which lets you know that your mount / sensor are not askew in some other way. It's self powered with an internal battery or by a cable.
I want to have a look at Uniq optics Diascope and see what's up with that. Probably next week.
Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com
.... or ... wait a few weeks till the sets are out in the wild.
