Red Pro Zoom Lenses for Red One...

[Mike Krumlauf]

I honestly have no idea where to post this so given I use a Red One I figured here would be good.


I am about a week and a half away from investing in a PL Zoom for my RED ONE. On my limited budget, DZO, RED, and SURI seem to be the only companies I can afford.

I remember Red making a series of zoom lenses and was interested to see if any of you had worked with them and if they were worth the money? You can get the 17-50 for under 2k now which is nice. I've heard Red just re housed a Sigma or Tameron lens for these, is this true? Also, does the front barrel expand and contract like a photography lens or is the zooming internal as it should be? It seems like from pictures i've seen, the lens looks kinda stupid like a photo lens trapped inside an outer cine housing lol

 

[PatrickWebb]

Hi Mike,
My 2c worth:
I think the DZO might be your best bet here. I have the Pictor Zoom 20-55mm and have to say, hands down, that it is a stellar lens for the price. The Red zooms can be quite a hit and miss, with zoom, focus and aperture gears getting sloppy, slipping or jamming with age. At least with the DZO you are getting a modern lens with great optics inside. Seeing that it is going on an R1, I guess size and weight is negligible. You will get more use out of the DZO than any of the other options here.
Cheers.

 

[Alex Lubensky]

I own a 18-85 T2.8. It's rather heavy, 4.5kg in weight, and has a large front diameter (138mm), so no cheap matteboxes. Overall when I was buying it it was the cheapest way possible to cover a full lens set under 5 grand. Later DZO, LAOWA released their compact zoom lenses. Also there's Sigma in cine housing.

Speaking of the lens itself - it's not covering RED Epic MX @5k open gate, but covering 5K HD (16:9) with a slight vignette on 18-20mm range. Fully covering RED One MX. It's a bit soft at T2.9 (depending on focus distance - it's center, edges), but tack sharp starting from around T3.5 and up. It doesn't like big light sources in a high contrast environment - like windows in a dark room or a commercial on a green screen - the image quickly starts loosing contrast in this scenario, but overall in regular scenes it's good.

How does it compare to those DZO zooms? To me DZO are the way to go today because of the weight, size, mattebox diameter etc. Only this will save you a hefty amount on tripods, accessories, matte boxes, filters etc. Image quality wise - I'd say the 18-85 is batter at all focal length except for 32mm. It's really soft at 32mm. 18mm will introduce some pillow distorsion, but it'll go away at 22-25mm already. Red zoom doesn't breath almost at all, but the focusing mechanism has some design faults and if your mattebox isn't on 19mm support - image might shift a little bit at 85mm when the focusing motor is changing direction.

Also due to the size of the lens it's impossible to operate without focus motors. The focus gear is just massively big.

 

[Alex Lubensky]

This was shot on RED Scarlet MX @4k and RPZ 18-85 T2.9
[video]https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/622797495[/video]
This was shot on RED Epic M MX @5k and RPZ 18-85 T2.9 - long vertical light leaks are not from the lens, but from the old version of OLPF installed on early M versions of Epic.
[video]https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/625567708[/video]

 

[Rob Reid]

Hey Alex, any knowledge on whether the original olpf was replaced on Epic M's to the MX olpf as part of the upgrade program that replaced the heat sink ect...

Thanks, RR.

 

[Alex Lubensky]

Hey Alex, any knowledge on whether the original olpf was replaced on Epic M's to the MX olpf as part of the upgrade program that replaced the heat sink ect...

Thanks, RR.

IDK, cause I wasn't an owner back then. I sure know that the top plate, the left side board aswell as the fans were a part of the same upgrade. While OLPF did seem like it was user replacable and I've seen some messages on reduser that RED did send out the OLPF upgrade to users directly.

 

[Rob Reid]

Thanks Alex, my M had the heatsink- fan upgrade already when I bought it. Not sure if the olpf was done as well. I haven't experienced the vertical light streaks yet. Checked out your vimeo link. Nice work, didn't find the streaks or flares too problematic.

 

[Alex Lubensky]

Thanks Alex, my M had the heatsink- fan upgrade already when I bought it. Not sure if the olpf was done as well. I haven't experienced the vertical light streaks yet. Checked out your vimeo link. Nice work, didn't find the streaks or flares too problematic.

thanks, most of the videos I have on VIMEO are shot with Scarlet MX or Alexa Mini, only couple were Epic MX - one by the link where you can see light streaks in some clips, and the late BMW ad where I have already replaced the OLPF (since I already had one normal from my Scarlet MX) and it wasn't showing any of those.

It's easy to see one - if there's a light source on top or after the bottom of the frame - it'll produce a long light streak over all image on the older OLPFs.

 

[Zack Birlew]

I always liked the RED Primes and Zooms but they were expensive S35-only options and by the time I could have considered them they were EOL and now they're still pretty pricey on the used market and while there are newer options to boot. From what I've seen for zooms, the DZO, Surui Jupiter, and Sigma 18-35/50-100 rehoused cine zooms are very nice quality options and if I had to use S35-only, I would personally opt for the Sigma's since they're so stellar but DZO might be worth looking at as well since they have their new 12-25 2.8 out and covering a nice wide end. Don't forget, there are also similarly priced Nikon and Canon rehoused zoom lens options as well to cover full frame use on top of being very nice zoom lenses.

 

[Mike Krumlauf]

I ended up just using the nikon mount my RED came with and am putting my PL mount in the case off to the side for now. I got the Nikon 17-35 and 80-200 lenses and im in love