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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

Rehoused Hasselblad lenses for 8k?

Christopher Probst said:
To answer your queston with another question... Why are people spending 10s of thousands of dollars rehousing old Baltars and Speed Panchros? Are those lenses delivering 100 lp/mm? Doubtful.

My only question on those lenses is, why bother with a lens with an image circle not even designed to cover Super 35? Plan that for your future!
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Haha - good answer! I mean...question!
 
Christopher Probst said:
Without getting too exotic with the math and dealing with diagonals or root2 blah di blahs... If you just look at the horizontal resolution, a 5 micron photo site pitch in Dragon sensors IS 100 lp/mm...

Look at the numbers.

For 6K, horizontall that is 6144 photosites across the 30.7mm width. Now to have a LINE PAIR, you need TWO photosites. One to read a black line, and another to read a white line. LINE PAIR. So 6144/2 is 3072... Therefore LINE PAIRS PER MILIMETER would be 3072/30.7mm = 100 lp/mm...

I don't think this photosite (pixe pitch) is mere coincidence... It's in a pretty sweet spot resolution wise. I'm still loving Dragon sensors in my Weapon and I'm sticking to it!
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I 100% agree with you Chris. The 5 micron pixel pitch is very, very smart. I do hope it's something built on for the future or at least referenced. At the moment technology below 3.5-4um is not exactly ideal for motion work in some ways. Though, like anything, advancements can be made.
 
Christopher Probst said:
To answer your queston with another question... Why are people spending 10s of thousands of dollars rehousing old Baltars and Speed Panchros? Are those lenses delivering 100 lp/mm? Doubtful.

My only question on those lenses is, why bother with a lens with an image circle not even designed to cover Super 35? Plan that for your future!
Click to expand...

oh good, because i do mostly shoot with vintage lenses like the cookes and kowas but that guy had me scared that an old lens wont hold up on a epic sensor, admittedly im mostly on an alexa with those lenses shooting life style. but the second part of your question, i as well will answer with a question (ha!) isnt the answer because image circles are becoming bigger then super 35???
i do like the lenses for other reasons too, ever deal with the iris? i actually like how you press the button and its smooth and you let it go and it locks in, pretty great, also the one button take the whole iris away to get focus thing, as well for a still lens the focus throw is so long and so smooth even compared to contax zeiss…lastly, there is so much glass in the front its actually easy to get this beautiful soft flare, or put on a deep hood and its not. lastly, the old zeiss glass look has become one of my favorite looks now.
 
Nick Morrison said:
It would appear having 5K packed into S35 for Dragon (vs 2.8K for Alexa) is that it's much easier to outresolve...
We intermixed a Hassy 50mm FE with Contax Primes and a Nikkor 200 f2, and once we got into the grade, the Hassy looked JUST AS SHARP.
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Its the opposite, Dragon has more pixels per mm so you need a sharper lens than you would on say the Alexa, if you care about sharpness.
Alexa has much larger pixels so you can get away with weaker optics.

Your history channel spot looks good, but I couldn't tell you if the lenses were sharp from a vimeo clip. For 1080 deliverable you can get away with a lot. I'm pretty sure you would see the difference between the lenses with a 4k deliverable.

and the thread was about 8k. It you like the look of vintage glass or character glass thats cool, but what is the point of upgrading to 8k if your optics only maybe resolve 4k? Going from 6k Dragon to 8k Weapon is expensive, if your not going to use glass that resolves any better on a 8k sensor than a 6k sensor I don't see the point.

I was excited about the extra resolution, but the sensor size makes it a problem, so I'm debating if we'll go ahead with our upgrades.

Glass designed for 65/medium format is designed for a a much bigger sensor so its not going to be as sharp, and its slower. There are also very few workable zooms.
Some glass designed for FF35 may just cover weapon's 8k size, but your using the extreme edges of the glass which are not going to be very sharp and will be heavily vignetted - so you'll need to stop down = slower. Neither choice is very good. Maybe someone will make a type of speed booster to go from MF glass to 8k weapon sensor size. If not, if I were looking for MF glass for weapon 8k I would look for more modern glass that was designed for digital back, as the sensor size is much closer to the weapon 8k sensor size than lenses made for 6x6 film - so the lenses would be sharper.

Shooting with the MF FE 50 on weapon 8k vs Dragon 6k and and Otus 55 for a 4k dci deliverable - I'm pretty sure the Dragon/Otus would be sharper by a significant amount.
Weapon 8k with a modern MF lens like a Leica S or even Pentax D
or
Weapon 8k with an Otus cropped to say 7.5k
is either going to be significantly sharper then Dragon 6k for a 4k dci deliverable?
Thats the $30k question.

Phil Holland said:
I 100% agree with you Chris. The 5 micron pixel pitch is very, very smart. I do hope it's something built on for the future or at least referenced. At the moment technology below 3.5-4um is not exactly ideal for motion work in some ways.
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How does 5 microns hold a special place in your heart? It was easy for Red to just make the sensor bigger for 8k, but its too big for FF35 glass and too small for Medium Format/65 glass.
I don't really like the size of the Alexa camera itself, but having much larger pixels 8+ micron pixels makes it more sensitive/less noisy and its the right size for 35mm or 65mm glass. On the other side you have Sony who's sensor division is pretty much ruling the world, the A7RII 8k sensor in FF35 format make a lot of sense, I think the F8 and F85 could be pretty interesting seeing as the price for weapon is more in their realm now.
 
Christopher*Seguine said:
How does 5 microns hold a special place in your heart? It was easy for Red to just make the sensor bigger for 8k, but its too big for FF35 glass and too small for Medium Format/65 glass.
I don't really like the size of the Alexa camera itself, but having much larger pixels 8+ micron pixels makes it more sensitive/less noisy and its the right size for 35mm or 65mm glass. On the other side you have Sony who's sensor division is pretty much ruling the world, the A7RII 8k sensor in FF35 format make a lot of sense, I think the F8 and F85 could be pretty interesting seeing as the price for weapon is more in their realm now.
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Heh. Good question. Let me explain my perspective on this.

Well if we're getting on the romantic side of things, 5 microns has led to 5K FF and 5.5K HD being the approximate S35 imaging plane. This holds relevance to me due to what modern motion picture film stocks actually resolved in terms of captured detail. I've written a whole bunch about resolution and format relevance here over the years and that is certain one thing that has pushed Dragon onto a lot of sets. It's no secret that a lot of Directors and DPs are shooting 6K and extracting a 5K frame for their standard workflows and this is just one of the reasons why.

Outside of nostalgia and romance, I have no problem with going a bit smaller than 5 microns. However, I have done tests (many, many, many tests) on cameras that now feature pixel pitches in the sub 5 micron range. Mainly in the 4.56-3.63um size and a few smaller than that. It gets tricky with smaller pixels. Artifacts can occur for instance. Things like moire, aliasing, and false color. Many of the cameras we have that are out now do a lot under the hood to make a still image or a motion picture image come to life. I shoot with the 5DsR and a7RII for instance and I know their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to stills and motion. Same could be said for the GH4 and the Samsung NX1. All very cool technology and I'd burn them into a pile of rubble if I couldn't get some use out of them. However, there's a reason they aren't A camera or even B camera. And one of those reasons starts at the pixel design level which leads into image processing. I do agree that Sony will go 8K at some point however and likely build on the A7Rii technology, however there is much work to be done there and it's likely a bit away from anybody's hands timeline-wise. More work needs to be done with that design before it's on set filming for typical shooting days.

5 microns has turned out to be pretty decent pixel size for Dragon and it works well, I'm just saying build from there. Go a bit smaller (higher resolution, sensor advancement), cool. Keep it the same (same resolution + sensor advancement), cool too. There's so much that hasn't been explored yet from a sensor design perspective that will be coming down the pipe into our hands in the future. The time just hasn't come yet.

As for the low light sensitivity, that's certainly a hot feature that many are after and I truly understand the desire for it. For me and others it's not exactly an issue right now, especially with our OLPF options. Will I be made if we have cleaner high ISO performance? No, I'll welcome it. But Dragon hasn't limited me in anyway when it comes to exposing and lighting. I see some of the tremendously cool tech of some of these cameras shooting at ISO 25600 and beyond can do, but there's just too much noise reduction and chromatic blurring going on. And depending on what NR settings you even have access to it can also really damage your tonal/luminance detail as well. Which sort of defeats shooting at 2K or 4K or whatever anyways. There's a few cameras right now on the market that give you control over the NR settings and when they are turned "off" they are certainly not off at all. That's cool. I understand what the end goal is for the consumer and what can help sell those camera models.

Onto glass. Well, in terms of the purest format size, yes RED Weapon 8K Dragon is indeed larger than FF35 and even larger than the maximum negative of VistaVision. That however does not mean that the glass will not cover actually. In fact I'm betting that coverage is going to be much more favorable than many think on much of the popular FF35 glass out there. As for it being too small for Medium Format glass, well yes again. However, by being in the central sweet spot of these Medium Format lenses we won't have as much vignetting wide open and you'll have impressive corner and edge performance, which is important for sure. Already had a chat with somebody shooting an IMAX project about all of that. This is all talking 8K FF btw. I'm damn near 100% positive that 8K HD will happily be covered by nearly all current FF35 glass.

I've made most of my "planned" glass investments and have ongoing glass projects over at Duclos Lenses in preparation for 8K Weapon that should be done prior to it's release. I'm pretty ready for what's on the horizon. The 8K workflow doesn't scare me off either because it's the same workflow as current REDCODE RAW, just scaled up to 8K.

Long and the short of it this 40.96x21.60mm 8K Dragon sensor to me is actually more of a smart move than anything close to a bad move. VistaVision itself has held a place in my heart for a long, long time. Now that we are getting close to having a similar format with the resolution to deliver very immersive images I'm salivating at the creative potential on how to use the format and resolution.
 
so it seems to me that the hasselbads will still be a nice thing for 8k, especially is cieco7 makes that hassy positive lock mount!
 
Christopher*Seguine said:
Its the opposite, Dragon has more pixels per mm so you need a sharper lens than you would on say the Alexa, if you care about sharpness.
Alexa has much larger pixels so you can get away with weaker optics.

Your history channel spot looks good, but I couldn't tell you if the lenses were sharp from a vimeo clip. For 1080 deliverable you can get away with a lot. I'm pretty sure you would see the difference between the lenses with a 4k deliverable.

and the thread was about 8k. It you like the look of vintage glass or character glass thats cool, but what is the point of upgrading to 8k if your optics only maybe resolve 4k? Going from 6k Dragon to 8k Weapon is expensive, if your not going to use glass that resolves any better on a 8k sensor than a 6k sensor I don't see the point.

I was excited about the extra resolution, but the sensor size makes it a problem, so I'm debating if we'll go ahead with our upgrades.

Glass designed for 65/medium format is designed for a a much bigger sensor so its not going to be as sharp, and its slower. There are also very few workable zooms.
Some glass designed for FF35 may just cover weapon's 8k size, but your using the extreme edges of the glass which are not going to be very sharp and will be heavily vignetted - so you'll need to stop down = slower. Neither choice is very good. Maybe someone will make a type of speed booster to go from MF glass to 8k weapon sensor size. If not, if I were looking for MF glass for weapon 8k I would look for more modern glass that was designed for digital back, as the sensor size is much closer to the weapon 8k sensor size than lenses made for 6x6 film - so the lenses would be sharper.

Shooting with the MF FE 50 on weapon 8k vs Dragon 6k and and Otus 55 for a 4k dci deliverable - I'm pretty sure the Dragon/Otus would be sharper by a significant amount.
Weapon 8k with a modern MF lens like a Leica S or even Pentax D
or
Weapon 8k with an Otus cropped to say 7.5k
is either going to be significantly sharper then Dragon 6k for a 4k dci deliverable?
Thats the $30k question.
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Christopher, I shot these a couple of years ago for History Channel...on a HASSELBLAD 150 2.8...wide open...on a Scarlet MX @ 3K (Tilt/Shifted)

Don't you think these would look MILES BETTER 8k on Vista Vision Weapon? That's over 250% more resolution shooting through THE SAME LENS.


8239389226_653e39ddf7_c.jpg


8239388668_ca0cfa80a8_c.jpg


8239387436_f01d52e5b1_c.jpg



I personally think RED's growth in resolution (6K, 8K) is breathing new life into vintage glass. The camera itself is getting sharper.

And regarding RED vs ALEXA for sharpness, all I know is the same lens looks SHARPER on Dragon. Just look at this test comparing Dragon to Amira. The 35mm CP2 renders noticeably sharper on Dragon than Amira:

 
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Nick Morrison said:
Christopher, I shot these a couple of years ago for History Channel...on a HASSELBLAD 150 2.8...wide open...on a Scarlet MX @ 3K (Tilt/Shifted)
Don't you think these would look MILES BETTER 8k on Vista Vision Weapon? That's over 250% more resolution shooting through THE SAME LENS.
I personally think RED's growth in resolution (6K, 8K) is breathing new life into vintage glass. The camera itself is getting sharper.
And regarding RED vs ALEXA for sharpness, all I know is the same lens looks SHARPER on Dragon. Just look at this test comparing Dragon to Amira. The 35mm CP2 renders noticeably sharper on Dragon than Amira:
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The Hasselblad shots as 800pix jpgs look soft, post some 6k R3ds or cr2s to judge,

Of course the CP2 looks better on dragon in that test, 6k raw scaled to vimeo hd vs Alexa HD prores to vimeo HD, the dragon gains sharpness by down-converting.
A CP2 is designed for FF35, the hasselblad FE lenses are designed for 6x6 film, nearly double the image circle of weapon 8k, its not the same comparison.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
Would love to mount the MF Leica-S glass on Weapon 8K. Is that impossible? Possible but stupid expensive?
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If you wanted maximal quality, that's what you would use. The thing is that the Otus lenses are about on par with the Leica S lenses, give or take. Otus is about the same cost but easier to adapt, given that the F mount versions have an aperture ring.

Nikon SLR lenses are great for VistaVision if they're reduced to S35, especially if they're stopped down a bit, but I would not use them for serious projects, based on what I have seen from them. I do like the 200/2, however. It's sharper than the 135/2, which is interesting.

I made a bet on another site that so far has not been answered: the Leica T, a 16Mpx camera, with its native 35/1.4 (just released) will give sharper images than any FF Nikon body with the 58/1.4 G, both wide-open. Nobody has yet responded. $5 to your favourite charity if I lose.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
Would love to mount the MF Leica-S glass on Weapon 8K. Is that impossible? Possible but stupid expensive?

Cheers - #19
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It's possible, theoretically, via rehousing, adapter or dedicated mount.

The flange focal distance of the Leica-S lenses is 53mm, so there's room for a Leica-S to Canon-EF adapter for example, but probably not a PL (52mm FFD) adapter.

Seems to be mostly the S lenses automatic/electronic aperture complicating things though.

Unless the lenses are re-housed with manual aperture controls, which would be quite a job, you'd have to use a smart mount or adapter to adjust the aperture in-camera. Technically, you might be able to take the lens off a dumb mount or adapter, put it on a Leica-S camera to adjust the aperture, then remount it to your camera, but that obviously wouldn't be acceptable to a lot of end-users. Likewise with leaving the aperture wide open and using ND's or shutter speed for exposure adjustments.

I think the easiest solution would be to use an adapter. Based on other ones I've seen, there are people out there who could make a Leica-S one, even with a conversion chip. Would probably cost about $700-$900.

But realistically, when you factor in the relatively low demand for such a thing, and the expense of the lenses themselves, it's easy to see why it might never happen.
 
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Thanks for the notes. In my perfect world RED would make a mount for the Leica-S lenses that included full control of all the "drive by wire" functions via menu, assigned keys, Fool Control and various external controllers.

I wonder how many pre-orders with deposits it would take to get RED (or anyone else) to jump in?

Leica already has the tooling and protocols developed for their own gear - perhaps RED could certify Leica as a 3rd party and let them make the mounts...

Cheers - #19
 
How about a much simpler solution:
Instead of going through this nonsense of endless (lens) conversions RED could make the 8KWeapon a true flex format camera that would allow the operator very easily adjust the capture area of the sensor if the lens was vignetting.
Most likely all but the widest lenses will cover the full frame 8K.
For the extreme wides that don't just quickly bring in the frame lines , frame and shoot away. Simple, cheap and elegant solution.
Better yet: Red add to their supported lens data base the vignetting info and camera automatically adjusts the capture area to compensate. Most operators wouldn't even have clue that happened ;-)
 
Maybe I'm missing something Jacek, but one can window the sensor in fairly small increments already. If your point is that one could easily "work around" minor vignetting via windowing or post cropping then, yes, you can. For most narrative work, I doubt it would be a real problem, especially if you were accounting for that in choosing focal lengths.

For certain projects, I am interested in getting some glass in front of the 8K sensor that would give that "window" look. Clean and sharp to the corners, without even a hint of vignetting or falloff, which led me to the Leica-S MF lenses. If anyone has suggestions for alternative lensing for no compromise coverage of a 21x41 sensor, please take me to school.

Cheers - #19
 
You're on the right page Blair. When it comes to FF35 designed lenses it's interesting as many, even the wides, cover. I will need to do further testing, but on certain FF35 motion picture lenses that I experienced small coverage issues with I wonder if the difference between PL and EF makes a difference even.

As for the type of coverage, with the Weapon 8K at FF you will be living in the sweet spot of the lens and have generous coverage with somewhat minimal (if any) vignetting.

With some FF35 designed glass you will experience heavier vignetting and depending on the lens design possibly some distortion to the bokeh and perhaps enhanced coma for instance. Just depends on the design of the optics.

Leica-S might one day happen on Weapon 8K, but for the time being it's not an easy endeavor.

I picked up my full set of Mamiyas because they suited my needs. The Hassy glass is also a good solution. But I also have a slew of FF35 glass that will be on there probably even more of the time mostly due the speed advantages, or in the case of the Otus primes, optical advantages.
 
Blair S. Paulsen said:
Thanks for the notes. In my perfect world RED would make a mount for the Leica-S lenses that included full control of all the "drive by wire" functions via menu, assigned keys, Fool Control and various external controllers.

I wonder how many pre-orders with deposits it would take to get RED (or anyone else) to jump in?

Leica already has the tooling and protocols developed for their own gear - perhaps RED could certify Leica as a 3rd party and let them make the mounts...

Cheers - #19
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If you're talking about new mounts for the 8K Weapons, RED have yet to reveal what they've got planned for that, so who knows.

In terms of 'dumb' mounts, the XPL52 mount that Hawk made for their new Anamorphic and Vantage One T1 lenses could be sign of things to come - http://www.vantagefilm.com/en/news/...s-meet-the-red-weapon-8k-in-los-angeles-10510

But if you're looking at new smart mounts for the 8K Weapons, a Leica-S one would make some sense, because, as you say, it could make use of the Leica-S lenses auto-focus and auto-aperture, and via adapters, also enable the auto-focus and auto-aperture features of the Contax 645 and Hassleblad HC & HCD lenses. Leica already make adapters for those other lenses to be used on their S system cameras - http://leicastoremiami.com/products/leica-s-adapter-c-for-contax-lenses http://leicastoremiami.com/products/leica-s-adapter-h-for-hasselblad-hc-and-hcd-lenses

Not sure though if RED would need permission or have to pay to make a Leica-S mount, or how receptive Leica would be to that if it is required.

Funny that Jacek responds to the question of adapting lenses to RED, as his lens mounts and adapters are a perfect example of the kind of high quality products that can be made, if there's enough interest - http://optitek.org/products/canon-prolock-i-for-arri-amira-alexa-mini-cameras/

Interesting idea too, to make the RED camera's capable of auto-cropping to avoid vignetting. I can also imagine profiling specific lens/aperture combinations by pointing them at a flat neutrally coloured target and having the camera correct for darkening and discoloration around the edges of the frame. Something for the future perhaps.
 
Is the Hasselblad 40mm f4 CFE shutterless and good to use with Reds/PL?
 
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