Vantage One T1 Spherical Primes

[Alexandros Tsoupras]

Any videos from this lenses? Is it full frame, s35 or what? How many blades do they have? Do they sell them or is it only for rental?

 

[Phil Holland]

Any videos from this lenses? Is it full frame, s35 or what? How many blades do they have? Do they sell them or is it only for rental?

There are two houses that have them here in Los Angeles. Camtec and Keslow Camera. They are very expensive if you can purchase them, but I don't know the specifics behind what it would take.

There are currently 5 lenses available: 25mm, 40mm, 65mm, and 90mm. The most recent addition is the 17.5mm T1:

I believe all of the lenses have and will use a 16 blade iris:

I need to spend more time on Dragon with them, but these are designed for S35 and do cover Dragon 6K. Though I can't say anything for sure about the 17.5mm. It does at least cover up to 5.5K on Dragon though.

 

[Hugues Dagallier]

Phil, do you consider the T1 optically better wide open than the noctilux, the SLR magic 50 t0. 95, or the mitakon 50 ?
How would you rate the bokeh of the T1 ?

 

[Alexandros Tsoupras]

Thanks for the information once again Phil. I will wait to see images from this lenses.

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

Phil, do you consider the T1 optically better wide open than the noctilux, the SLR magic 50 t0. 95, or the mitakon 50 ?
How would you rate the bokeh of the T1 ?

apples and oranges?

 

[Hugues Dagallier]

apples and oranges?

What about apples and apples ? Have you never compared a T1.5 cinema prime with a f1.4 still lens ? If you have not, never go to the lenses test section of this forum...You would think that people compares banana with apple with lean meat.

 

[Phil Holland]

Phil, do you consider the T1 optically better wide open than the noctilux, the SLR magic 50 t0. 95, or the mitakon 50 ?
How would you rate the bokeh of the T1 ?

They are overall fairly different beasts.

In terms of fast still lenses the best 50mm that's within financial reach is the 50mm T0.95 SLR Magic Prime. The Mitakon 50mm doesn't fit on Red cameras, but I've tested "elsewhere". It's a notch lower than the SLR Magic IMO in terms of a pretty image. The SLR Magic and Leica Noctilux are where the war is at, but I'd say the SLR Magic is actually a hair better. There's also the Voigtlander Noct 50mm f/1.1, but same deal, the SLR Magic is just a bit "better" to me.

I've been around the Vantage Ones 3 times now. Two tests, one trade show. I spent a handsome amount of time racking focus with the 17.5mm wide open. I've never seen a T1 17mm-ish wide before so this was more of an educational experience. There's a decent amount of bloom/haliation that develops out of higher contrast situations. They are sharp, but at T1 you're dealing with a really small in focus area and I need to do much harder tests to put them up against anything. Stopped down to T1.4 and T2 they pretty much become crispy ninjas and that's interesting. Their mechanics and housing in general feels like it was built for war, though they are far from the prettiest lenses out there on the outside.

I'll see if I can shoot with these coming up. They are pretty damn cool and unique. But we're literally talking about lenses in the range of $35-45K each.

 

[Hugues Dagallier]

They are overall fairly different beasts.

In terms of fast still lenses the best 50mm that's within financial reach is the 50mm T0.95 SLR Magic Prime. The Mitakon 50mm doesn't fit on Red cameras, but I've tested "elsewhere". It's a notch lower than the SLR Magic IMO in terms of a pretty image. The SLR Magic and Leica Noctilux are where the war is at, but I'd say the SLR Magic is actually a hair better. There's also the Voigtlander Noct 50mm f/1.1, but same deal, the SLR Magic is just a bit "better" to me.

I've been around the Vantage Ones 3 times now. Two tests, one trade show. I spent a handsome amount of time racking focus with the 17.5mm wide open. I've never seen a T1 17mm-ish wide before so this was more of an educational experience. There's a decent amount of bloom/haliation that develops out of higher contrast situations. They are sharp, but at T1 you're dealing with a really small in focus area and I need to do much harder tests to put them up against anything. Stopped down to T1.4 and T2 they pretty much become crispy ninjas and that's interesting. Their mechanics and housing in general feels like it was built for war, though they are far from the prettiest lenses out there on the outside.

I'll see if I can shoot with these coming up. They are pretty damn cool and unique. But we're literally talking about lenses in the range of $35-45K each.

Thank you Phil.
Sharpness is nice, but the pretiness of the bokeh is IMO very important with these specialty lenses. IMO, you use them to shoot at T1, in order to get an unique look. If the out of focus area doesn't have a nice creamy look, it would be a deal breaker for me...
If I want ultra sharp, I buy Lux-C's or MPs ;-). Now I didn't imagine that at T1.4 the Vantage lenses were comparable to the ARRI and the Leica ones...

 

[Phil Holland]

Thank you Phil.
Sharpness is nice, but the pretiness of the bokeh is IMO very important with these specialty lenses. IMO, you use them to shoot at T1, in order to get an unique look. If the out of focus area doesn't have a nice creamy look, it would be a deal breaker for me...
If I want ultra sharp, I buy Lux-C's or MPs ;-). Now I didn't imagine that at T1.4 the Vantage lenses were comparable to the ARRI and the Leica ones...

These are pretty damn sharp stopped down to 1.3/1.4/2. They are different than both MPs and Lux-Cs. They certainly can be used more than just at wide open.

At T1 the bokeh is pleasing for sure. As is the field/plane separation. Beyond that I need to test further.

 

[Hugues Dagallier]

These are pretty damn sharp stopped down to 1.3/1.4/2. They are different than both MPs and Lux-Cs. They certainly can be used more than just at wide open.

At T1 the bokeh is pleasing for sure. As is the field/plane separation. Beyond that I need to test further.

Ok.
Thank you, Phil.

 

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

apples and oranges?

Apples and anthrax!

Mike

 

[Mike 'Fireman' Ross]

They are overall fairly different beasts.

In terms of fast still lenses the best 50mm that's within financial reach is the 50mm T0.95 SLR Magic Prime. The Mitakon 50mm doesn't fit on Red cameras, but I've tested "elsewhere". It's a notch lower than the SLR Magic IMO in terms of a pretty image.

Interesting. I recall recently seeing test images that pointed to precisely the opposite conclusion; the Mitakon fared much better. The SLR Magic suffered in particular from a considerable fall-off in sharpness towards the edges, which the Mitakon did not.

Then again the Mitakon is a full-frame lens, initially marketed towards the likes of the Sony A7S, and I'm sure someone will come up with some way of mounting one on a RED. I have the Sony, and as soon as I can lay hands on one, I'll have a Mitakon. Watch this space; I have been called 'The court jester of darkness' (c.f. The Prince of darkness) and not for no reason

Of course 'optically better' does not always equal 'pretty'...

Mike

 

[Hugues Dagallier]

I am very curious to know if there are a lot of spherical aberrations wide open, as suggested in the first page.

Unfortunately, the bokeh of the noctilux f1.0 (1976) doesn't seem very pretty, and in this article : http://www.fdtimes.com/2012/11/25/vantage-one-t1-spherical-primes/, the author compared the Vantage bokeh to the Leica one.

An ugly bokeh would be a deal breaker for me.

 

[Hugues Dagallier]

Phil,

Did you have the ocassion to test these lenses more deeply ?

There seems to be absolutely no review about them on Internet. Weird.

Thank you.

 

[Mike P.]

Then again the Mitakon is a full-frame lens, initially marketed towards the likes of the Sony A7S, and I'm sure someone will come up with some way of mounting one on a RED. I have the Sony, and as soon as I can lay hands on one, I'll have a Mitakon. Watch this space; I have been called 'The court jester of darkness' (c.f. The Prince of darkness) and not for no reason

Of all the cameras currently out there, I think the A7s is the least likely candidate to actually need f0.95/T1.0... It's ISO16,000 looks like other cameras' ISO1600...

 

[Phil Holland]

Phil,

Did you have the ocassion to test these lenses more deeply ?

There seems to be absolutely no review about them on Internet. Weird.

Thank you.

Not that weird. There are only two sets in Los Angeles and they are rare beasts that are rather expensive to own as well if you can convince V1 to sell them to you. So far I've seen the 17.5, 25, 40, 65, and 90mm. The other lengths don't exist yet, but they are coming. They are extremely impressive in my mind. I'm a big fan of shallow depth of field shooting and the light gathering is impressive for sure. I'm being more active about using other lenses for shoots these days and I'll likely shoot on these in the next two months.

 

[Hugues Dagallier]

Not that weird. There are only two sets in Los Angeles and they are rare beasts that are rather expensive to own as well if you can convince V1 to sell them to you. So far I've seen the 17.5, 25, 40, 65, and 90mm. The other lengths don't exist yet, but they are coming. They are extremely impressive in my mind. I'm a big fan of shallow depth of field shooting and the light gathering is impressive for sure. I'm being more active about using other lenses for shoots these days and I'll likely shoot on these in the next two months.

I cannot wait to know your opinion after using them on an actual shoot.
Thank you, Phil.

 

[Timothy Jones]

Another lens that hardly anyone knows about is the canon EF 50mm 1.0 a low light monster that was hand ground by canon up until the mid 90's . Still is the fastest focusing 50 mm that canon has made .
It has no purple fringing, no doughnut shaped out of focus, but does make some odd shaped flares .
Thanks,
Tim
https://www.dropbox.com/s/7lxacw43po9z0yd/008U7419.jpg?dl=0

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[Stephen_G]

interesting bokeh on that one.. I think the wierd flare comes from the aspherical element which is essentially rippled