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Will Leica ever come out with anamorphic lenses?

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Matthew Glover

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I love the look of the summilux's. Can we expect to see some anamorphics with the same look and feel in the future? Has anyone heard anything from Leica?
 
They are investigating a few different directions at the moment. If they do go green with it, it's minimum 2 years away.

We will see at least one unannounced anamorphic series sometime next year. Probably available for a late 2015 release.
 
Phil Holland said:
They are investigating a few different directions at the moment. If they do go green with it, it's minimum 2 years away.

We will see at least one unannounced anamorphic series sometime next year. Probably available for a late 2015 release.
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I'm hoping Ian Neil is designing them lol. The look I get from the summilux's are awesome. I want a anamorphic lense comparable to some panavisions.
 
Is it not all smoke and screens when it comes to lenses? Are we buying a brand name? Like NIKE or COCACOLA
 
aree shonteff said:
Is it not all smoke and screens when it comes to lenses? Are we buying a brand name? Like NIKE or COCACOLA
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In some cases yes. However, a good deal of companies announce their collaborative or branding efforts and you can indeed see that on the lens itself. Arri, Zeiss, and Fujinon comes to mind. There's certainly lenses on the market that are simply re-branded or come from an alternate source. My Schneider Cine-Xenar III primes are a good example and is actually easily found information as they are made by Isco in reality, though Schneider now owns them. Oddly, I landed on Isco more than once in my glass journey.

However, the real deep and dark madness stems from chasing down specific lens engineers.

All lenses are not the same. Mechanical and optical designs, elements, rare glass, coatings. It's a very deep and dark madness.

In my particular case knowing as much about a lens or a set of lenses is beneficial to both truly understanding what you are getting and knowing exactly what you can do with them.
 
Thanks Phil it just seems madness as to what lenses cost you could buy a small property for a decent set of lenses 1 set of primes but maybe I don't know what goes on behind closed doors
 
Zeiss is as much a chemical company as it is a glass one. The real secret of lensmaking these days is the coatings and the design. There is only so far you can go with the glass itself. That;s the limit of physics really. So a lot of the manufacturing is farmed out. Thus in many ways it is a lot more like Nike than it used to be.
 
I wish someone could do a continuous scientific comparison of all major lenses but including also Nikon (old and new) and Canon EF lenses.

I do not have access to Arri Master Primes but I really like to see an analytical comparison with the Nikon AI-s and Canon EF's. There's no question that are better and of course are made for movies, not pics but $45,000.00 for an anamorphic lens from Arri?

For me as I film only in 3D it translates to $90,000.00 per lens set. So for a set of 5 is half a million, does it worth it? I don't think it'll tell a better story at least to 99.9% of the people who don't know the difference.
 
Ken Wilson said:
I wish someone could do a continuous scientific comparison of all major lenses but including also Nikon (old and new) and Canon EF lenses.

I do not have access to Arri Master Primes but I really like to see an analytical comparison with the Nikon AI-s and Canon EF's. There's no question that are better and of course are made for movies, not pics but $45,000.00 for an anamorphic lens from Arri?

For me as I film only in 3D it translates to $90,000.00 per lens set. So for a set of 5 is half a million, does it worth it? I don't think it'll tell a better story at least to 99.9% of the people who don't know the difference.
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There's a bit of a side by side in the SALT III Test here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?94289-SALT-III-High-Speed-Lens-Shootout-quot-WFO-quot-Results

I've got about 15 years of using Canon EF glass professionally and have built rigs and seen many copies of lenses over that time. I've got about 60% of that time shooting on Ultras and Masters here and there. Seen quite a few sets. Very different beasts overall when compared to each other.

If we're talking still lenses versus motion picture glass the mechanics of the lens often are the biggest culprit for image quality concerns. Especially in regards to image shift, which really sucks on a 40 foot screen.

In many ways the best lenses are the ones that you can afford and create with. Pretty much all modern glass is "decent". However, depending on how discerning you are in regards to total image quality and lens performance you may need to pick and choose with certain battles. That's just how it is.

It could be argued that the gains received by the top tier lenses doesn't exactly scale well with the cost from a consumer perspective. However, what can't be argued is good lenses performing really well and the expense for the manufacturers to get to that level. And if that's what you're after there really isn't another choice. There are interesting things you can do in post to "match" the look of other lenses or remove various aberrations, which makes this even more interesting. However, for out of the can day to day shooting you want workhorses that perform well and can be used in variety of circumstances while creating good results.
 
I was under the impression that the lens coatings were pretty much all the same today. Basically the older coatings were softer, the newer ones are more durable. This is what I was told in an optics lab where they were applying coatings to optical elements, and would seem to be born out by my experience with having elements recoated when they were scratched, and having no color shift or noticeable change at all. I could see where the high end lenses were all getting the same coatings as they are the most expensive and there is a cheaper process that is don to cheaper lenses, but I doubt it's that much of a trade secret as to how to coat optics. Would be curious to hear what any of the lens guys have to say about this.

Nick
 
Nick Gardner said:
I was under the impression that the lens coatings were pretty much all the same today. Basically the older coatings were softer, the newer ones are more durable. This is what I was told in an optics lab where they were applying coatings to optical elements, and would seem to be born out by my experience with having elements recoated when they were scratched, and having no color shift or noticeable change at all. I could see where the high end lenses were all getting the same coatings as they are the most expensive and there is a cheaper process that is don to cheaper lenses, but I doubt it's that much of a trade secret as to how to coat optics. Would be curious to hear what any of the lens guys have to say about this.
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That's absolutely incorrect. Formulas, materials, how many layers, and coating application are all rather nuanced variables. Usually what we are getting on modern cinema lenses are stacked or multilayered coatings above the base element substrate.

While there's certain standard practices for things like the various antireflection coatings used on many commercially mass produced glass, there's much more to it when it comes to specialty optics both for scientific and photographic purposes.

From what I understand and based on what I can see, some of the more impressive advancements in coatings happened just in the last few years really.
 
Nick Gardner said:
I was under the impression that the lens coatings were pretty much all the same today. Basically the older coatings were softer, the newer ones are more durable. This is what I was told in an optics lab where they were applying coatings to optical elements, and would seem to be born out by my experience with having elements recoated when they were scratched, and having no color shift or noticeable change at all. I could see where the high end lenses were all getting the same coatings as they are the most expensive and there is a cheaper process that is don to cheaper lenses, but I doubt it's that much of a trade secret as to how to coat optics. Would be curious to hear what any of the lens guys have to say about this.

Nick
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Don't know much about camera lenses but my dad was an optician and from running around in his shop as a kid I know that for lenses in normal eye glasses every brand has at least like 50 different coatings and about the same amount of different materials to choose from and with Carl Zeiss, Hoya and all the others you can understand that when making a camera lens there is quite a few elements involved, all can be made / chosen to work differently and all coatings has their + and minuses. Of course these coatings got better and better over time but there is still a lot of different ways to make a lens and is a lot about patents. Something that Jim Jannard is living proof of as we all know he made quite a bit of money when he sold of Oakley and the lens patents that went with it.
 
I'm not suggesting that it's a one step process, just that it's pretty standard. The main reason as far as I know to coat optics is to reduce light loss at the glass air interface and to reduce reflections. Obviously there are multiple layers, and they are pretty high tech, I just don't see coatings as having a major impact on how lenses look from on to another. Again speaking about modern coatings. It's all rather speculative since nobody is going to have a Canon lens with ziess's coatings and vice versa, so it's sort of impossible to compare.

Nick
 
Nick Gardner said:
I'm not suggesting that it's a one step process, just that it's pretty standard. The main reason as far as I know to coat optics is to reduce light loss at the glass air interface and to reduce reflections. Obviously there are multiple layers, and they are pretty high tech, I just don't see coatings as having a major impact on how lenses look from on to another. Again speaking about modern coatings. It's all rather speculative since nobody is going to have a Canon lens with ziess's coatings and vice versa, so it's sort of impossible to compare.

Nick
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It's not standard. it's more like champagne. Not just take the best grape and make bubble wine. The trick is to have a perfect mixture of many different kind of grapes that all bring in their qualites and in combination with each other makes it great. You do not only have coatings in lenses. They arealso built differently an the materials in the glass used have different indexes. Not even sure its all glas lenses in modern lenses as composite materials are actually faster and has less color tints but scrats more easy and build up more statics... but then you have the anti static coatings and the hardening coatings etc etc. So to make a perfect lens you make a huge compromise. Then when to make a set of lenses that need to match each other etc then things does not get less complex to say the least.
 
Phil Holland said:
There's a bit of a side by side in the SALT III Test here: http://www.reduser.net/forum/showth...igh-Speed-Lens-Shootout-quot-WFO-quot-Results

I've got about 15 years of using Canon EF glass professionally and have built rigs and seen many copies of lenses over that time. I've got about 60% of that time shooting on Ultras and Masters here and there. Seen quite a few sets. Very different beasts overall when compared to each other.

If we're talking still lenses versus motion picture glass the mechanics of the lens often are the biggest culprit for image quality concerns. Especially in regards to image shift, which really sucks on a 40 foot screen.

In many ways the best lenses are the ones that you can afford and create with. Pretty much all modern glass is "decent". However, depending on how discerning you are in regards to total image quality and lens performance you may need to pick and choose with certain battles. That's just how it is.

It could be argued that the gains received by the top tier lenses doesn't exactly scale well with the cost from a consumer perspective. However, what can't be argued is good lenses performing really well and the expense for the manufacturers to get to that level. And if that's what you're after there really isn't another choice. There are interesting things you can do in post to "match" the look of other lenses or remove various aberrations, which makes this even more interesting. However, for out of the can day to day shooting you want workhorses that perform well and can be used in variety of circumstances while creating good results.
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Phil, thank you so much for the fantastic information/reply.

I'm working on project to get funds for the Leica Summilux "C" primes x 2 so looks like close to 300k (at least) the problem is what to do until then.

How close in a ball park % to "match" the Leica Summilux "C" primes can someone come with post from a good glass of Canon EF or Nikon AIS?

Do you or anyone knows of any movies that were big screen hits that were done with EF or Nikon or close to that lenses? I really wish I could see lots of footage we shot in Greece and Florida in a 40' or bigger in 3D. Any suggestions? Some footage samples in 4k webm here: red.3dmovies.com
 
David Mullen ASC said:
What is the old saying about lenses, that the last 10% of quality accounts for 90% of the costs? Plus high-end cine optics don't benefit from the economies of scale.
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Thank you for your reply David,

Have you seen any great movies done with any of these lenses?

the best of Nikons AI-S, The best of Canon EF's or any lenses of that level?

I've seen a lot of movies with a ton of all kinds of imperfect CA, blur etc but do not know the specifics.

As an accomplished ASC Cinematographer will you use a Nikon Noct or a Canon 50mm F:1.0 without hesitation and without fear of compromising the quality?

Or a Sigma 300-800mm F:5.6?
 
Ken Wilson said:
Do you or anyone knows of any movies that were big screen hits that were done with EF or Nikon or close to that lenses?
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I've shot with Nikon F, Canon EF, and Leica R that's all made it to the big screen with various cameras. The VistaVision material I've shot is all Nikon or Leica. When shooting with lesser cameras or digital cinema cameras to match themselves or matching them to S35 film required signficant post work to remove things like color aliasing, compression artifacts, and adding things like sampled film grain.


David Mullen ASC said:
Why would I have to? Why would I force my focus pullers to use still lenses when I can easily use cine lenses?
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What this guy says :) The short focus throw, mechanics, and potential for chaos involving image shift are things to be concerned with. Pulling focus on a f/1.2 still lens is a somewhat heroic adventure where a fraction of a turn can put you way out of focus.

That said, you can certain shoot with them. Older lenses like the Leica R, Nikon F, and Canon FD are typically slightly better than the electronic lenses we have today. For instance, I just converted a Canon FL 55mm f/1.2 that doesn't exhibit image shift. Mostly did it for the classic look that the lens yields. A good chunk of Leica Rs are similar.


In terms of matching lenses in post, while you can eliminate or add things like aberration the general "draw" of the lens is the real tricky thing to achieve. That more or less has driven me insane over the years! Other things too look out for: color rendering, tonal rendering, iris shape/OOF bokeh, breathing, flare, etc... It goes on and on. If you have the eye for it or can find somebody who's good at it many things are possible. It also largely depends on how serious you are about totally matching the optics. Most tend to stop at distortion and aberration elimination. That gets you a lot of the way there in terms of the look.
 
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