Would you prefer Metric or Imperial markings ?

[Irri]

I wouldn't say "unanimous"
It's about 3:1 in favor of metric in a poll representing a small fraction of camera owners, who would all (most likely) have chosen the third option of being able to choose.

 

[Charles Angus]

I'd certainly agree with you about SI units for calculations.

Having pulled focus in both metres and feet for about the same amount of time I still favor feet and inches. A foot is somehow a more usable size. A foot is a more accurate approximation than a metre, an inch is more accurate than a decimetre and a centimetre is too hard to judge.

As a Canadian I am "fluent" in both systems. Not everyone here is; many people older than me only understand Imperial, and many people younger than me only understand Metric.

I'm 6'2" and a foot is the size of my foot, which is pretty sweet.

A yard very close to my comfortable stride, (but then so is a metre, but a bit farther off).

An inch is the size of the last joint of my thumb.

Does that matter? For me it does, for differently sized people, I guess not.

At the end of the day, everyone I know pulls in Imperial. Why? Because that's what they want to do. Go figure. People are set in their ways, and alienating people is silly.

 

[Zakaree Sandberg]

Cooke lenses are British! Please consult the following map before forcing the imperial system upon the rest of the world. :angry03:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Metric_system.png

since when did Alaska become a country?

 

[Alexis Vanier]

It's quite interesting. Living in Canada I was taught the metric system in school, but in no business have I seen it used. It's all Imperial except for volumes (ml/oz) and great distances (km/miles) (mostly car related stuff actually). Cooking is done in Fahrenheit, but the weather in Celsius. Engineering, carpenting, focus pulling, and every day life is all imperial. I'd go to school be thought about centimeters and my father would pick me up from school and ask me to open the car window by an inch.

Has anyone ever tried going to Home Depot and ask for a 5,06cm x 10,16cm (2x4)?

In the end it's really about what you feel the most comfortable with.

For me it's feet and inches. I think centimeters (aprox. 1/3") are too small a unit when pulling focus. Nevertheless, I have my weird units. I picture someone I know laying on the ground as my 6 feet reference and "stack" him.

But I also work with people from France and Switzerland and when they tell me about a 60m mag (200 ft), I can't help but to go : "Whua?".

Lenses really need to be available in both scales. Interchangeable would be nice.

 

[Axel Mertes]

As being from germany: Metric, no question.

Why not have both?
All my Canons have both... Its not THAT hard to calculate from one to the other (well, don't hire that ex-NASA guy that slammed that one robot in the dust years ago by mixing it all up 3-2-bang-ouch).


Axel

 

[Adrian T.]

Final word by RED:

I can answer this issue right now for you, we will unfortunately not be selling any lenses with metric scales.

What a major bummer!

Someone with contacts to a sticker printing company?

 

[Axel Mertes]

I guess this is something I start to work on this week. No metrics at all is not acceptable.

The precision of a sticker is not the big issue, as the precision is anyway never perfect, but through viewing through the lense. But its important as a close reference, after all.

Making the sticker should not be the big problem.

My question is just: Why has RED decided to not deliver metric scaling? Convince the rest of the world that the better measurment system is indeed the worse?

Can it be a patent issue? I can't really believe this idea, but what else would prevent this (except having tons of lenses ready to go, ah, yep...).

It is as least something we wonder about, since it has been discussed long time ago, and I think I remember Jim to note they will have both.

Anyway, the sticker solution sounds like a possible way down the road. Not perfect, but acceptable (what else can we?)

Axel

 

[Eirik Tyrihjel]

I will definetly have to make stickers, the benefit is that my markings will be costum made to my lenses, and hence more precise. I know just the place (in Norway) that prints on anything adhesive - I will make sure they print my stickers on the thoughest material they have. (On mine I can also put in imperial, in a littles smaller size, should anyone ever want them)

 

[Brent J. Craig]

The precision of a sticker is not the big issue, as the precision is anyway never perfect, but through viewing through the lense. But its important as a close reference, after all.

Every motion picture lens I prep for a job must have all the distance markings line up exactly with the witness marks on the lens or they are rejected. Proper cine lenses (Cooke and Zeiss) are extremely precise. If the difference between the distance mark and the witness mark is off by even the width of the witness mark I would ask the lens tech to repair the lens. Shooting 35mm film or 4K is pretty unforgiving.

This announcement makes me wonder if Red has realized that you can't compete with real cine glass and is slowly moving away from supplying lenses.

 

[Adrian T.]

I guess this is something I start to work on this week. No metrics at all is not acceptable.

The precision of a sticker is not the big issue, as the precision is anyway never perfect, but through viewing through the lense. But its important as a close reference, after all.

Making the sticker should not be the big problem.

My question is just: Why has RED decided to not deliver metric scaling? Convince the rest of the world that the better measurment system is indeed the worse?

Can it be a patent issue? I can't really believe this idea, but what else would prevent this (except having tons of lenses ready to go, ah, yep...).

It is as least something we wonder about, since it has been discussed long time ago, and I think I remember Jim to note they will have both.

Anyway, the sticker solution sounds like a possible way down the road. Not perfect, but acceptable (what else can we?)

Axel

And we could even add witness marks. So we'd even have the better solution than the "imperialists" (sorry about using this word here :wink.