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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 :)

ZF Lenses Moded by Duclos

Andrew Walker

Andrew Walker

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So here are the set of Zeiss ZF primes that I just got back from Duclos, which they added the geared focus ring, 80mm front and de-clicked the lens. Plus they tested out the lenses and made sure they worked fine. Great place and I would strongly recommend going there to get this work done or any other lens work. Very nice people that work there and they did this mod in 24hrs.

ZF1.jpg


ZF2.jpg


ZF3.jpg


ZF4.jpg
 
ZF5.jpg


Here are some still out of REDAlert from the little test I shot today. The room was very poorly lit but that is the test I wanted to see from these lenses. How they look wide open.

RED_ZF1.jpg

85mm @ f~1.4

RED_ZF2.jpg

50mm @ f~1.4

RED_ZF3.jpg

50mm @ f~2.0 (I just wanted to show how much the CA goes away)
 
Hey Andrew, these look great!

Can you give a little more info on the mod-job they did for you? I take it these are the Zeiss ZF lenses for Nikon? How about a ballpark on cost?

Thanks
 
Hi,

Whats the blue color on the sides of the hat?
 
Jonathan Stevenson said:
Hey Andrew, these look great!

Can you give a little more info on the mod-job they did for you? I take it these are the Zeiss ZF lenses for Nikon? How about a ballpark on cost?

Thanks
Click to expand...

So yes these are Zeiss ZF(Nikon Mount) still lenses. What Duclos did was add the geared focus ring, the 80mm front ring and de-clicked the iris. When they de-click the iris they also add Zeiss lens grease to dampen the movement. The iris movement feels like a cine lens movement. I was originally not going to get the de-clicking done but then I felt the movement of the Zeiss 28mm that already had the cine-mod done to it that I bought from Duclos. It felt so smooth that I then wanted it on the lenses that I was having worked on. Plus they also put my lenses on their projector and checked to make sure they were accurate in the focus marks.

Price per lens for the cine-mod is $250.
 
Stephen Williams said:
Hi,

Whats the blue color on the sides of the hat?
Click to expand...

Its chromatic abbreviation, which goes away as you close the iris down. I wanted to see how bad it got, which is why I wanted such a strong backlight for the shots.
 
Breathing and tracking with the ZF

Breathing and tracking with the ZF

Andrew,

I have used Nikon primes before and found they do not track accurately when you pull focus so there is a subtle movement in the image. Not a problem in stills world but problematic in Cine world. How do you find both the lens breathing and tracking with the Zeiss ZFs?

Are you swapping between the PL and Nikon mount? Is this as painful as I have read and do you need to redo backfocus on the PL mount after a change?

Thanks for your patience and thanks for the pictures

Tom
 
Wow, this is great. I was looking at this very same set of lenses myself. I'm so glad to see that you can get this mod, what a cool deal!

Do you feel like this set of lenses will be appropriate for the Scarlet? I hear that because the sensor area is so big, SLR lenses will have big issues with use on the S35 or the FF35...
 
TomG said:
Andrew,

I have used Nikon primes before and found they do not track accurately when you pull focus so there is a subtle movement in the image. Not a problem in stills world but problematic in Cine world. How do you find both the lens breathing and tracking with the Zeiss ZFs?

Are you swapping between the PL and Nikon mount? Is this as painful as I have read and do you need to redo backfocus on the PL mount after a change?

Thanks for your patience and thanks for the pictures

Tom
Click to expand...

Tom, I just upgraded to these Zeiss lenses from Nikons. My biggest beef about the Nikons was the mechanics of the lenses. The focus throw is super short on the Nikons. The Zeiss lenses focus throw is much longer, the 85mm has a longer range than my RED 18-50mm zoom does. But the wider you get with the Zeiss lenses it seems the focal throw gets shorter. It is still nowhere near like it is on Nikons. Hope that answers your question about tracking. The lenses do breath a little but I can live with it. I'll try and shoot some tests and either post them in this thread or in the footage section.

I do switch between Nikon and PL mounts but I try and stay on the Nikon mount because I have more Nikon lenses that I do PL glass. Backfocus isn't a problem switching between mount. It might be slightly different and if it is you could always put marks on the backfocus adjustment to let you know where to go when swapping. For me the swap takes about 7-10 minutes.
 
The images look great, especially for the price...but they still look noticeably different than a cine lens IMO. I've shot alot with still lenses and they just are flatter in their depiction of images.

(r)yan
 
Jonathan Stevenson said:
Wow, this is great. I was looking at this very same set of lenses myself. I'm so glad to see that you can get this mod, what a cool deal!

Do you feel like this set of lenses will be appropriate for the Scarlet? I hear that because the sensor area is so big, SLR lenses will have big issues with use on the S35 or the FF35...
Click to expand...

I bought these lenses with the FF35 Epic or Scarlet in mind. When I picked up the lenses from Duclos I had a little talk with the owner Paul about sensor coverage and these lenses. He would measure out with his calipers on a piece of IMAX film that had all the other film formats printed on it. He said that these lenses would provide full coverage on the 6K FF35 sensor, based on the specs released by RED. PL lenses will not cover that area.

We also talked about 9K and 28K. I didn't realize how big those formats were until Paul measured them out on the film. 9K is almost IMAX and 28K is like 2 IMAX frames put together.
 
(r)yan said:
The images look great, especially for the price...but they still look noticeably different than a cine lens IMO. I've shot alot with still lenses and they just are flatter in their depiction of images.

(r)yan
Click to expand...

Well that "flatter" look, if your talking about these images that I posted. Might be because I just did some basic adjustments in REDAlert. With a little more time you might be able to make the images stand out. Plus I'm sure the dim lighting didn't help either.
 
Doesn't look like chromatic aberration to me. That usually appears as very fine lines of separated colors at edges.
 
Charles Angus said:
I've heard that that purple ringing seen in one of the f 1.4 shots is not CA, but in fact a sensor overflow. Can anyone confirm or deny this?
Click to expand...

As far as I know it looks like CA to me. I've never heard that it's anything to do with the sensor. The reason for the pattern on the hat is because there are blinds in the window.
 
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