(Page 2 of 2 pages for this article  <  1 2)

Filed under: Cameras •NAB 09 •

NAB 2009 - New PL Mount Lenses

Rebel and IB/E Optics PL mount lenses at Abel Cine.

Abel Cine Tech showed the new Rebel primes, three lenses for €7,990, or about US$10,600, at least until 15 May when the price may go up:

• T1.9 25mm
• T1.9 50mm
• T1.9 95mm

Add a 35mm and a 75mm, and the five lens set will be €13,500 (US$17,900). Lenses are supposed to ship in June.

At around $3000/lens, they’re the most affordable primes I saw at the show, but bear in mind these are prices from the website; prices at the booth were different, and all pricing is subject to change in these uncertain times.

These German lenses are in the “think different” category. They aren’t internal focus; the entire body forward of the mount moves out as the focus is pulled closer. Note how wide the drive gears are; that’s necessary to engage a follow-focus and/or motor drives as the focus changes. The direction the focus ring turns is opposite the usual cine convention, and the total throw is small. The lenses make no pretense of being physically interchangeable without repositioning accessories.

The lenses are highly telecentric—the rays of light exiting the rear element are mostly parallel—which improves edge-to-edge image quality on CMOS sensors (all photosites get mostly perpendicular light, instead of the edges seeing light rays entering on a slant) and reportedly reduce breathing (change in magnification as the focus is changed).

The iris has 18 blades for a smooth and pleasing bokeh.

My gut feel is that these may be based on IB/E Optics industrial machine-vision lenses, though I could easily be wrong. That’s not a slur on their performance, just an observation that they weren’t designed first and foremost with a cine workflow in mind. The short-throw, opposite-direction focus will confound the instincts of any experienced 1st AC, while their differing lengths and the front-to-back motion of the lens front when focusing make fitting conventional matte boxes and filters challenging.

If you’re doing animation or moco work in controlled lighting with servo drives on the rings, of course, none of that matters. And if you’re looking for affordable lenses, especially as an indie working outside the system (and its experienced ACs), the nonstandard configuration of the Rebels   may not matter to you nearly as much as the cost savings they promise.

They’re pretty dense, heavy lenses, but I don’t have actual weights for them.

The Rebel folks say they tested their lenses on the projector in the RED booth at the RedUser party, and that they performed very well optically. The lenses will see some unspecified mechanical reworking prior to release. It’ll be interesting to see how they perform in the real world.

The IB/E Optics T1.8 14mm is a purpose-built cine lens, due out in July, to be followed by a T1.8 10mm, a T1.8 18mm, and a T2 12-28mm zoom. Its linear iris scale, long-throw focus ring traveling in the conventional direction, brightly-filled scales show that IB/E can design a lens that ACs will like. The 14mm at least should be able to work on a film camera, Arri D-21, or optical VF-equipped SI-2K without interfering with the mirror or beamsplitter.

I don’t have a price or a weight for the 14mm, but it felt like it was in the Compact Prime / Ultra Prime range, roughly around 1 kg or 2 pounds. Mitch Gross at Abel tells me that none of the IB/E and Rebel lenses have firm prices yet; “Klaus the lens designer is currently vacationing across America and will arrive in our NY office in a couple weeks, at which point we’ll get some real answers”!

IB/E Optics “RED Null” back-focus setting lens.

IB/E Optics had another surprise, the RED Null lens. It’s simply a fixed-focus, wide-angle element (thus, very shallow depth of focus). Stick it on a RED ONE, aim at a bright light more than 10 meters away (or use a Chrosziel collimator), and adjust the back-focus ring until the image is sharp. The RED Null lens is supposed to get your back focus calibrated to within 5 microns, which should be more than good enough.

Note that since the RED Null sticks way back into the sensor cavity, it’s only suitable for a camera without a mirror shutter: don’t try this on your D-21!

Abel should have them starting in May for around $2000, more or less.

A Century Optics 17-35mm T3 (rebarreled Canon) zoom and an ISCO 95mm f1.8 prime.

Over at the Schneider Optics booth I found this odd couple. Century Optics has long been known for taking good still camera lenses and rebarreling them for cine use, and this 17-35mm T3 zoom is a “prime” example (if you can’t stand the puns, lock up my keyboard). Its focus throw is a mere 110 degrees and the iris ring turns in the reverse direction of what a 1st AC expects; the lens has simply been rebarreled, not completely re-engineered. Even so it’s a very workable lens and the US$15,000 price makes it enticing. This particular one is a customer return from a cancelled shoot; it’s unused, but selling for $12,500; if you’re interested, contact Ryan Avery: ravery at schneideroptics dot com.

The other lens is an ISCO f1.8 95mm prime, an industrial lens that just happens to be available in PL mount. Like the Rebels, it’s not internal focus, and the mechanism is more suited to set-it-and-forget-it machine vision work than cine work. However, ISCO makes anamorphic attachments and projection lenses, and is planning a series of broadcast and 4K cine lenses; you may be seeing more ISCO lenses in the months to come.

I don’t have a price or weight on the HSF 95, but I’m sure the Schneider folks will help you out if you’re interested.

Focus Optics Ruby Series 14-24mm T2.8 (rebarreled Nikon) PL mount zoom.

Focus Optics repairs and rebuilds film and video lenses, and converts Nikkor 200mm and 400mm primes for cine work. Now they’ve taken the Nikkor f2.8 14-24mm FX-format (full-frame) still zoom and rebarreled it as the Ruby series 14-24mm wide short zoom. It suffers from the usual rebarreling issues—short throws, reversed direction on the iris ring—but at US$10,500 the price is very attractive, and the core Nikkor lens is superbly sharp. Besides, it weighs only 3 pounds; this could be a great handheld/Steadicam lens. Place an order now for $2,000 and take delivery in August; Focus Optics is already building up a backlog.

Angenieux Optimo DP T2.8 16-42mm PL mount digital zoom.

Last year Angeneiux demoed the Optimo DP (“Digital Production”) T2.8 30-80mm zoom for RED; this year they have the Optimo DP T2.8 16-42mm to complement it. It’s tiny for a cine zoom, partially due to the short zoom ratio and partially due to the relatively small T2.8 maximum aperture. The fact that’s it’s designed for RED and other mirrorless cameras means that the rear elements can stick out into the sensor cavity; this simplifies the design considerably, leading to less cost and bulk.

Why it’s “digital”: rear elements protrude where a film cam’s mirror or beamsplitter normally resides.

The result is 2.6x zoom covering wide-to-normal focal lengths that weighs a mere 1.9 kg / 4.2 pounds (the same as a midrange RED or uniQoptics prime) and costs only US$21,000; comparable zooms (the Optimo T2.6 15-40mm and Cooke T2 15-40mm) normally sell for $48,000 or so. I have no idea how long the back-order list is, but I expect it’s not small; this looks like it’s going to be hugely popular.

Arri under glass: 535 film cam wearing a prototype Fujinon 14.5-45mm T2 PL mount zoom.

Finally, for those of you who scoff at any cine lens marketed as “compact” or “affordable” or compromised in any way, Fujinon is entering the fray with full-sized, no-nonsense PL mount zooms for 35mm film and digital cinema cameras.

Videofax’s Sony F35 sporting a Fujinon 18-85mm T2 PL mount zoom.

The T2 18-85mm, shipping in May, weighs a whopping 5.5 kg / 12.1 pounds (not hugely bigger than the RED T2.9 18-85mm, which is 4.5 kg / 9.9 pounds), and has big, long-throw focus / iris / zoom rings to gladden the heart of any 1st AC.

It’s only the first of four zooms, all with comparable weights, gear placements, lengths, and front diameters, so if you’re lucky enough to have the whole set (and a 2nd AC sufficiently manly to schlep them all around for you), you can swap between them with only minor faffing about with follow-focus, motors, and matte boxes:

• T2.0 14.5-40mm
• T2.0 18-85mm
• T2.6 24-180mm
• T2.6-4.0 75-400mm

Get that? A matched set of zooms spanning the range from 14.5mm to 400mm. The mind boggles; the back strains; the wallet empties.

Lenses other than the 18-85mm are supposed to ship in December. Prices? Between the long lead times, the global recession, and the whipsawing exchange rates, prices are hard to come by. They won’t be cheap.

Now how much would you pay? But wait, there’s more… there’s always more. Mitch Gross mentions a few I didn’t see, and undoubtedly more will be coming as more manufacturers rush to fill the vacuum created by digital cinema cameras like the RED ONE, the SI-2K, and the D-21.

I think Cine Gear Expo is going to be more interesting this year, eh?

(Page 2 of 2 pages for this article  <  1 2)

Indeed it does; it’s the iris ring that’s backwards (I wrote the article with the pictures in front of me and an Ultra Prime in my hand, just to be on the safe side!).

It’s only a minor quibble; one doesn’t pull exposure nearly as often as focus, so the “muscle memory” for iris ring rotation isn’t quite so ingrained. I mention it simply to illustrate the differences in the designs, not to cast aspersions on what looks like a rather nice lens.

Posted by Adam Wilt  on  04/29  at  10:06 AM

---

Name:

Email:

Location:

URL:

Smileys

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?

Submit the word you see below: