Lenses with rotating front elements

[Mark Virtue]

How do people deal with lenses that have a rotating front element? Is there anything that can be done, or do you just avoid them like the plague?

 

[QuickHitRecord]

I avoid them.

[Mark Virtue]

Thanks! Just means I get to go out and pickup some more new old glass :)

[JohnBarlow]

The clamping solutions available for legacy anamorphics tend to work by having a fixed screwed connection between the anamorphic and the taking lens. This type of design tends to proclude lenses that have RFE and also the more modern lenses with plastic barrels like the hybrid AF/Manual override L glass from Canon and G glass from Nikon which no doubt would suffer from having a heavy adapter on the end. They also require extra work when changing lenses since the adapter has to be realigned vertically everytime.

 

For lenses with RFE you could using a rotating filter mount (like that from an old polarizer) provided you have some means of locking down the anamorphic. On ebay I recently saw such a clamping system which combined with a rotating filter would work pretty good and also save time aligning things vertically when changing lenses.

 

Having separate support for the anamorphic is preferable for modern hybrid lenses with plastic barrels and is especiallly useful for focussing with a dual focus system -  just set the focus on the anamorphic and half press the shutter for focus on the taking lens and adjust from there using hybrid AF/Manual overide.