Uncoating an Isco 16:9 Video Attachment. Thoughts?

[Rumple]

Hi All,

I managed to pick up a reasonably priced Isco 16:9 Video Attachment recently, and after research and testing I assume that the common view of this adapter "lacking a look" must come from the multi-coatings.

So this gave me an idea, why not just get an lens specialist to uncoat the front and possibly also the rear optics...?
Obviously this is something I can't undertake lightly as it could make this unit worthless if it goes wrong.

Has anyone got any thoughts on this? Experiences with similar experiments?

Many thanks,
Matt.

[Xavier Plagaro Mussard]

I assume that the common view of this adapter "lacking a look" must come from the multi-coatings.

Did you tried it?? Did you find it lacking a look?? Will you put three LUTs over the footage anyway?? 

Uncoating probably is expensive and non-ctrl-z

[richg101]

One of the main problems with attempting uncoating of lenses is that the coatings are usually harder than the glass underneath.  so what can sometimes happen is that you end up going through the coating in one place first then in that area you end up changing the surface flatness and 'quality' while you proceed to uncoat the remainder of the glass.  MC coatings from the era when your lens was made will be very tough and will need a lot of work to take it to bare glass - and in this time you'll almost certainly not be able to ensure every part of the lens face receives the same amount of abrasion/polishing. 

also, becuase of the way the lens is made, you'll need to uncoat elements behind the two focusing elements.  

Going a professional route and having a bare glass face of the same quality of the lens as it currently stands will almost always require tooling (to hold the glass during a regrind/polish of the optical face you want decoated) as well as a grinding/polishing tool that suits the curvature of the lens.  since these are cylinderical lenses the cost goes up even more.  I have a specially made orbital polisher I designed for use on my lathe which works extremely well with spherical lenses but wouldn't work on cylinders.

Personally I think it would be wise to play around with UV filters.  a cheap 95mm uv filter up front and a 67mm filter on the back will promote some additional reflections and boost the flares quite drastically.   also you might find that using moder taking lenses makes the flaring from your isco more obvious since it'll be less masked by the flaring from a vintage taking lens.  

[Bioskop.Inc]

I'd follow Rich's advice & stick with what you have, since you'll almost certainly ruin your lens. Your lens does have character & most people tend to think that horizontal flare is the only thing anamorphic lenses are good for, which is completely false - there's so much more to using anamorphics, you just have to experiment a little harder. I've got MC anamorphics to flare just fine, eventhough I don't particularly like horizontal flare

This was a quick'n'dirty flare test that I did with a MC Isco 54. My personal favourites are examples 9+10 (9 was a vintage Tomioka with Gold-ish coating & 10 was a new MC Zeiss ZE).

[richg101]

Your lens does have character & most people tend to think that horizontal flare is the only thing anamorphic lenses are good for, which is completely false - there's so much more to using anamorphics

exactly.  the barrel distortion, the gradual degradation of iq as you get further to the edges, the defocus distortions, the wider fov.  all of which combined make a lot more of the anamorphic look than the flares.  if anything the horizontal streak is usually overdone.  That said it would be nice if the newer 16:9 attachments from isco would flare up just a bit more than they do.  being such a sharp and fast lens (huge rear element and reduced strength of 1.33x) and using a fast 50mm and a 16:9 fullframe sensor area for a 2.39:1 ratio is definitely gonna deliver a magical combination whether it flares or not!!.