Lenses

[kye]

Another video on the probe lens with lots of BTS, but this time for tech reviewing.

Interesting fact, it's FF and F14-40.  Apparently at F14 you still need a ton of light, so that's why it has the ring light built in.

[Cinegain]

Filmriot also recently used it:

 

[kye]

14 hours ago, Cinegain said:

Filmriot also recently used it:

Yeah, as strange as it looks, it sure looks like it can make some awesome footage  

[Zach Goodwin2]

New picture I took with the edmika 35-105 F/3.5 with Canon T2i.

[kye]

Interesting video from Brandon Li..  It's essentially a demonstration of his skill to help people decide to purchase his (rather expensive) paid course, but has lots of useful info in it and is definitely worth watching.  It's partly about why he loves FF 35mm f1.8 focal length lenses for street shooting, partly about how to frame with the 35mm, partly about shooting cinematic hand-held shots, partly about shooting cinematic gimbal shots, and lots of other tips in there about lighting, distortion, etc.  It's BTS style so you can see what he's doing too.

Its particularly interesting to me as I shoot doc style shots in public with the MFT equivalent of a 35mm f1.9 lens, so I very much understand the dynamics of the whole equation, which essentially boils down to every shot being an environmental portrait.

 

[Tito Ferradans]

On 11/14/2019 at 12:38 AM, Gregormannschaft said:

I was going to buy the Jupiter 9 a while back but decided against it. Now looking at getting a slightly cleaner set of lenses with a 35 1.4, 50 1.4 and 85 1.4 set of Contax Zeiss Planar. Anyone have any experience with these?

I used the 85 1.4 ZE lens (which is said to be the same lens as the Contax 85mm rehoused in a modern body) recently on a shoot and was surprised at how much purple fringing there was wide open. Other than that it was nice and clean and relatively contrasty. Not a lot of vintage character but a nice lens.

I have lots of experience with both J9 and C/Y 85/1.4.

The Jupiter is a big hit and miss, like most Soviet M42 lenses. If you get a good copy, you'll have tons of character, easy flares, lots of bloom and sharp results wide open. Not a contrasty lens unless stopped down. Getting a good copy is a tough process though. You can go through a dozen of them before finding one you like. I certainly have.

Contax: the 1.4's are all fring-y, chromatic aberration-y wide open. The 35 is the best performing wide open of the trio. The 50 is notoriously bad wide open (think blooming and intense CA). The 85 has no blooming and CA is mostly controlled, at least in my copy. But good luck getting a close up in focus if everything is not bolted down. hahahaah

Here's some more info on my set and the decisions through building it - https://***URL not allowed***/zeiss-contax-cine-tune-up-guide/

[Gregormannschaft]

10 hours ago, Tito Ferradans said:

I have lots of experience with both J9 and C/Y 85/1.4.

The Jupiter is a big hit and miss, like most Soviet M42 lenses. If you get a good copy, you'll have tons of character, easy flares, lots of bloom and sharp results wide open. Not a contrasty lens unless stopped down. Getting a good copy is a tough process though. You can go through a dozen of them before finding one you like. I certainly have.

Contax: the 1.4's are all fring-y, chromatic aberration-y wide open. The 35 is the best performing wide open of the trio. The 50 is notoriously bad wide open (think blooming and intense CA). The 85 has no blooming and CA is mostly controlled, at least in my copy. But good luck getting a close up in focus if everything is not bolted down. hahahaah

Here's some more info on my set and the decisions through building it - https://***URL not allowed***/zeiss-contax-cine-tune-up-guide/

This is exactly what I was after, thanks so much. I actually found a good deal on the 50 1.4 and it has a lovely clean look from f2.4 and above, below the sharpness really takes a hit.

[Zach Goodwin2]

Photo I took on a Canon T2i with Edmika FD 35-105 F/3.5

[leslie]

5 hours ago, Zach Goodwin2 said:

Photo I took on a Canon T2i with Edmika FD 35-105 F/3.5

now you just need another arbitrary amount of photos , say ... 1439 and you can make a short movie. Feel free to move the camera/tripod in small amounts as you go.?

[Shell64]

Anyone used the sigma 17-50 2.8 on MFT cameras with speed booster?  How is the autofocus

[mercer]

I've been using the Canon FD 50mm 1.2 L lens I had modified to EF mount a lot lately and I must say it is quickly becoming one of my favorite lenses. I'd be curious to know how this lens resolves on 4K cameras, if anybody has any insight.

On my 5D3, with ML Raw, it's slightly soft, some may say organic, but it has great separation... both color and subject. I find I like it with muted tones, though. I can really see why Canon used the optical designs from the FD lenses for their K-35 cinema glass.

[noone]

1 hour ago, mercer said:

I've been using the Canon FD 50mm 1.2 L lens I had modified to EF mount a lot lately and I must say it is quickly becoming one of my favorite lenses.

Loved that lens!   The three FD aspheric element L primes are all favourites for me (24 1.4L, 50 1.2L, 85 1.2L).

 

 

I had to sell my 50 L and would have one again except I got the Sony Zeiss 55 1.8 instead and it is (for me) even better.     Still, the FD 50 L was by far my favourite legacy normal lens.

I still use the 24 1.4 and if i could ever get my 85 1.2 fixed (it has the dissolving bearing issue that affects some FD lenses) and could afford another 50 L, I would really like to get the band back together again.

 

[mercer]

46 minutes ago, noone said:

Loved that lens!   The three FD aspheric element L primes are all favourites for me (24 1.4L, 50 1.2L, 85 1.2L).

 

 

I had to sell my 50 L and would have one again except I got the Sony Zeiss 55 1.8 instead and it is (for me) even better.     Still, the FD 50 L was by far my favourite legacy normal lens.

I still use the 24 1.4 and if i could ever get my 85 1.2 fixed (it has the dissolving bearing issue that affects some FD lenses) and could afford another 50 L, I would really like to get the band back together again.

 

I'd love to get the 24mm 1.4 but they doubled in price over the past year or two. I'd see them sell for around $700 but now they're hard to find for less than $1500 with some Japanese eBay sellers asking over $2000. I don't want it that bad.

With that said, if I was forced to own only one lens, I could make do with the 50mm 1.2 for sure. 

[noone]

3 hours ago, mercer said:

I'd love to get the 24mm 1.4 but they doubled in price over the past year or two. I'd see them sell for around $700 but now they're hard to find for less than $1500 with some Japanese eBay sellers asking over $2000. I don't want it that bad.

With that said, if I was forced to own only one lens, I could make do with the 50mm 1.2 for sure. 

A year or two ago I had my 24 1.4 L on Ebay with a starting price a lot lower than that and a reserve price of less than that in Australian dollars (so probably around 4 or 5 hundred US from memory) but could not get a bid.    Mine LOOKS a bit ratty but the glass is very good.     No way i will sell it now though.

I am surprised it stays so high because there are other 24 1.4s available now.     For a long while there were very few makes/models in existence but in the last couple of years some more makes/models have been made.

 

[kye]

6 hours ago, mercer said:

I've been using the Canon FD 50mm 1.2 L lens I had modified to EF mount a lot lately and I must say it is quickly becoming one of my favorite lenses. I'd be curious to know how this lens resolves on 4K cameras, if anybody has any insight.

On my 5D3, with ML Raw, it's slightly soft, some may say organic, but it has great separation... both color and subject. I find I like it with muted tones, though. I can really see why Canon used the optical designs from the FD lenses for their K-35 cinema glass.

Nice images - I particularly like the compositions

In terms of how the lens resolves on 4K cameras, it's too old for online tests but you can shoot a few RAW stills and get a sense of what the resolution is.  Just find something with fine detail and sharp edges in the house and use a fast shutter speed and then pixel peep, that should tell you what resolution the lens is.  Ken Rockwell said very nice things about it, including that it was sharp, so the limitation in whatever setup you end up with will likely be something else - the sensor / codec / anamorphic element / etc....

[noone]

7 hours ago, mercer said:

I'd love to get the 24mm 1.4 but they doubled in price over the past year or two. I'd see them sell for around $700 but now they're hard to find for less than $1500 with some Japanese eBay sellers asking over $2000. I don't want it that bad.

With that said, if I was forced to own only one lens, I could make do with the 50mm 1.2 for sure. 

This is just nuts!    I was looking on Ebay out of curiosity at the price of 24 1.4 lenses.

There was only about five FD 24 1.4 L lenses listed and the CHEAPEST was $3000 Australian (around $2200 US maybe a bit less).    I thought they all must be some of those silly listings that are always there (things like a kit lens for a grand and the like) but then I looked at sold listings and could only find two....one at around $2000 Australian and the other that was still well over $1500 but sold as is with fungus!!!!      For the price of the CHEAPEST FD listed, I can fly to Japan and have four nights in a half decent hotel and buy an auto focus 24 1.4 from Canon, Sony, Nikon or Sigma (or a Samyang or clone manual focus lens with a lot of change still).      The Sigma Art and Sony FE 24 1.4 (and other AF) lenses are much better I am sure but can still be found (some of them new) for about a THIRD of the price of the old FD warriors.

I love the old thing but if someone wants to give me $2000 Australian (so i can buy a FE 24 1.4 and pocket the difference), you can have mine (sold as is no refunds).

You would be insane to do that though.

[kye]

They look lovely though!!

 

[kye]

I just took delivery of the 7.5mm F2 Laowa, so will be comparing it with the SLR Magic 8mm F4 soon..  first impressions are pretty good though  

[kye]

Getting setup to do a bunch of lens tests, but not entirely sure how to test very wide angled lenses.

For everything longer than 35mm (FF equiv) I'd do the person sitting with xmas lights in the background, but at what point is a lens so wide that this style of test doesn't apply?  

I have lenses that are 15mm and 16mm equivalent, so not sure what to test - people? landscapes? sharpness?  People talk about the classic Hollywood close-up with a wide-angle and a shallow DoF, should I do that?

[BTM_Pix]

19 minutes ago, kye said:

 

I have lenses that are 15mm and 16mm equivalent, so not sure what to test - people? landscapes? sharpness?  

The first port of call for me with wides like that would be the edges, for both sharpness and curvature so a brick wall is usually the simplest way to do that.

Anything upright vertical on either edge of the frame will suffice though so if you are shooting indoors a couple of pencils etc could be used.

Its a very obvious basic test but with ultra wides it might save a lot of time in additional testing as its likely going to be the most important determining factor as to whether you find the lens acceptable.

The subtleties of all the other parameters may be rendered moot if the overall image is distorted enough to act as a quasi fisheye.

If it passes that test then you can move on to picking out the bits you need from this guide.

https://www.lensrentals.com/blog/2010/11/how-to-test-a-lens/