Who made Red's lenses?

[Steve Switaj]

Does anybody know where Red used to get their lenses?

The large stop motion company that I work for is circling around the idea of upgrading our lens fleet for upcoming projects.

Our needs are not really that weird, but still specific enough that we end up remounting or even rehousing much of our glass, and, it's a pain.

The number of lenses we're thinking of buying is large enough that we may be justified at looking at some semi-custom options, so I'm gathering names of vendors to talk to.

Anybody have any leads?

 

[Dom Jaeger]

The primes were designed by Kenji Suematsu, of UniqOptics, but built by Tamron. The zooms were a combination of rehoused Tamron stills zooms and some custom designs, none very good.

This transcript of an interview with Kenji Suematsu makes for interesting reading, and explains some of the dumb design decisions that went into the Red Pro Primes. They were never very successful except among Red fanboys. The lenses Kenji released were branded UniqOptics, but they were quickly sued into bankruptcy by Jannard.

https://ddr.densho.org/media/ddr-densho-1003/ddr-densho-1003-11-22-transcript-77bea43e2d.htm

For rehousing purposes you might be better contacting companies that specialise in that - TLS, Zero Optic, Whitepoint, GL Optics, TK lenses, Iron Glass etc, although most of them are very busy and have long wait lists.

Edited March 20 by Dom Jaeger

[Phil Rhodes]

I hate to say it but absolutely nothing in that transcript surprises me one iota.