Non-Bolex lenses for Bolex

[Robert Dreyer]

I have seen a lot of input about using non-Bolex lenses on Bolex cameras. Ebay sells Computar lenses advertised as Bolex compatible. I know they are cctv and not the greatest but does give a beginner an idea of usage with zoom during filming. I have seen online where people have said they had good luck with Nikon and Canon lenses on Bolex cameras, Yet I can't find a single Youtube or any video showing the use of these lenses. Almost all videos mentioning the use of "Bolex 16" are using ELB or Super 16 and are using Switar RX lenses. I have a Rex 5 with two RX lenses but would love to see just some footage of the use of any Rex camera, using a SLR lens that has not gone through a major clean up with a DaVinci Resolve program or other editing process. Just want to get an idea of the quality that they are seeing and discussing the pros and cons. Is there anything out there?

[Jon O'Brien]

I've got a very brief clip filmed on a Super 16 Bolex Rex 5 a few years back. The lens was a Nikkor 50mm. It's not a great scan of the film but I will see if I can get the time to find it, and then upload to Youtube. If I do I will post again here, with the link. I was pleased with the look of the lens. It's a shot of a water bird swimming on a lake. I like the look of the images from that lens compared to the mildly wide angle Switar RX I was also using that day. The colours were better for a start. But that particular Switar isn't a great example.

Edited March 25 by Jon O'Brien

[Don H Marks]

https://bioskoplab.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/rxrule_76-78.pdf

[Dennis Toeppen]

Use Arri Ultra-16 with adapter from Les Bosher. The sharpness will blow your mind. It blew my mind first time I got a film back. I'm still trying to recover from the trauma of realizing all my films could have been super sharp if I'd just had the Arri lenses earlier.

[Dom Jaeger]

The best lenses you can use on a reflex Bolex are probably Kern RX Switars, designed to mitigate the effects of the reflex prism. Especially the later pre-set versions from the 70s. You can use any lens over 50mm without needing special RX variants, but the longer Kerns are still pretty great.  There were other RX lenses made for Bolexes by Schneider (also very good) and Som Berthiot (not quite as good), as well as RX zooms by Kern, Angenieux and Som Berthiot. A lot of older lenses tend to be lower in contrast, which gives the appearance of being softer, but Switars were renowned for their high contrast. 

You can use non-RX lenses that are 50mm and below, but at fast apertures you will likely get some introduced aberrations. Generally around f/2.8 and below. Mainly spherical aberration and astigmatism, which cause soft focus and corner fall off.

Cheap cctv lenses like Computer and the like tend to have been made to lower resolution specs, and were not designed with the aim of creating pleasing images. But sometimes they can be ok, subject to the prism aberrations mentioned before.

Full frame lenses can also be ok, but generally speaking they are also not designed to be as high resolution as dedicated 16mm lenses. They have an image circle roughly 3 times the diameter of S16, so they are optimised differently. While the centre is the sharpest part of the frame, it is often still not as sharp as a lens made for S16. But this is of course variable and depends entirely on the lens and often the era it was made. The other issue is finding wide angles, and apertures as fast as 16mm lenses often have.

Speaking of aperture, almost any lens looks sharp stopped down to f/5.6 or f/8, but at f/2 and below you will get all the lens character (or flaws depending on your perspective) shining through. Add in a Bolex reflex prism and you can get all sorts of mistiness and soft focus romance. 

While something like a Zeiss Ultra 16 or Cooke SK4 will give you as good an image as 16mm is capable of (and a much better ability to fine-tune focus), I don’t think it’s a life-changing improvement, particularly on a Bolex. Compared to an old Angenieux zoom or a low con C mount from the 50s, sure. But you’d be surprised how good some older lenses can look. Here’s an interesting test of some Zeiss Super Speeds vs Kern Switars on a S16 Reflex Bolex. Note in particular what happens to the Super Speeds at T1.3.. that’s the Bolex prism at work. 
 

 

[Simon Wyss]

On 3/25/2025 at 2:11 AM, Robert Dreyer said:

Just want to get an idea of the quality that they are seeing and discussing the pros and cons.

Are you rather interested in the technical properties of ciné lenses than in the pictorial character they offer? Do you want to learn about triplets, four-glass lenses, five, six elements systems? Seven? Nineteen? Transmission of the sunlight spectrum? Resolving power?

What are you planning to expose, colour negative or colour reversal stock? Black and white films? Do you project? Will there only be binary data? Is your eyesight so good that you can focus precisely?

Just want to get an idea of the person who’s asking.

[Greg Bischoff]

On 3/29/2025 at 8:26 AM, Simon Wyss said:

Are you rather interested in the technical properties of ciné lenses than in the pictorial character they offer? Do you want to learn about triplets, four-glass lenses, five, six elements systems? Seven? Nineteen? Transmission of the sunlight spectrum? Resolving power?

What are you planning to expose, colour negative or colour reversal stock? Black and white films? Do you project? Will there only be binary data? Is your eyesight so good that you can focus precisely?

Just want to get an idea of the person who’s asking.

Not the person asking, but I have a similar question on a few of these points about 16mm lenses. I am interested in the relative performance of 16mm lenses that you can easily get secondhand. The Switars are usually at the top of the list, and you can tell by sample photos/videos, but they're quite expensive compared to the camera in many instances. And then you gotta keep them in that same system and with the right system in terms of RX vs non-RX.

How do early "premium" brands of lenses compare to the later ones, the main one I know is when I was looking into the Kodak Cine cameras and they had their "Anastigmat", later on they had "Ektanon" and then "Ektar". Are any of those worthwhile? What about Elgeet, which had that crazy 12/1.2 (with the first aspherical element!) or Wollensak? Any standouts that compare very nicely to Switars?

Also, I've seen many simple designs perform great, Tessar is one, and many of Zeiss' old photographic lenses from the 50s can still go toe-to-toe with some modern aspherical lenses. So while shoving more elements in can do a lot, there's probably a ton out there that hold up very well. Know of any good ones?

On 3/29/2025 at 6:53 AM, Dom Jaeger said:

The best lenses you can use on a reflex Bolex are probably Kern RX Switars, designed to mitigate the effects of the reflex prism. Especially the later pre-set versions from the 70s. You can use any lens over 50mm without needing special RX variants, but the longer Kerns are still pretty great.  There were other RX lenses made for Bolexes by Schneider (also very good) and Som Berthiot (not quite as good), as well as RX zooms by Kern, Angenieux and Som Berthiot. A lot of older lenses tend to be lower in contrast, which gives the appearance of being softer, but Switars were renowned for their high contrast. 

You can use non-RX lenses that are 50mm and below, but at fast apertures you will likely get some introduced aberrations. Generally around f/2.8 and below. Mainly spherical aberration and astigmatism, which cause soft focus and corner fall off.

...

While something like a Zeiss Ultra 16 or Cooke SK4 will give you as good an image as 16mm is capable of (and a much better ability to fine-tune focus), I don’t think it’s a life-changing improvement, particularly on a Bolex. Compared to an old Angenieux zoom or a low con C mount from the 50s, sure. But you’d be surprised how good some older lenses can look. Here’s an interesting test of some Zeiss Super Speeds vs Kern Switars on a S16 Reflex Bolex. Note in particular what happens to the Super Speeds at T1.3.. that’s the Bolex prism at work. 

[video]

When I first saw that, it made me realize how awesome the Switar lenses are. But, aren't super speeds mean to cover super35? And so aren't they doing very nicely for a format that's 1/4 the size? And what about older Switars from the 50s vs the 60s? Are they still very good compared to Yvars and others?

I also see Schneider Xenon a fair bit, but usually they're earlier lenses. I'm not sure of their relative quality either...

Thanks!!

[Simon Wyss]

I think we’ve had such discussions here but I’ll try once again.

A single glass is not used in 16-mm. cinematography. Two-elements lenses can perhaps be found with cheapo products from China. Then come the many triplets. The still larger group of constructions has four elements and some of them have become world famous—Josef Petzval’s design, Goerz Celor and its derivatives, Zeiss Tessar, the Perlynx of Hermagis or the Ernostar.

The Petzval was taken up again and again, you’ll find it for example with Kodak taking and projection lenses in the sixties. From the Celor comes the f/1.9 Kodak anastigmat as employed for Kodacolor (1929). The Tessar pops up on a Kinarri for instance or with Bausch & Lomb for the Animar f/2.7. The Animar 26 mm, f/1.9 is a Petzval lens. A Perlynx is a triplet with an additional positive rear glass which gives better image flatness and more even illumination till the corners. The Ernostar returns as Eumigar on the Eumig C 16. The Kern-Paillard 25 mm, f/1.8 is an Ernostar.

It is not possible to correct a triplet for the entire spectrum. Some longitudinal chromatic aberration must be left in them but the designers choose it to be on the short wavelengths end, so by using a yellow(ish) filter black-and-white films don’t record it. Four-glass lenses can be fully corrected for the majority of optical aberrations. Sufficient image quality at relative apertures up to f/1.9 is generally given.

Although an f/0.99 aperture would actually call for at least seven elements Dallmeyer made a four-glass lens of that speed. Naturally at open hole the image degrades towards the borders.

The most intense use can be seen with the six-glass formulae. Initially there was the symmetric Planar by Zeiss, a so-called double-Gauss arrangement of f/5.6. Taylor, Taylor & Hobson changed that to the asymmetric Opic in 1920 from which various Xenon have been deducted. Along this line we have the Quinon by Steinheil, the Heligon by Rodenstock, Zeiss Biotar alias Wollensak Raptar, Kern-Paillard Switar, Angénieux S 41, and many more, all at around f/1.5, f/1.4. None of them is perfectly depicting. Only the Apochromat of Kinoptik, f/2.0, has no fringing or soft edges.

Tevidon from the former GDR are also top-notch glass.

From Rochester have come some interesting lenses. While Kodak bought the f/1.4 Cine Ektar II from Schneider, Elgeet indeed made the f/1.2 Golden Navitar wide-angle (1955). ILEX’ Cine Paragon 25 mm and 50 mm, f/2, are Tessar types, should be fascinating. Among long focal lengths a Century is always present. From Gundlach a number of Radar Ultrastigmat are known but hardly seen. These are variations of the first Radar anastigmat, f/4.5 from 1916. Graf, South Bend, made a small range of lenses also for the 16-mm. format.

Always remember that a clean and correctly adjusted triplet gives more satisfying pictures than a dirty or misaligned heavy system. They’re cheaper, too.

[Greg Bischoff]

Simon, thank you for the wonderfully thorough overview of these designs and where they show up! And apologies if I'm the N'th user to have asked this.

The Ernostar is very interesting, I believe it was the predecessor to the f/1.5 Sonnar, which itself is an exceptional lens. I found that to be interesting because I saw it's large aperture of f/2 or f/1.8 on large-format plate cameras. But I suppose all it is is the same design scaled up. Funny, we could have f/1 medium format and large format lenses. They'd just be absurdly huge and expensive, right?

11 minutes ago, Simon Wyss said:

It is not possible to correct a triplet for the entire spectrum. Some longitudinal chromatic aberration must be left in them but the designers choose it to be on the short wavelengths end, so by using a yellow(ish) filter black-and-white films don’t record it. Four-glass lenses can be fully corrected for the majority of optical aberrations. Sufficient image quality at relative apertures up to f/1.9 is generally given.

Although an f/0.99 aperture would actually call for at least seven elements Dallmeyer made a four-glass lens of that speed. Naturally at open hole the image degrades towards the borders.

Right, and thus the Apochromat was invented! I guess that's why certain lenses were sold as "for color", whether or not that was merely marketing fluff.

Ah, interesting. So certain designs tend to work very well up to a point, so to speak? A certain aperture. Like you'd be wary of using a Tessar at f/1.4?

f/0.99? Weren't they an early lensmaker?? I see Dallmeyer show up in high-end old lens discussions but I never know what their main claim to fame was. Besides being highly coveted cine lenses due to their rendering, were the still photographic lenses just fast while also covering larger than 35mm or no? Or were they very unique in their design?

4 minutes ago, Simon Wyss said:

The most intense use can be seen with the six-glass formulae. Initially there was the symmetric Planar by Zeiss, a so-called double-Gauss arrangement of f/5.6. Taylor, Taylor & Hobson changed that to the asymmetric Opic in 1920 from which various Xenon have been deducted. Along this line we have the Quinon by Steinheil, the Heligon by Rodenstock, Zeiss Biotar alias Wollensak Raptar, Kern-Paillard Switar, Angénieux S 41, and many more, all at around f/1.5, f/1.4. None of them is perfectly depicting. Only the Apochromat of Kinoptik, f/2.0, has no fringing or soft edges.

Tevidon from the former GDR are also top-notch glass.

I've been fairly impressed by even single-Gauss formulas, I have a half-frame camera with one and the results have been quite great!

Even the Switars? You mean at maximum aperture, right? They become very very nice stopped down by the quoted video! Would you say they all performed similarly-well or were Kinoptiks particularly nice? I see the 5.9mm wide angle listed quite often, but I don't know if it's similar to the Angénieux R7 where it's only "okay".

4 minutes ago, Simon Wyss said:

From Rochester have come some interesting lenses. While Kodak bought the f/1.4 Cine Ektar II from Schneider, Elgeet indeed made the f/1.2 Golden Navitar wide-angle (1955). ILEX’ Cine Paragon 25 mm and 50 mm, f/2, are Tessar types, should be fascinating. Among long focal lengths a Century is always present. From Gundlach a number of Radar Ultrastigmat are known but hardly seen. These are variations of the first Radar anastigmat, f/4.5 from 1916. Graf, South Bend, made a small range of lenses also for the 16-mm. format.

Always remember that a clean and correctly adjusted triplet gives more satisfying pictures than a dirty or misaligned heavy system. They’re cheaper, too.

It surprises me that they were all in Rochester! I guess it was and went the same way as Gloversville. The Navitar looks really neat, and BIG. Retrofocus? And f/1.2, though I bet you'd want to stop it down a bit! And yet Kern made a 10mm...

Did anyone else make good wide-angles? Or wider-wide angles than 10mm? It's surprising to me how it practically stopped at a 36mm equivalent, at least for Kern, and then the single digits show up in those very nice zooms. I was wondering if there were any good 9, 8, 7 or even 6mm lenses for 16mm at the time.

Zeiss had made their Biogon design for still photography, which was far more symmetric, but seeing as not all 16mm cameras needed a mirror, were there some more symmetric designs that sought to give an "ultra wide"? After all, Bertele, who's claim to fame was the Ernostar and Sonnar, did make the 21mm Biogon!

About Kodak, I'd seen Kingslake had worked for Hawk-eye in a film about their lensmaking process, along with an explicit use of of "Ektar quality" in a design request. Seems they had started by pulling more and more manufacturing from Germany back to Rochester (I believe the early Retinas were German? And the Schneider lenses, as you mention). Disney and the BBC used the old Cine Kodaks and Ektar lenses for nature documentaries, so it seems they were quite good. But were they even better than Kern Yvar? I'm not even sure where the lesser-labeled lenses rank, so to speak.

Again, I greatly appreciate your response!

[Simon Wyss]

YVAR was the economy class, basically triplets. Stereo-Yvar: two triplets. Macro-Yvar are dialytic four glass. The Yvar 75-2.5 is a classic Cooke triplet but the 75-2.8 has a thick center negative unlike everything known until its appearance. Similar the 36-2.8 for 8-mm. film.

PIZAR form the middle segment, five-glass normal or mild telephoto or less opened wide angle lenses.

SWITAR is the premium line. Still, the six-elements normal was made without depth-of-field indicator and branded PIZAR 25-1.5. Then the 50 mm Switar, f/1.4. 75 mm, f/1.9. The 5,5 mm wide angle consists of five cemented doublets, Switar or Pizar identical glass, just different apertures. Bigger sister 10-1.6. Entirely new designs were the Switar and Macro-Switar for the Paillard-Bolex H-8 Reflex.

VARIO-SWITAR. These had begun with 16 elements. The 12,5‒100, f/2 has 19 elements.

[Greg Bischoff]

13 minutes ago, Simon Wyss said:

YVAR was the economy class, basically triplets. Stereo-Yvar: two triplets. Macro-Yvar are dialytic four glass. The Yvar 75-2.5 is a classic Cooke triplet but the 75-2.8 has a thick center negative unlike everything known until its appearance. Similar the 36-2.8 for 8-mm. film.

PIZAR form the middle segment, five-glass normal or mild telephoto or less opened wide angle lenses.

SWITAR is the premium line. Still, the six-elements normal was made without depth-of-field indicator and branded PIZAR 25-1.5. ...

Thank you very much, I didn't know that about Pizar! How did you learn the optical design details of the different lines of lenses, at least from Kern? I know some brochures and other materials might show a cutaway diagram, or may tout the number of elements, but it's otherwise hard to know where to look.

Does the thick center element in the YVAR 75/2.8 greatly improve it on some metric?

Also, I'm revisiting some example photos of m43 forums of C-mount glass. Kodak glass is more common, and they're not the best wide open but become great stopped down just a bit. Optics made around this time all seem to have carefully selected apertures, where the max just veers into glowy/spherical aberration territory. But then just as little a half a stop down can make a dramatic difference.

The Kodak 63mm can cover full-frame, surprisingly. And some of their other lenses, while sharp, can have pretty bad field curvature. I've seen people say, though, that strong field curvature is great for portraits because it can give you more subject-background isolation off-center.

Lastly, I did find out that there are Zeiss super speeds made for 16mm. So, really, the Switars are just that good against cinema glass!

[Simon Wyss]

Over the years you accumulate data, knowledge. It can get complicated sometimes but also interesting: https://forum.mflenses.com/wollensak-cine-raptar-1-inch-f-1-5-what-is-it-t82922.html

We haven’t spoken of many other manufactureres, yet. Berthiot, Leitz, Optikotechna/Meopta, Ernitec, Boyer, Sun, Laack, Nikon, Meyer, Zeika, Canon, Ling, DJS, Veydra, Ichizuka, Soligor, Walz, Kowa, Anstron, Fuji, Unitel, Cinetor, Tewe, Astro, Rüo, Enna, Krauss, Wray, Ross, Voigtländer, Busch.

The Kern-Paillard Compact Vario was a licenced Pan-Cinor Berthiot.