Arri Master Zoom, 435 HS?

[Guest 808_Bass]

Has anyone shot with the Arri Master Zoom?

 

Had a look at one today, big piece of glass, physically more the size of an 11-1 Primo.

 

It's a 16.5-110 T2.6, nice big rear element, it just looks like a sharp lens if you know what I mean.

 

I'm guessing that it's been built to compete with the 4-1 Primo, not that (in my opinion) that would be hard.

 

I'd think it'd be fairly safe to assume (gulp) that a longer one will appear before too long as well.

 

 

Also wondering if anyone has heard if a high speed 435 might be in development?

 

It seems Arri are doing a great job of integrating all of the various facets of their camera systems at the moment, which is what I always felt was their weak point. Shooting with Panaflex's always meant that whatever accessory you got, it was designed by Panavision for use on Panaflexes (apart from Preston's of course....grrr), and therefore fitted like a glove, where-as with Arri there were always issues with 3rd party lenses, mattebox compatabilitys, new accessories on old cameras, and so on, and so on.

 

From both a purists' and an assistants' perspective, it's great to see so much r&d going into film cameras.

[Chris Fernando]

Has anyone shot with the Arri Master Zoom?

 

 

Never shot with one, but from what I gather, from these forums and elsewhere, is that they are virtually breathless (is that a word?). Kinda nice from a 1st's POV.

 

Having seen one perhaps you can concur or refute.

[Brad Grimmett]

Also wondering if anyone has heard if a high speed 435 might be in development?

You mean faster than 150fps? I don't see much need for that since photosonics already do very high speeds and it's rare that you need anything faster than 150fps anyway.

[Max Jacoby]

From an optical point the Master Zoom is the best zoom lens available today, bar none. It is the zoom equivalent to the Master Primes. It does not breathe and does not distort, even on the wide end.

 

Now the bad news is that for the moment there are only few around. On top of that Arri is not going to sell it, if you want it, you have to rent it from them.

[Guest 808_Bass]

You mean faster than 150fps? I don't see much need for that since photosonics already do very high speeds and it's rare that you need anything faster than 150fps anyway.

 

When you say that it's rare you need anything faster than 150fps anyway, is this because to shoot faster than 150fps is not practical unless it is for a specialized shot, so 150fps has become a nominal value? I mean a few years ago, it was 130fps with the 35III, and if I had a buck for evertime the directors asked me "How fast will this camera go?"

 

If it was practical to shoot at say 200 or 300fps without the need for an additional camera and technician (ie Photosonics) then wouldn't it just open up new realms of possiblity? Filmmaking and in particular Commericial production has always been about pushing and reinventing the limits with the equipment that's available, and a HS 435 would seem to be the next logical step in it's evolution.

 

As for the Master Zoom, I didn't get a chance to mount it on a camera, but would be interested to know how it compares to the Optimos, and Master Primes, particularly with regards to breathing, which seems to be the only reason that the zoom gets taken off the camera these days.

 

Anyways, that's my 10 pesos worth.

 

 

From an optical point the Master Zoom is the best zoom lens available today, bar none. It is the zoom equivalent to the Master Primes. It does not breathe and does not distort, even on the wide end.

 

Now the bad news is that for the moment there are only few around. On top of that Arri is not going to sell it, if you want it, you have to rent it from them.

 

Sorry Max, must have been typing when you posted.

 

Thanks for the info on the zoom, it's as I suspected.

 

Have you shot with one? How does it perform flare-wise? Have you used it at night? I am also curious about pulling focus on it, is the focus barrel a monster like on an 11-1 primo? The barrel on those has to rotate a long way between distances, which isn't an issue with the smaller rear focus gear on a Primo, but does it become an issue on the Master Zoom?

 

Cheers.

[Max Jacoby]

Unfortunately I haven't tested one yet, since there are many around and I haven't been to Munich lately. I've only asked Arri about the Master Primes. They have shot a test comparing them to the Ultra Primes, Cooke S4s and Primos and the Master Primes are the only lenses that did not flare in nightscenes. On top of that the bokeh is perfectly circular for pretty much all the various stops. The look of the Master Primes was described to me as so technologically perfect that it was almost 'synthetic' and 'without character'. Meaning that since they do not distort, flare, breathe and have a perfect circular bokeh, these lenses look very neutral, just how the human eye sees. Just what the doctor ordered for any shots involving CGI, etc...

 

Could you elaborate your opinion on the Primo zooms, how they perform optically and how they look. I have never worked with them unfortunately.

[Guest 808_Bass]

Unfortunately I haven't tested one yet, since there are many around and I haven't been to Munich lately. I've only asked Arri about the Master Primes. They have shot a test comparing them to the Ultra Primes, Cooke S4s and Primos and the Master Primes are the only lenses that did not flare in nightscenes. On top of that the bokeh is perfectly circular for pretty much all the various stops. The look of the Master Primes was described to me as so technologically perfect that it was almost 'synthetic' and 'without character'. Meaning that since they do not distort, flare, breathe and have a perfect circular bokeh, these lenses look very neutral, just how the human eye sees. Just what the doctor ordered for any shots involving CGI, etc...

 

Could you elaborate your opinion on the Primo zooms, how they perform optically and how they look. I have never worked with them unfortunately.

 

 

Sure, here's my 20 pesos worth.....

 

 

As with all of the Primo series, the zooms have a very "organic" look, you can definately tell when they are sharp, but the focus also falls off really nicely, giving them a kind of warmth. Nice Bokeh as you'd expect from any professional lens (what was up with those Variable Primes!? Can't remember, but weren't they a 3 leaf iris?)

 

 

The 4-1 has never been my favourite lens, I put it down to having to do too much work - 17.5 to 75mm is a big range (until now), sure it might only be 4-1, but to go from as wide as that to a potrait lens is, I'm sure, lots of work optically speaking.

I've also never found it to be the sharpest piece of glass on the planet (that's my excuse anyways), and the focus markings tend to drift in extreme hot or cold weather. As far as the flange depth is concerned it behaves like a 17.5mm, and I'm sure everyone has heard the stories of people going to weather cover sets, or heading to the snow from the rental house, shooting all day on the 4-1 and all the rushes coming back with that slightly diffused look - very popular in Eastern Europe I believe, which is where you'd most likely be headed after you're inevitable firing.

I'm sure it's an urban myth, but it is possible. Believe me, checking and adjusting the flange when it's freezing cold is not much fun, and neither is carrying extra batteries for the camera heater.

I've also noticed that it is very susceptable to ghosting with hot sources and highlights in the frame. I'm not sure if this is due to the front element being so convex that it is hard to back the filters right up to it, or, as someone that would know once told me - there is a higher than normal concentration of silver in the front element, causing more light than normal to be bounced round between the filters and the lens (optical pong if you like), I think it's the combination of both.

In my opinion using an anti-reflection filter tray is the standard rig for this lens, even though using a regular tray sometimes fixes the problem (angle of incidence = angle of reflection, and all that stuff y'know).

 

On the positive side, physically it's a really nice size and weight, particularly for mounting on remote heads, it balances without much drama, even on stabilized heads. 17.5 to 75 is also a really nice range, especially for remote work, you know that even if the DP or Director goes nuts with the zoom, you're not gonna break too much of a sweat! With stablized heads becoming more common I can definately see the long end of this lens becoming not long enough to test the head though.

 

 

As for the 11-1, it's just an alround great lens, they vary a little, but with a bit of testing it's easy to find 3 or 4 really good ones. I've also noticed a little ghosting of hotspots and highlights, but if you're keeping an eye out for it, there are always solutions to be found.

Check that the lens doesn't "auto zoom" when you tilt steeply down, fun to watch during prep, not so fun to watch on set.

I guess the only real criticism I have of this lens is that it's hard to mount 3 Preston motors on. I end up using the focus motor (with a zoom gear attached) on the big barrel up the front, but the motor has to physically turn so quickly to rotate such a big barrel, combined with the finely pitched gear it's quite susceptable to slipping, so you really have to have a gentle touch on the focus knob, almost coaxing it round.

 

I haven't used the 3-1 (Hubble) an awful lot (my back is thankful), but I have never heard (optically) any bad reports.

 

Anyways, that turned into 50 pesos worth rather quickly.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I just shot a commercial with the Master Primes. It was shot wide open, all the time. In TK it looked very sharp and with a lot of snap - impressive. Nice set of lenses, but very big. Will definitely use them again for the right project.

[Brad Grimmett]

When you say that it's rare you need anything faster than 150fps anyway, is this because to shoot faster than 150fps is not practical unless it is for a specialized shot, so 150fps has become a nominal value? I mean a few years ago, it was 130fps with the 35III, and if I had a buck for evertime the directors asked me "How fast will this camera go?"

 

If it was practical to shoot at say 200 or 300fps without the need for an additional camera and technician (ie Photosonics) then wouldn't it just open up new realms of possiblity? Filmmaking and in particular Commericial production has always been about pushing and reinventing the limits with the equipment that's available, and a HS 435 would seem to be the next logical step in it's evolution.

Well, I suppose if a camera did 200fps then people would shoot at 200fps more often, but I think it would be for the same reason that most people shoot at 150fps.....because they don't know what they want, so they just shoot as fast as they can and figure it out later. 150fps really slows things down quite a lot, so to me it's like....."Oh, now we can make things 7x slower, instead of 5x slower!" But, why? Sure, there are situations where you need an extremely high speed camera, but in my mind that's what the photosonics are for. Sure, having to have a tech just for the camera could be an issue, but if you're shooting 1000fps or faster, the tech's rate quickly becomes a very small factor in the budget.

I've certainly heard the "how fast does this camera go?" question plenty of times, but I don't often hear someone say, "Gosh, if only we had been able to shoot at 200fps" after the fact. Does that make sense? I just don't see 200 or 300fps being that big of an advantage over 150. Of course there are always exceptions.

[David Mullen ASC]

You have to ask yourself if the number of people that want to shoot at 200 fps, and want to shoot it often enough to want more convenience than an occasional Photosonics rental, makes it worthwhile to develop a 435 that can go faster than 150 fps.

 

Personally, after thirty features, I can only recall once needing a camera that went faster than 60 fps, and that was 96 fps. But I don't shoot commercials.

[Daniel Stigler]

How many times have you done 150fps?

[Brad Grimmett]

You have to ask yourself if the number of people that want to shoot at 200 fps, and want to shoot it often enough to want more convenience than an occasional Photosonics rental, makes it worthwhile to develop a 435 that can go faster than 150 fps.

 

Personally, after thirty features, I can only recall once needing a camera that went faster than 60 fps, and that was 96 fps. But I don't shoot commercials.

Exactly my point. In the long run it basically comes down to whether it's worth it for Arri or not, and in my opinion it's probably not.

[David Mullen ASC]

How many times have you done 150fps?

 

Never, but then, I can't afford a 435 on a feature.

[Daniel Stigler]

Never, but then, I can't afford a 435 on a feature.

 

 

Sorry. My question was intended to be a response to 808_Bass's original post.

 

But then, have you been in situations where you would have done 150fps if it was in the budget?

[Stephen Williams]

How many times have you done 150fps?

 

Hi,

 

About the same amount as 360fps on a Photosonics! I have my own Mitchell that goes 120fps, so 150fps is no big deal.

With the Photosonics at 360fps you could get 4 or 5 takes on a 1000' roll if the takes were very short, producers uaually start crying by the 10th roll!

 

Stephen

[Daniel Stigler]

Hi,

 

About the same amount as 360fps on a Photosonics! I have my own Mitchell that goes 120fps, so 150fps is no big deal.

With the Photosonics at 360fps you could get 4 or 5 takes on a 1000' roll if the takes were very short, producers uaually start crying by the 10th roll!

 

Stephen

 

Dammit! I never got beyond 100fps...

I'm shooting an imagefilm for a tire company in Capetown in two weeks. I'll encourage my DoP to go as fast as possible :D

[Stephen Williams]

Dammit! I never got beyond 100fps...

I'm shooting an imagefilm for a tire company in Capetown in two weeks. I'll encourage my DoP to go as fast as possible :D

 

Hi,

 

To be honest 100fps is fast enough for most things. I once spent a week with an Actionmaster 16mm filming tennis. The director wanted to shoot every shot at 500fps, because we could! Almost all the shots had to be speeded up afterwards. Lighting was such pain (we were inside), the producer would not pay for a generator, I only had 63 amp 3 phase available. Every shot was wide open, after that I got high speed out of my system!

 

Stephen

[Arni Heimir]

Is the Arri master zoom different from ARRI/Zeiss Lightweight Zoom LWZ-1? Are you talking about the same lenses?

[Max Jacoby]

The Masterzoon is a different lens. 16.5-110mm T2.6

[Arni Heimir]

The Masterzoon is a different lens. 16.5-110mm T2.6

Max, do you have some literature about it? A weblink?

 

Do you know when it will become avail for general rental?

[Max Jacoby]

There's nothing on the Arri website yet, but it has been available from Arri Munich since last summer. But I'm sure there are not too many around yet. Also unlike other equipment that they manufacture, Arri will not be selling the Master Zoom to other rental companies. If you want to use it, you need to rent it straight from them.

[Charlie Peich]

Also wondering if anyone has heard if a high speed 435 might be in development?

 

It seems Arri are doing a great job of integrating all of the various facets of their camera systems at the moment, which is what I always

 

A few years ago when I was considering purchasing the 435 Advanced, I had heard the rumor about the possibility of a high-speed 435 in the future. It was explained to me that the 435 movement we are all familiar with, the one that has been in use since day one, will run up to 200fps. The reason the current 435s will not go this fast is the design of the present magazine. While the 435's magazines are a vast improvement over the 2C and 35III mags, there is still one common element left over from the older mags, the throat containing the gear drive and feed/take up sprockets. I was told this design could not handle frame rates much above 150fps. By the time the speed reached 200fps, the magazine started to vibrate so much it caused damage to the film, mag and the camera. Apparently the operator of that test ran away seeking cover when the camera hit 170fps.... just kidding...

 

My next question was.... "Why didn't you just redesign the mags to handle the 200fps?". The answer falls into the marketing aspect of introducing new equipment, what does the customer want and what will he pay for it. To Arri's credit, when they started the 435 program, they questioned D.o.Ps, camera owners and rental houses to find out what they would like in a new mos camera. I'll only address one request as it pertains to the 200fps issue. Owner operators and rental houses wanted to be able to use their existing 2C and 35III mags on the new camera. I'm also keeping this discussion to 400ft mags and not the 1000 footers. There are different issues with the 1000 footers.

 

The 35III mags are able to reach 130fps without any modifications other than changing the brass drive gear to a harder steel one if your mag didn't already have one. Remember, the 1st 35III ran up to 100fps, the 2nd generation reached 120fps and the 3rd generation reached 130fps. Someone must have felt the extra 10fps was worth it. When using the old style mags on the 435, you lose the ability to run at 150 fps, the camera will not let it run over 130fps (I personally don't like to run them over 120fps anyway). There is a sensor that senses when the old style mags are on the camera and then slows down the range of speed ramps you can do. You also loose end of roll shut off, but that wasn't a problem as we never had that feature before so it didn't matter, at least to that generation of shooters. You can have the older style mags modified to run at 150fps by PS Technik and that includes magnets installed for the sensors in the 435. I haven't used one, so I can't comment on its performance.... anyone out there use one??

 

By agreeing to stay with the old throat design, I imagine Arri saved a lot of time and money not having to redesign this part of the mag, a part that has proven it's reliability for decades on thousands of mags. Plus Arri was already making these parts and had bins full of them in the stock room. I'm not saying it's the best solution, but to Arri it may have meant less engineering time and time saved having to manufacture new parts. Also, Arri could pass that savings on to a customer per mag and the customers saved by the number of mags they initially had to invest in. With the new 435 mag housing design, including the improved take up drive, Arri achieved 150fps out of the existing throat and its gear drive and sprockets. Another thing to remember, the camera housing is made to accept this throat design, and the magazine gear drive in the camera is built to drive the older style mags. Any new mag designs that would solve the high-speed problems would most likely not fit the camera and be incompatible with the camera drive. New camera then? Maybe Arri regrets not completely designing new mags to go at higher speed from the get go...????

 

The new 235 uses the same mag throat design also. The lid latch on the 200ft mag is the same design as the old style 400ft mags. Did they have a bin of these parts left over also? Why didn?t they use the latches that are on the 435 mags? The movement is a pre existing movement that was developed for another camera design that was scraped, so Arri adapted it for the 235, therefore keeping the price for the 235 down. The 235 doesn?t have all the features of a 435, but it answers a request for a smaller, lighter and cheaper camera that is able to use some bits and pieces from other cameras. Also, the 235 would most likely get more use and with a lower price than the 435, posibly there would be more sold than a High-speed camera. Is the jury still out on this camera?

 

The 435 Advanced and subsequently the Xtrem was originally designed to answer a specific use?.. to be compatible for use on motion control rigs. It was originally going to be called the ?435 MoCo?. One of the new improvements was the motor for the shutter. The new motor is 2.5 faster than the 435ES allowing for smoother and faster ramps with exposure compensation. With the Xtrem version, you can now do ramps from .01fps to 150fps (without full exposure compensation however).

 

Arri could start from scratch and design a whole new high-speed camera that starts at 150fps and goes to whatever speed they can get out of a pin registered movement. Or the new camera could be just like the 435Xtrem, but with newly designed magazines that enables it to go to 200fps. Will 200fps satisfy the commercial shooters? Will there be a market for it to make it worth Arri?s time, effort and investment? If you read some of the posts on this list and on CML, there seems to be a lot of ?posters? in the business who definitely feel film will be gone in 3 to 5 years for production. Who wants to invest in a new camera then?

Maybe Arri has read these posts also. :unsure:

 

Charlie

D.o.P. Chicago

[Guest 808_Bass]

Thanks for that, v. interesting.

 

Having worked on a high speed clip a few weeks ago, i'm now re-visiting the whole concept of a h/s 435.

 

I've come to the conclusion that speed gains, when viewed on screen, are exponential (like most things camera related).

We'd shoot at 500fps, and then when that wasn't slow enough we'd jump to 1000fps - the difference between 500-600fps was was minimal, as was 500-750 and so on (the camera could do 200,000fps, and not even start to smoke!).

For us it was just numbers, but thinking of it in terms of film camera performance, we were making 250fps jumps just to see any difference at all, albeit minimal.

 

I guess my point is, i think any kind of 435h/s would have to be capable of hitting at least 500fps to make a meaningful difference from 150fps, and i'm thinking that if they could do that based on the existing 435 template, then Arri would probably be building car engines that run on Heineken instead of cameras.

 

Still, you never know.

 

Oh yeah, I'm also thinking that the 400 foot mags not being able to hit 200mph wouldn't nessecarily be a consideration, given that you'd by the time the camera got to speed, it'd be pretty much time to cut again....

 

 

On the Masterzoom subject, I can't quite remember, but I think minimum focus is 7' or something. Ooops!

 

Anyways, no more thinking.

[Max Jacoby]

On the Masterzoom subject, I can't quite remember, but I think minimum focus is 7' or something. Ooops!

The minimum focus on the Master Zoom is not 7 feet, but 70 cm.

[Mike Panczenko]

Speaking of these high speed cameras, a few weeks ago Audiris posted something about the Panavision Highspeed 360, the only one in the world, located in Belgium. I can't find anything more about this camera than what is on the site: www.bfcrental.com . It looks like its not a Panavision original, but a a camera modified by them. The specs are incredible, and I'd love to know more about it. Anyone have any info?