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Red Lenses - Why not T stop


rory hinds

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This looks likes my error. I did not work hard enough to negotiate on this feature. My new goal is to include T-stops at no additional cost to our customer. If we have to take a margin hit... oh, well. I think we can accommodate this on the primes. The jury is still out on the zoom. I'm still working on it.

 

Please remember that we are working hard for our customer and this is our 1st camera/lens project. We are likely to make a few mistakes along the way. The only thing we can do it try to correct them as quickly as possible. It appears that we still have some time to fix this.

 

BTW... that's why we are here on the boards.

 

Jim

 

Sorry... I reversed primes/zooms. I think we can accommodate the zooms, jury is still out on the primes. But we are working on it.

 

Jim

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I asked a few questions in the appropriate places, and the answer is fairly much as been suspected.

 

Unless the lens maker wants to buy a tonne of blank glass and get a life time's supply of lenses cut, ground, polished and coated all at once, there will be differences between lenses in assembled form.

 

If it is a very expensive, handcrafted lens that people pay lots of money for, the extra work needed to equip T-Stops is not going to add much. It is possible to select lenses from stocks of different sizes in that the overall average assembly adds up to the same average transmission efficiency, so all lenses of one batch use the same calibration marks.

 

However, these will not necessarily the same for the next production of the lens.

 

With very small production, the lenses are usually hand calibrated by simply measuring how much light from a calibrated light box gets through to the focal plane.

 

Why do "digital cinematography" cameras lenses have "T stops"? Bah! There is no need for it at all, except, the makers were keen to erase the dreaded "V" word, you know V---o! Anybody who thinks they need T-Stops with a "camera is not a film camera" does not know enough about cameras that are not film cameras. In my modest opinion :lol:

 

With cheap mass production lenses it is simply cheaper to mark the lens according to the diameter of the aperture and have it at that. Nearly 100% of the lenses made these days are for consumer automatic cameras anyway.

 

I have my suspicions that Jannard is getting his glass (or even whole lenses) made in China. It can be cheap, but be warned, quality control is a continuous nightmare there. It has been only half joked that the biggest growth in industry in China used to be quality control, but now it's in companies that test the quality of quality control companies :rolleyes:

 

I don't understand, with all the fancy equipment Jannard has in it's factory, they can't make something that automatically engrave T-Stop marks? The marker lines only has to be in the right place, the numbers can be stuck on a label.

 

But, unless you are going to use the lenses with film cameras, the T stopping will be an extra expense for the pure benefit of film users. If it was me I would charge the bastards extra!

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I have my suspicions that Jannard is getting his glass (or even whole lenses) made in China. It can be cheap, but be warned, quality control is a continuous nightmare there. It has been only half joked that the biggest growth in industry in China used to be quality control, but now it's in companies that test the quality of quality control companies :rolleyes:

This is a telling statement, considering that a Beijing court sentenced the former head of China's food and drug administration to death Tuesday on corruption charges for accepting bribes in return for granting approvals to hundreds of medicines.

 

Here is an excert form a recent news report:

 

"The sentence comes as lax controls over the safety of foodstuffs, drugs and other consumer goods have catapulted to the top of the national agenda following a series of public health scares from Chinese-made products.

 

It also came on the same day state media announced China would introduce regulations soon creating a recall system for dodgy products."

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Don't know why you assume RED is getting its glass in China. There are precious few optical firms with the installed technology to manufacture these lenses. China is only one possibility. I'm betting that RED is expecting an initial production run of at least 500 sets of primes (good call to make them only available as a complete set) and that is a sizeable enough order to make the economics work.

 

Every individual Cooke prime is hand-tested and marked for T-stops. I suspect the same is true of Zeiss, Angenieux and others.

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Don't know why you assume RED is getting its glass in China. T

 

There are hundreds of Chinese companies making lenses now. Try the Internet. Canon gets most of their lenses made in China now. Nearly all the "Zeiss" lenses used on Sony's Handycams and Cybershots are made in China.

The explosion in the electronic camera market (both still and video) has upscaled producition of quality lenses to a great extent.

 

Lens glass is a commodity, sold by the kilo like the silicon they make microchips from. Because so much is made now, the quality is much more constant, which is what they want for easy mass production.

 

Most of the known brands of lens makers, like everybody else, has found more money in selling technology to the Chinese than making lenses themselves. From what I have heard, their quality can be very good, but as I said you have to watch them.

 

The USSR did make some OK lenses at one time, when money was no object (strictly speaking, in the USSR there was no such thing :rolleyes:) What we saw appears to have been stuff that "fell from the back of an (army) truck". The only things the USSR ever made any good was military equipment . I don't think Russia have the technology or the workforce to produce the quality Jannard is wanting, at least for a decent price! Plus the Russian exchange rate is no longer as good as it was. And I would trust those bastards less than the Chinese!

 

 

Every individual Cooke prime is hand-tested and marked for T-stops. I suspect the same is true of Zeiss, Angenieux and others.

You would expect less? For the prices they are charging, I would not! :lol:

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The Russians still make high quality lenses. There has been a number of threads here comparing the Optar Super 16 favourably with the Zeiss Super Speeds.

 

http://www.optica-elite.com/default.aspx

 

http://www.optarillumina.com/

 

 

Of course, RED could have engaged a Chinese manufacturer, but they tend to go for higher volumes than you'd expect in the high end professional camera market.

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Don't know why you assume RED is getting its glass in China. There are precious few optical firms with the installed technology to manufacture these lenses. China is only one possibility. I'm betting that RED is expecting an initial production run of at least 500 sets of primes (good call to make them only available as a complete set) and that is a sizeable enough order to make the economics work.

 

Every individual Cooke prime is hand-tested and marked for T-stops. I suspect the same is true of Zeiss, Angenieux and others.

 

Hi Mitch,

 

I would be very interrested in reading your source that says every Cooke prime is individually marked for T stops.

 

Thanks,

 

Chuck

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Hi Mitch,

 

I would be very interrested in reading your source that says every Cooke prime is individually marked for T stops.

 

Thanks,

 

Chuck

 

Chuck,

 

I have just mailed that question to my contact at Cooke Optics, hopefully I will have an answer on Monday.

 

Stephen

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Hi Mitch,

 

I would be very interrested in reading your source that says every Cooke prime is individually marked for T stops.

 

Thanks,

 

Chuck

I believe it was Jon Fauer's Film & Video Times. He wrote an article after visiting the Cooke factory.

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Many years ago, I owned a set of Ziess super speeds T1.4's and had them at one of the major rental houses for an evaluation.

 

For some reason I was concerned about the accuracy of the iris after a repair, and so we put the lenses up to be read for exposure accuracy.

 

Much to my surprise, the lens tech informed me that there would be some variation in the exposure across the iris range. Though the lenses are marked in T-Stops, he said, the markings are only 100% accurate when the lens is wide open. Once one starts closing the iris, I was informed, the marks are made using math/geometry and not light measurement. He told me that the spec from Ziess was that each stop be accurate +? 1/3 stop.

 

I checked the lens set, and well it was true: Exposure varied in accuracy as I closed the iris. This was true for every lens in the set.

 

This has not been an issue shooting color negative film as there is enough latitude to cover up the iris variation from lens to lens. On an HD camera, (when not shooting a raw workflow) tiny changes in iris have a very noticeable effect on the image. I'm not sure one will be able to just set all cameras to the same stop in this situation, regardless of the T vs. F markings because of the variation in the accuracy of the irises themselves.

 

I thought this might add some perspective to the f vs. T stop discusssion. If there is a real lens expert out there who would like to comment or correct me here, please step forward.

 

-bruce

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Cooke optics have replied as follows:-

 

Hi Stephen,

 

Yes, Cooke individually calibrates, marks and engraves the scales on all of

our lenses. However, I believe this is not the case for all lens manufacturers!

Hope things are going well for you.

 

All the Best

 

Laura Hatton

Cooke Optics Limited

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Plus the Russian exchange rate is no longer as good as it was. And I would trust those bastards less than the Chinese!

 

I don't think this language is appropriate or necessary. Russians are no bastards, nor are Chinese - everybody would agree, correct?

 

Stephen, kindly moderate this.

 

Thank you.

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I don't think this language is appropriate or necessary. Russians are no bastards, nor are Chinese - everybody would agree, correct?

 

Stephen, kindly moderate this.

 

Thank you.

 

Hi George,

 

I agree that such language is inappropriate. I am not authorised to edit posts, only Tim Tylor can do that.

 

I have sent a PM to Tim & Werner.

 

Stephen

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The LOMO optical works in Russia have and still do produce some of the finest optical air spaced tripplets for astronomical use ever made. And if they are good enough for Thomas Black of TMB telescopes they should be respected. The company producing the "Elite" series of motion picture lenses is also very well respected. So please try and show those commie pinko bastards there due. lol

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I don't think this language is appropriate or necessary. Russians are no bastards, nor are Chinese - everybody would agree, correct?

 

Stephen, kindly moderate this.

 

Thank you.

 

"Russians are no bastards,"

 

Sir, my wife is Russian and even she does not agree with you :lol: However she did grow up mostly in England!

 

And nowhere did I did say the Chinese were.

 

But I steadfastedly apologize to the entire former Soviet Union and Mainland China as well.

 

And I referred to Russian (well ex-Soviet to be more exact) manufacturers, rather than the Russians in general. The USSR may be gone and buried, but the work culture lingers on. But if you are happy to place orders with them, please, don't let me be the stop you! You will pick up your orders in your reliable Trabant pickup I'm sure.

 

What many people not understand is that for every cheap Chinese knick knack you buy that seems pretty good, there will be perhaps 10 - 12 that the importers knocked back because they are rubbish!! The Chinese still struggle to escape the bad habits of 50 or so years of communist rule and competitionless manufacture and hash totals rather than QC.

 

The Russians have even more years to learn such bad habits! And yes, as I said, the only stuff they made that was any good was their military orders. Just because they CAN make good glass does not mean YOU will get any :lol:

 

When I was a boy, my uncle from Poland bought me a present, a Russian Made transistor radio. I wish I'd kept it, they were so awful that they are now collector items! I have never seen anything from the USSR that I did not think was a piece of junk. Speaking of LOMO, they also produced a modern marvel, the Elektronika (or however they spelled it) VCR, a knock off of VHS. 30% of them were said to not work out of the box, the rest died soon after, and there were only 4 places in the USSR that could fix them! They're a REAL collector item!

 

I eagerly await the flood of quality Russian made consumer goods!

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However she did grow up mostly in England!

 

Alot of them seem to these days :rolleyes:

 

 

Apple : Red

 

I think it's nice how the guy places the lens on the table with the Cooke logo conveniently facing towards the camera. Product placement! We're being brainwashed I tell you.

 

But in all seriousness. Sure they couldn't just have contracted say Nikon, Fuji(Hasselblad H-series lenses), Leica or Canon(less likely) to produce the lenses? Even someone like Cooke might be willing to do it. I mean these lenses would hardly steal business from someone looking at buying Angenieux, Cooke or Zeiss lenses.

Zeiss seem to be doing pretty well producing el'cheapo for Sony handycams and Nokia mobile phones :P

I guess we'll know more when they are out. They'll have to mark them with "Made in Somewhere" I guess.

Edited by Alexander Joyce
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I believe the Zeiss lenses on home camcorders are just Zeiss designs and are not fabricated by them. Same with the Schneider zoom on my little Kodak digital still camera.

Or the Leica glass on Panasonic camcorders. It is licensing to build to a standard. And let's note that this is for thousands and thousands of units, not the few hundred that 35mm PL lens mount lenses would yield.

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Hi Jim,

 

Can you confirm that the Red primes will be in T stops.

 

I have just read this on REDUSER

"Now that Jim has anounced the Red lenses will be marked in T stops I'm going to close this thread. I think we all need some breathing room."

 

My best

 

Stephen

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Hey Stephen,

 

Ever hear back from the Cooke guy about "T" stopping on their lenses?

 

Chuck

 

Cooke optics replied as follows:-

 

Hi Stephen,

 

Yes, Cooke individually calibrates, marks and engraves the scales on all of

our lenses. However, I believe this is not the case for all lens manufacturers!

Hope things are going well for you.

 

All the Best

 

Laura Hatton

Cooke Optics Limited

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