Problems with RED & Century made PL mounts

[Guest Robert Skates]

I originally posted this at the end of a longer thread and it was slightly off topic. I thought it deserved it's own thread.

 

The RED PL mount has issues with some Century made PL lens mounts. I discovered this last summer while shooting a multi RED camera project. We had a Century converted Canon 150-600mm. The lens would mount just fine on one of the Red bodies and not at all on the other. At first I thought it was the PL locking ring on the Red. I work at a rental house so I started testing that lens on other Red bodies and discovered that it would mount on some but not others. Even when it did mount, the PL locking ring would not rotate as far as it normally would with other lenses. After examiningg the difference between lenses that worked and lenses that did not I realized it was only the Century made PL mounts.

 

The problem has to do with the 90 degree angle where the flange portion of the PL mount (the four wings that the camera's PL mount locks around) meets the part that extends into the camera's PL mount (body). On Zeiss PL mounts that 90 degree angle has a sharp corner. On Century made PL lens mounts that corner has a chamfer. ARRI PL camera mounts have a sizable chamfer. The RED PL mount has less of a chamfer. This causes many Century PL mounts to not seat properly on some RED mounts. It depends how tight the locking ring is. If the lens does lock in it will still be approx. 1-1.5mm further away from the focal plane than it should be.

 

Has anyone else encountered this. This happens with some long Century converted primes, Century 1.4 & 2X extenders and some older Cooke Zooms.

[Guest Robert Skates]

I originally posted this at the end of a longer thread and it was slightly off topic. I thought it deserved it's own thread.

 

The RED PL mount has issues with some Century made PL lens mounts. I discovered this last summer while shooting a multi RED camera project. We had a Century converted Canon 150-600mm. The lens would mount just fine on one of the Red bodies and not at all on the other. At first I thought it was the PL locking ring on the Red. I work at a rental house so I started testing that lens on other Red bodies and discovered that it would mount on some but not others. Even when it did mount, the PL locking ring would not rotate as far as it normally would with other lenses. After examiningg the difference between lenses that worked and lenses that did not I realized it was only the Century made PL mounts.

 

The problem has to do with the 90 degree angle where the flange portion of the PL mount (the four wings that the camera's PL mount locks around) meets the part that extends into the camera's PL mount (body). On Zeiss PL mounts that 90 degree angle has a sharp corner. On Century made PL lens mounts that corner has a chamfer. ARRI PL camera mounts have a sizable chamfer. The RED PL mount has less of a chamfer. This causes many Century PL mounts to not seat properly on some RED mounts. It depends how tight the locking ring is. If the lens does lock in it will still be approx. 1-1.5mm further away from the focal plane than it should be.

 

Has anyone else encountered this. This happens with some long Century converted primes, Century 1.4 & 2X extenders and some older Cooke Zooms.

No one else has experienced this?

[Hal Smith]

No one else has experienced this?

Have you contacted RED? They need to hear of your troubling experience with Century mounts as soon as possible.

[Matthew Rogers]

I've had an issue with mounting some old Ziess lenses which were Arri B mount and had a removable PL mount on them. According to the owner, they worked just fine on a friend's RED, but neither of the two PL adapters would work on my RED. So yes, I believe some PL mounts just will not fit on some RED's.

 

Matthew

[Mike Medavoy]

I also couldn't mount on my RED a Tegea 9.8mm lens with a custom Century PL mount.

 

 

I've had an issue with mounting some old Ziess lenses which were Arri B mount and had a removable PL mount on them. According to the owner, they worked just fine on a friend's RED, but neither of the two PL adapters would work on my RED. So yes, I believe some PL mounts just will not fit on some RED's.

 

Matthew

[Satsuki Murashige]

I've been working with a Century converted 200mm T2 Nikkor lens on a Red for the past two days with no problems. I did notice the PL mount on the lens was a little different from those on the Ultra Primes we were using, as the rear PL cap on the Century lens was very loose and would keep falling off. It mounted fine on the Red though, and it taped out so the FFD was not affected.

[thomas-english]

I had the same problem with a bayonet to PL converted century optics 3.5mm and a 5.7mm Kinoptic. Deneesh from Panavision explained the same thing you report noticing. He simply turned the mounts on a lathe.

 

As yet I have not had a chance to test it on the standard RED. The last job I did was an IMS RED. It worked fine on that but...