Angenieux 24-290 Optimo...

[Jonathan Spear]

Hey,

 

 

I was wondering if any of you have had any experience with the Angenieux 24-290 Optimo and if you know of any films shot mainly with this 24+ lb lens. Any stills shot with this lens would be tremendously appreciated.

 

Cheers,

 

-Jon

[Max Jacoby]

I used it on 'The Merchant of Venice'. I think it is the best PL mount zoom lens out there. Very sharp (with less depth of field than primes) and very fast. It is heavy, but then again it is a zoom lens, so it'll stay on the dolly/tripod anyway. Lots of films have been shot on it recently. 'King Arthur', 'Closer', 'Alexander' come to mind. Interesting to note that people use them in combination with both UltraPrimes and S4s.

[Phil Rhodes]

Hi,

 

> with less depth of field than primes

 

That's clever - how've they done that?

 

Phil

[Adam Frisch FSF]

(with less depth of field than primes)

 

I'm sorry, but I think that's an impossibility.

[Stephen Williams]

Hi,

 

> with less depth of field than primes

 

That's clever - how've they done that?

 

Phil

 

 

 

Hi Phil,

 

Zoom lens's do seem to have less depth of field than primes at the same T stop. (Depth of field is a relationship of F stop). A zoom lens has much more glass for the light to pass thru so there can be quite a difference. For example a Cooke 20-100 is f2.8 & T3.1. Remember DOF is calculated from the enterance pupil of the lens, not the film plane, thats why the Samcine DoF disc has a seperate chart for Zooms!

 

I have just made some tests with 2 zooms & 4 primes and I was surprised how much the apparent DoF varied. A soft lens seems to have far greater DoF than a very sharp lens.

 

Stephen Williams DoP

Zurich Switzerland

 

www.stephenw.com

[Brent J. Craig]

The 24-290 is a beautiful lens.

 

The out of focus highlights wide-open look really glamorous. They are perfectly round and look great. That extra 40mm that brings it to 290 seems to make a big difference.

 

As a focus puller, of course I hate any lens that the DP can suddenly crash in to 290mm without notice :( but the Optimo has a special charm.

 

Sure it weighs a ton, but once it's mounted, it can often stay there for several shots.

 

Clairmont Camera has modified their Optimos to include a nice contoured handle right at the center of balance of the lens. Since it's Clairmont, they have also added a threaded hole to the handle so you can mount your onboard monitor right there within your field of view. If you're shooting at 290 mil at 2.8, you might as well see what the DP is aiming at!

 

That extra handle came in very handy when Harris Savides and Dante decided to use the lens as a director's finder and lug it all around downtown Toronto last year.

 

In my experience, the Optimo looks just as sharp as the Cooke S4's, but is slightly more prone to flares, just like any zoom lens. It cuts perfectly with the S4 look.

 

The optical voodoo mentioned above about zooms having less depth of field than primes is completely true. Macro lenses take it even a step further.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

I'm sorry, I still don't believe that. It might look that way, but isn't it more of a case that you often end up at a focal lenght that's slightly longer than you think? At least that's my experience with zooms - you kinda end up at the long end ('cause long looks goooooood).

 

DoF is a function of the f/stop, focal lenght and the size of the image. These are physical rules that can not be cheated no matter how many elements of glass you have in the lens, as far as I've understood it.

 

In fact, we had a long discussion some years ago about DoF actually being constant. It was

about photographing a face and keeping it the same size in frame. It went something like thike this:

 

If you move in with a wide lens, say a 20mm, you're so close that you have to be close focus probably. This will throw the background out of focus since you're very near the macro end.

 

At the other end of the spectrum you're doing the same thing with, let's say a 200mm. Now you have to be so far from the object to keep the same size that your focus is now closer to the infinity mark. Not at infinity, but close enough to make it within the hyperfocal distance. Meaning that the background will be out of focus, but not moreso than it was in the 20mm.

 

I still haven't found out clinically if this is true, but it sounds like a possibility. Remember all those Vertigo-shots where they track in and zoom out? I can't recall seeing massive defocusing of the background in those when the size of the object in the frame stays the same. So maybe there is some thruth to it. I'm going to find out some day.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Also compounding the problem is that zooms actually "change" f-stop during a zoom to make it constant. They have physical stops restricting light at the wide end as to have the same f-stop as the long end. Still zooms don't have to bother with this and there you frequently see zooms that are f2.8 in the wide end but f4 in the long end. Don't know if this could affect something, my brain is cooking now, so I'll just have another coffee and let you fight it out. :P

[David Mullen ASC]

Zooms should not have a different depth of field than primes. A 20mm at f/2.8 has the same depth of field even if you're talking about 20mm on the zoom.

 

What some are saying is that because of the slightly greater difference between f-stops and T-stops on a zoom versus a prime, you'll be shooting at a slightly wider f-stop when you match T-stops on a prime versus a zoom. But the depth of field isn't different if you match their F-STOPS, just when you match T-STOPS. In other words, saying that a zoom has less depth of field just because it has worse light transmission characteristics hardly sounds like a technical advantage.

 

The other issue is where softer older lenses seem to have more depth of field than modern sharper lenses, just because the difference between what's soft and sharp is more blurred on an older lens. People talks about Zeiss lenses dropping off more rapidly in focus as you rack, for example, versus an older Cooke. That's more of a visual trick, getting more depth of field by being softer overall, than true depth of field.

[Max Jacoby]

One 1st AC I have worked with tested the Optimo against the UltraPrimes and he said too that the zoom has less dof than these primes. This guy is extremely thorough and I know he tested these lenses extensively so I do believe him.

[David Mullen ASC]

One 1st AC I have worked with tested the Optimo against the UltraPrimes and he said too that the zoom has less dof than these primes. This guy is extremely thorough and I know he tested these lenses extensively so I do believe him.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

It defies logic and physics so until someone gives me a reason I can understand, I'm going to file that into the "wive's tales" and "psuedo-science" that permeates the film industry, the same thinking that got us believing that the Frazer lens had more depth of field or that you need to poor more light on a black object to make it black.

[Adam Frisch FSF]

What some are saying is that because of the slightly greater difference between f-stops and T-stops on a zoom versus a prime, you'll be shooting at a slightly wider f-stop when you match T-stops on a prime versus a zoom.  But the depth of field isn't different if you match their F-STOPS, just when you match T-STOPS.  In other words, saying that a zoom has less depth of field just because it has worse light transmission characteristics hardly sounds like a technical advantage.

 

Sorry, didn't get that. Please explain, David.

[David Mullen ASC]

Sorry, didn't get that. Please explain, David.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Well, let's say you light the scene and the meter tells you to expose it at f/4. So you set the prime lens and the zoom lens to T/4. But if you look at the actual f-stop (if marked) you perhaps see that the true f-stop on the zoom is nearly a half-stop wider-open than the T-stop. And since depth of field is controlled by f-stop, not T-stop, you're shooting at a wider f-stop with the zoom and therefore getting less depth of field, even though you have matched the prime and the zoom with the T-stop.

 

But I can't imagine it's a significant difference.

[Stephen Williams]

 

 

DoF is a function of the f/stop, focal lenght and the size of the image. These are physical rules that can not be cheated no matter how many elements of glass you have in the lens, as far as I've understood it.

 

Hi Adam,

 

As a rule of thumb this is correct and applies 100% in macro photography.

 

However when comparing lenses, the focus distance of the widest lens used must be less than 1/4 of its hyperfocal distance. That explains why the DOF charts usually agree with the theory but not in every case!

 

Stephen Williams DoP

Zurich Switzerland

 

www.stephenw.com

[Max Jacoby]

I don't think anyone here is trying to suggest that the Optimo is defying the laws of optics or that zooms in general have less depth of field than primes. But while formulas to calculate depth of field are good as a general tool, they do not take the characteristics of individual lenses into account. Some lenses just have a faster fall off into out of focus and therfore less depth of field than others. Which is why each lens manufacurer publishes charts for their own lenses. If you take an Ultra Prime and a Cooke S4 of the same focal lenght, then the Ultra Prime will have less depth of field than the Cooke at the same stop. That is just the way these lenses are manufactured

 

The Optimos are the very latest zoom lenses and lots of research went into them to make them as fast as they are, to reduce breathing and to get good close-focus. Unlike older zooms that are less sharp than primes (and therfore have less depth of field also), the Optimos are very sharp lenses with a very fast fall off. Therefore it make sense in my mind that they also have less depth of field than a prime.

[David Mullen ASC]

How?

 

No one has yet to explain why, other than to say "that's just the way it is."

[Max Jacoby]

Then let me ask this question in return:

 

Do people think that Cooke S4s and Zeiss Ultra Primes have exactly the same depth of field? Or to take an even more extrem example: does anyone think that the new Master Primes and an old Cooke S2 have the same depth of field just because their focal length happens to be identical?

[Tenolian Bell]

That's actually what I've always heard. Is that a general depth of field chart like Sammy's is broad. But doesn't take into account varations in manufacture of different brands. That Zeiss, Cooke or Primo's won't have the exact same depth of field. Not far off but not exact either.

 

To have proof of that I guess you would test them next to each other. How do we really know Kodak uses T-grain in its films, other than the fact they told us so?

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Then let me ask this question in return:

 

Do people think that Cooke S4s and Zeiss Ultra Primes have exactly the same depth of field? Or to take an even more extrem example: does anyone think that the new Master Primes and an old Cooke S2 have the same depth of field just because their focal length happens to be identical?

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

Yes, I do. Percieved DoF is another thing, since softer lenses might have "less apparent" DoF due to the general softness of them (i.e. it's hard to judge). But if one could somehow measure it clinically, they'd probably be the same. Now, we can't measure DoF clinically, so the whole exercise becomes a question of judgement.

[Tenolian Bell]

On Cooke's website they have different depth of field charts for different types of lens.

 

"The depth of field charts refer specifically to the optical design used for the specific lens, since allowance has been made for the position of the front nodal point relative to the film plane in each case."

 

"Hard copies of individual depth of field charts are available for the older Cooke Speed Panchro lenses and Cooke Speed Panchro lenses, Series II and Series III..."

[Max Jacoby]

Yes, I do. Percieved DoF is another thing, since softer lenses might have "less apparent" DoF due to the general softness of them (i.e. it's hard to judge). But if one could somehow measure it clinically, they'd probably be the same. Now, we can't measure DoF clinically, so the whole exercise becomes a question of judgement.

 

I am talking about 'peceived depth of field' since that is the only one that counts in my opinion. If it looks soft it is soft, even if according to a formula it should still be sharp.

[Peter Martin]

Zooms should not have a different depth of field than primes. A 20mm at f/2.8 has the same depth of field even if you're talking about 20mm on the zoom.

 

David!

 

That's true. Calculating depth of field means using mathematics only. The actual design of the lens does not influence the result. You have to consider that the formulas referring to the position of the pupil and not the film plane. If you focus the 24-290mm to 2m at T4 the distance to the pupil will be about 1.75m at f3.3. A prime lens adjusted to the same distance would have 1.9m at f3.7.

 

Older lenses tend to be more forgiving because of lower definition and their curved field.

 

Peter Martin

Lens Design Hawk Anamorphic

 

www.vantagefilm.com

[Stephen Williams]

It defies logic and physics so until someone gives me a reason I can understand, I'm going to file that into the "wive's tales" and "psuedo-science" that permeates the film industry, the same thinking that got us believing that the Frazer lens had more depth of field or that you need to poor more light on a black object to make it black.

<{POST_SNAPBACK}>

 

 

David,

 

I think I have an answer you will understand!

David Samuelson's HANDS-ON manuel for cinematography second edition page 220 explaines it well. I simplify as follows:-

 

DoF is measured from the enterance pupil of the lens NOT the film plane.

With a zoom lens the enterance pupil MOVES during Zoom and focus changes

 

The Panavision Primo 11:1 T2.8 24-275 is a good example.

With the lens focused at infinity:-

@24mm the enterance pupil is 305.9mm in front of focal plane

@275mm the enterance pupil is 263.4 behind the focal plane.

 

At the wide end of the Zoom there is less DoF than a prime. However at the long end of the zoom there is more DoF!

 

With all lenses the enterance pupil data is available from the manufactures. This is why the charts supplied by Cooke for the S4 lenses do not exactly match the Ultra Primes charts by Arri.

 

Stephen Williams DoP

Zurich

 

www.stephenw.com