How to get the clearest image with 16mm

[Samuel Berger]

 

Make sure you focus really good.

 

Here's some regular 16mm footage when I was testing an Arri SR1 with a Zeiss 10-100 2.8 lens. A decent lens, sunny day and decent focusing can get you very sharp results.

 

 

I like the lens, it's just going to be a nightmare to find it in CA-1 mount. I was given an adapter from Arri to CA-1 made by Les Bosher but I never tried it. I guess I'll read up on the different Arri mounts, I haven't a clue which Arri mount my adapter accepts, as it was a gift.

[Jon O'Brien]

Excellent advice in this thread. Thank you! I'm going to start a short music video soon on a Bolex. I have a Switar 16mm and Nikkor 50mm SLR on adapter for prime lenses. Will have to make sure I can stop down the Nikkor to f4 to get around the Rx/prism issue. Will be using 50D.

[Doug Palmer]

Excellent advice in this thread. Thank you! I'm going to start a short music video soon on a Bolex. I have a Switar 16mm and Nikkor 50mm SLR on adapter for prime lenses. Will have to make sure I can stop down the Nikkor to f4 to get around the Rx/prism issue. Will be using 50D.

Try the Nikkor lens on wider stops too. You may be pleasantly surprised at the sharpness.

[Jon O'Brien]

Thanks Doug. I will try it out.

[Jon O'Brien]

What are some examples of tack-sharp C mount triplet lenses for 16mm cameras?

Also, what are the Ektar lenses like, generally? The ones made for the K100 camera. Are any of them triplet designs? I have a 25mm f1.9 which seems to be pretty good though maybe with a slight haze depending on the light, and a 25mm f1.4 coming soon which I'm hoping will be good.

I've heard that the Ektar f1.9 can suffer from yellowing from the lens coating. Is it expensive to have this yellowing removed?

[Simon Wyss]

8 hours ago, Jon O'Brien said:

I've heard that the Ektar f1.9 can suffer from yellowing from the lens coating.

25mm f1.4

What are some examples of tack-sharp C mount triplet lenses for 16mm cameras?

Lens coatings never turn yellowish, some sorts of glass do, namely thorium-oxyde alloys that contain traces of cerium oxyde. That goes brown-yellow.

The Cine Ektar 25 mm, f/1.4, is a Schneider formula.

The Hawk-Eye works made a few ciné triplets.

• Anastigmat, later dubbed Cine Ektanon 15 mm, f/2.7;
• Anastigmat 20 mm, f/3.5;
• Anastigmat 2 inch, f/3.5;

Sharper than triplets are four-elements lenses. Modern Petzval designs are surprising, for instance the Bausch & Lomb Animar 26 mm, f/1.9. Another good four-glasser is the Ernostar concept besides the all-time classic Tessar. Tele-Tessar are fantastic. Zeiss had the 18 cm, f/6.3, in a mount that takes only a quarter turn to pull through the focus range from infinity to 2,5 meters (8 ft 3 in).

Cleanest image else through fine grain stock, camera with good steadiness on rigid support, coated lens, sunshade, no filters, accurate focusing, and only little to no overexposure. A medium dense film projected with enough light yields the cleaner image than everything else. Of course you have a projection lens in the game but there again very good sharpness can be had with four-glass designs. The serious projectionist is equipped with a spyglass.