Best vintage lenses for shooting on 16mm?

[Owen A. Davies]

I realize that technically any lens on the market large enough to cover the 16mm circle would work on a 16mm camera, but in terms of vintage cine lenses out there designed specially for 16mm cameras, which ones are your guy’s top picks? Been hearing a lot of good things about Angenieux zooms and the Cooke Kinetals, but I want to know what else is out there and every time I try and search for "lenses for 16mm” I keep getting stuff regarding literally "16mm” lenses. For my upcoming short film, I’m trying to emulate a very kind of vintage 1930s-1940s look, so I do have that image very much in mind (think It’s a Wonderful Life).

[Simon Wyss]

Kind of 1930-1940s look―

Angénieux founded his enterprise in 1935 and had no zoom lens until 1956. Doesn’t fit. Kinetal was a lens line for 16-mm. film with ARRI mount in 1959, doesn’t fit either.

Things changed drastically from the thirties to the fourties, colour came in, reflex finder systems were introduced, magnetic sound recording began to be used, glass coating was being applied, the retrofocal lens concept got introduced (for Technicolor), the drama took hold rather than the lighter-hearted pre-war script. You mix up history without knowing.

If you want to have a, say, 1940 image, just technically spoken, you work at ISO 50 or 20, a panchromatic stock. Kodachrome had 10 ASA, Kodachrome A(rtificial Light) 16. Non-bloomed lenses, for 16-mm. Taylor-Hobson, Dallmeyer, Meyer, Zeiss, Goerz, Ilex, Kodak, Wollensak, Berthiot. Lesser known makes were Leitz, Graf, Ross, Gundlach, Laack. Cameras would be Bell & Howell Filmo 70, Facine, RCA, Victor, Paillard-Bolex, Ciné-Kodak Special.

What was available in 1940 but is no more today: step contact printing with labs, a well established duplication practice, titlers, hot splicers, carbon-arc projection (Strong Junior for example), variable density sound tracks, film clubs. What is it you meant with vintage???

[Duncan Brown]

It makes a big difference whether you plan to shoot in B&W or color, too.  With B&W you can more easily mix lenses that have different color casts; with color you either need to stick with one lens, or be prepared for extra color correcting when switching between shots through various lenses (assuming there's no such thing out there as a color-matched set of 1940s lenses for any reasonable price).

Duncan

[Giray Izcan]

Angenieux 12-120 wide open will do the trick i believe. 12-120 wide open will yield all sorts of flaws or as hipsters call it awesomeness haha..