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The Zeiss Distagon vs Cooke Kinetal for 16mm Film


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Going to be shooting a short film on the Arriflex 16SR in the coming weeks, and I'm caught at a crossroads. I either go with Zeiss's Distagon (super-35, 1960's, Arri S mount) line of lenses for the shoot or Cooke's Kinetals (super-16, 1950's, Arri S mount). There are many aspects (including price) which I really like about each in their own respective ways. I'm most certainly the minority here, but I've never been too crazy about "The Cooke Look" in the same way the rest of the cinematography world is. I just wanted to through this one out to you all and hear some opinions. Mainly, how do the Distagon's and the Kinetal's differ in make, reliability, handling, sharpness, contrast, abberation, flares, skin tones, DOF, and everything else worth mentioning. Thanks!

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I will save you the dilemma of choice by pointing out that many Cooke Kinetals cannot be used on Arri 16SR cameras because they protrude too far back. They were designed for the Arriflex 16S back in the 50s, but with the 16BL and subsequent cameras Arri changed the mirror and groundglass positions and the Kinetals were no longer compatible. 

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5 hours ago, Dom Jaeger said:

I will save you the dilemma of choice by pointing out that many Cooke Kinetals cannot be used on Arri 16SR cameras because they protrude too far back. They were designed for the Arriflex 16S back in the 50s, but with the 16BL and subsequent cameras Arri changed the mirror and groundglass positions and the Kinetals were no longer compatible. 

That’s a shame. You know if they would work on something like the Eclair ACL 2?

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4 hours ago, James Coleman Rogers said:

Kinetals were also made in C-mount although they are quite rare. I have a 12.5mm in c-mount for sale. A good number of the C-mount kinetals were late production/high serial number, and actually have Cooke's multicoating:

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C-mount wouldn't work whatsoever on any Arri camera, and if I were in fact going to shoot Eclair, I would be much better of just buying Arri mount and adapting it to C/Cameflex mount. 

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On 1/9/2022 at 2:28 AM, Dom Jaeger said:

Oh sure, ACLs can take C mounts so no problem with Arri Standard lenses, as long as you have the adapter.

Since I may actually have to end up going the Eclair route regardless of preference, would you happen to have any more of an understanding/any information regarding the rudimentary optical differences between the Distagons and Kinetals? 

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The Zeiss lenses came out in the late 60s/70s and are more modern and contrasty. Kinetals are about 20 years older from the same era as series 2 Speed Panchros.

The Zeiss lenses you’re talking about are usually called “Standard Speeds”, and were very widely used all through the 70s, 80s, 90s, and even still now. The widest is a 16mm, which is not very wide for 16mm format. Zeiss made a series of high speed (“Super Speed”) lenses for the 16mm format which goes from 9.5mm to 50mm. There is also an 8mm Zeiss standard speed for 16mm, it doesn’t cover Super 16 though.

Why don’t you see if you can rent a camera/lens package with Zeiss lenses and try them out? Kinetals will be harder to find for rent. If you buy them in Arri mount be aware they need a special adapter. Vintage lenses like these tend to also need cine modding if you want to use modern tools like a follow focus or focus motors, matte box etc.

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