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Panther / Canon 10-160 2.4 (PL S16 lens)


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Anyone know anything about this lens? I found a listing on a local site but I can‘t seem to find any info on this lens…apart from a rental company named „dagsljus“ that has one listed for rental. 
 

Description of the listing says it was rehoused by Panther and outfitted with a PL-mount. I guess it could be a Super 16 lens?

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Hello,

To my eye that looks like a 1970's - '90's era broadcast video lens minus the right handheld zoom - iris control box. I never had any reason to be aware of sensor size, so, other than standard broadcast size, I can't tell about S16 or regular 16mm coverage.

The lever on the left (or bottom of picture), side appears to be a focal length doubler, making it a 20-320mm f4'ish lens.

Behind that (closer to the mount), is what appears to be a macro lever that is continuous throughout the entire zoom range, affording some nice close-ups at any zoom setting.

The lens techs and actual users of TV lenses converted to film use can better respond to coverages and resolution factors.

One thing on the technical side I can comment on is that the aperture is not constant throughout the entire zoom range, but with our camera's auto-iris, adjustment was automatic, or if on manual, one hit momentary and it adjusted to the scene.

It became really obvious in low light situations where the iris could not open any wider.

I've never done this with a zoom lens, but as with still photo lenses, place the lens on something to keep it from rolling away from you looking through a window in a darkened room and move a small white index card close enough to allow an infinity focused image to come into focus.  Measure and diagram the resulting image circle. From this one can determine if the possibility of 16mm and S16mm frames fitting inside the circle.

That may not guarantee mechanical success, but at least will indicate theoretical optical success or failure.

As I come to the end of this response, it occurs to me that if someone went to the trouble of fitting a PL mount to this lens then it will at least fit 16mm. Unless it doesn't and is just a "Frankenstein."

Hope this helps.

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32 minutes ago, Eric Eader said:

Hello,

To my eye that looks like a 1970's - '90's era broadcast video lens minus the right handheld zoom - iris control box. I never had any reason to be aware of sensor size, so, other than standard broadcast size, I can't tell about S16 or regular 16mm coverage.

The lever on the left (or bottom of picture), side appears to be a focal length doubler, making it a 20-320mm f4'ish lens.

Behind that (closer to the mount), is what appears to be a macro lever that is continuous throughout the entire zoom range, affording some nice close-ups at any zoom setting.

The lens techs and actual users of TV lenses converted to film use can better respond to coverages and resolution factors.

One thing on the technical side I can comment on is that the aperture is not constant throughout the entire zoom range, but with our camera's auto-iris, adjustment was automatic, or if on manual, one hit momentary and it adjusted to the scene.

It became really obvious in low light situations where the iris could not open any wider.

I've never done this with a zoom lens, but as with still photo lenses, place the lens on something to keep it from rolling away from you looking through a window in a darkened room and move a small white index card close enough to allow an infinity focused image to come into focus.  Measure and diagram the resulting image circle. From this one can determine if the possibility of 16mm and S16mm frames fitting inside the circle.

That may not guarantee mechanical success, but at least will indicate theoretical optical success or failure.

As I come to the end of this response, it occurs to me that if someone went to the trouble of fitting a PL mount to this lens then it will at least fit 16mm. Unless it doesn't and is just a "Frankenstein."

Hope this helps.

Thanks for the detailed reply! 

It does indeed have a 2x doubler which was part of the modification that was supposedly done by Panther Film Equipment. I just wasn‘t able to find a Canon TV-lens that matches as a base-version. There is a 16-160mm TV zoom but that wouldn‘t make sense with the wide end of the lens. I reached out to them but haven‘t heard back yet.

I would think so too regarding the coverage. Wouldn‘t make sense in my eyes either to go through the hassle of converting and then engraving your logo on a frankenstein-lens. Any way I‘m gonna try to test it on a blackmagic micro cinema camera soon which should proof if it actually covers S16 or not.

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Hello,

It's possible that in converting to PL mount, Flange Focal Distance differences caused a change in focal length.

(I am not a tech).

So, as I remember, and not having looked on the internet, many TV news type lenses were 9mm wide focal length to whatever varying "long" focal length.

They had zoom boxes on the right for hand holding and for cables to be plugged in for on-the-tripod head handle operation.

Not all Canon Zoom lenses had 2X extenders but that box on the left would have been been put there by Canon if it started out in life as a 2X type.  Look for screw holes on the right underside of the collar to indicate missing zoom-iris box. 

Try looking for lenses to fit Sony 5, 7, or so models. Or earlier Ikegami 77-79 etc.  NBC used Panasonic cameras, but I don't remember models. 

Those were News cameras utilized by Network and Network owned and operated stations, and (Independent stations in Los Angeles), of that period. 

Like I said,  many were 9mm at the short end (with max aperture of f1.9), and some camera persons, but not all, would add on a Century wide angle adaptor for hall way "gangbangs"  (ex. ganging up on attorneys or defendants leaving courtrooms), or adding telephoto extensions when a plane crash or crime scene was too far away for in-camera 2X to give a meaningful picture.  (Not done by everyone as this was an out of pocket expense). (Would occasionally shake like hell in a moderate Southern California ocean breeze).

The more I look at that picture of the lens the more I think it is a Fuji lens (they were green ringed and had that rubber focus grip (reminding me of my Triumph Bonney 750 motorcycle throttle and brake grips).  (Add in the apparent differences in black finish color etc.).

But that may be old age senility creeping in.

Fuji had 2X as well so I don't see the need to make a Canon Extender fit a Fuji lens. Our Canon lenses had white lettering all over, but if it is a later model, it may have been changed to yellow. 

Reason and logic caution that I am simply misremembering.

Well, as the King of Siam said to Anna, (in the King and I), "Tis a puzzlement." 

The techs can speak to specs, but given the inherent softness of TV at that era/timeframe, your lens may give very crisp images with a nice "bokeh" and a working "macro" should make for quick convenient close-ups of some objects.

While Canon (and Fuji), made wider zooms, 9mm wide was about the widest available (for News) with a necessary longer end,  Too long at the wide end (above 9mm) just failed in cramped spaces, which were more the norm than not.  Too long at the long end meant handholding became very shaky; but working off a tripod meant missing fast happening events.  More than one person was "invited" to go back home for failing to understand this, or those that stayed got off the tripod pronto.  (Press conferences and limited access venues (a U.S. President's speech) being the exception to off-the-tripod operating).

To recap, look for 9mm wide (x12) f1.9 with 2X extender lenses as a base; usually Canon or Fuji.  Nikon simply wasn't used in the LA market.

If I rambled, sorry, but I hope this helps.

 

 

 

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This is almost certainly an SD era B4 Canon lens that has an Abakus 132 on the back, so it should cover s16.

It looks like Panther added measurement accurate shrouds at a 0.8 mod pitch. Maybe they cherry picked the lens, but it is going to be an older design, although some SD lenses were better than others. (I have a late model SD 15x8 Fujinon that looks pretty great.)

I can't tell the exact lens, but it would likely be from the SD era, based on the same IF logo on the side of this J16ax8 lens: https://www.ebay.com/itm/133607700251 . That lens doesn't quite match the math (8mm * 1.32 = 10.56mm ) but maybe it measured close enough for Panther to round down.

 

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Alright, this is getting even more interesting. Turns out it might not be a B4 lens after all. According to the rentalhouse in Sweden that owns one of those the base lens is actually a Canon 11-165 T2.5 Super 16 zoom which is surprising considering the angle seems to have turned wider through the modification. (Maybe also just a different measurement made by Panther during the modification) But it adds up if you compare the focus barrel grip to one of the Canon 11-165‘s. That would make this lens an actual Super 16 Zoom with an inbuilt doubler. 
 


 

 

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I'm 99.9% positive this is a converted B4 lens. The rear portion looks exactly like my Abakus 132.

The reason why the focus barrel grip matches the Canon 11-165 is that the Canon 11-165 was likely based on a B4 lens in the first place. It seems that every single Canon Super 16 lens is based on a B4 counterpart. (For instance, the Canon 8-64mm is almost certainly based on the Canon J8x6 B4 lens; they even have a similar match to one another in the focus barrel grip.)

Angenieux's 7-81mm for S16 was also directly based on a B4 counterpart - their 5.3-61mm lens. Both lenses are the exact same optics up front, with a different rear group in the back. (You could even buy a conversion kit for the 7-81mm.)

Also, I have seen where some lenses have had their focal ranges reduced when converted to a different formats. For instance, Angenieux had a similar SD B4 lens with a range of 5.3-64mm, which is a 12x zoom. The 5.3-61mm cine HD B4 lens is a 11.5x zoom. They also released an HD B4 5.3-53mm lens which is a 10x zoom.

The quality of a partial rehouse may be nice (accurate marks are not easy to do) but the overall visually quality of this 10-160mm is likely going to be the same you could get with a $200 SD B4 lens combined with an Abakus 132. Not personally worth it, in my opinion. 

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Well, at the very least, the potential Abakus 132 on the rear should be able to be removed -it's like any other B4 lens adapter - it just twists off. So, that by itself is worth somewhere around $500 - $1,500. However, newer B4 to PL S16 adapters are likely going to be better than this older optical design.

The lens conversion is rare - I've never seen one of these before. However, that doesn't necessarily mean it's worth that much more. Optex did full rehouses of HD B4 lenses and they aren't worth all that much - mainly because native B4 cine lenses from Canon, Fujinon, and Zeiss are so cheap - relative to what they originally sold for. For instance, Canon HD KLL lenses routinely sell for $1000 or less and these were around $30,000 (plus inflation) when they originally came out.

There's a chance that this lens does have some optical wizardry done by Panther, but I doubt it. Pather did rehouse some S16 primes, but it seems like they just took existing Optika Elite or Optar Illumina lenses and made them more physically match S16 Zeiss Super Speeds without altering them optically. (Or just had them custom made by Optika or Optar.) I could be wrong, though.

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