M Joel W

I'm in New England now. It's less humid here than in Japan, I believe, but I had one lens (a 18-55mm Canon kit lens) develop pretty severe fungus on just one element, weirdly. There's also a set of binoculars we stored for like twenty years in a closet and it's full of fungus, but it was possibly stored in a damp case or something. So I'm a little more paranoid than I would be were I in LA. I suppose the answer is I should buy the Pelican cases I've been putting off buying so I have a case for everything but still store things in the locker when they're not in use. I might be traveling for a few months at a time, but in that case I will just put desiccant packs in the Pelican cases. What do you do when you get home from a rainy shoot btw? Throw lenses in an airtight bag with desiccant? Or when it is cold, put them in a bag outside, seal, it, and bring them inside, to prevent condensation? I finally got the money to buy some cinema lenses and now I'm just afraid of damaging them!

Thanks, David. I do worry since I live in an area that's more humid than LA. Is a humidity controlled locker better or worse than a sunny shelf? I assume it depends on humidity levels. What's the concern with just storing in Pelican cases? I assume if there's desiccant fungus won't be a problem? How are lenses stored at rental houses btw?

Thanks, I appreciate the feedback. Echoing Shawn's question, do you mean on a shelf in open air, or would a humidity controlled locker be better? I suspect it's environment-contingent: I’ve noticed on eBay that lenses are much more likely to have fungus when they come from Japan. (I assume more likely to have haze when they come from Arizona.) I live in a temperate area (New England) but would be bringing my lenses elsewhere. I had an 18-55mm Canon kit lens develop fungus just lying around the house here so I'm using a Ruggard humidity-controlled cabinet to store my cinema lenses, but it's possible I'm unduly paranoid.

With very sharp cameras, Topaz seems like a miracle to me. Externally recorded C100 or C300 and F35 footage often comes out looking like sharp native 4k. (Then again, those sources are oversampled from 4k or more and recorded essentially uncompressed.) With compressed or soft sources, it often looks like an abstract mess to me. Its handling of compression artifacts and noise can be strange.

I'd like to store my lenses to avoid fungus and haze. I bought a small humidity controlled locker, but I would rather store them in Pelican cases so I can take them out with me. I have a few Pelican cases and a few knock offs. I've read I should store lenses with desiccant, and so I ordered a few of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B015OTBKAA/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o02_s03?ie=UTF8&psc=1 What do rental houses do? I've always wondered how master primes etc. are stored to avoid fungus. Do they stay in their pelican cases or do they go back in a humidity controlled locker? I've never heard about fungus on a master prime....

@Miguel Angel that looks great. For situations where there are not such large windows and hard light is preferred, a DP friend of mine once recommended mirror boards. They require constant adjustment during the day (and sunny weather) but pack the punch of an 18K without drawing any power of course.

That was my guess! I like how the catch lights look in the first and the last frames. How would you achieve this look without brightening up the face too much? Lone dimmed 4 foot kinoflo on the floor? LED panel? I've heard of people putting white diffusion or black nets or muslin over catch lights, but each approach seems to contradict the next. How would you go about achieving this?

No, I don't think the 17.5mm covers S35. They're designed for 16mm I believe (so are the 16mm and 25mm Cine-Xenons) but some of the longer focal lengths happen to cover S35. At least so I've read. And there are some images on Flickr that indicate the 37.5mm covers APS-C, maybe with a bit of vignetting. But I've never tried it myself. I have first-hand experience with the 28mm f2 Cine-Xenon, though. It's borderline on S35. But on Alexa 2.8k 16:9 it should cover I think. I believe it was designed for academy 35.

I've never used them, but have read that the 37.5mm, 50mm, and 75mm Kintal cover S35. Schneider Cine-Xenon 28mm f2 covers academy 35 (probably also 2.8K 16:9 on Alexa). The 16mm and 25mm probably don't. I believe they are 16mm lenses. Schneider Cinegon 18mm f1.8 covers S35, though. All these lenses have a strong vintage look, similar to Cooke Panchro imo but maybe not as nice. Different coatings and aperture shape.

I scored a two, with a weakness in greens. So I might not be one to talk as I don't have perfect color vision, but I once tried something really odd, staring outside with one eye while staring at a flashlight with another. Something along those lines. Anyway I think each eye adjusted independently because one eye had a warmer tint than the other until the two grew acclimated. Kind of like those tricks where you see an after image briefly after staring at an inverted image for a while. Clearly I was bored. I suspect the eyes do a lot more local adaptation than we realize: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Checker_shadow_illusion

I've converted the 12-240mm to a 24-480mm t11 (or something?)... twice... It's Arri standard mount only, but Birns and Sawyer made a teleconverter that I'm guessing was designed just for this purpose. I bought one on eBay. They show up from time to time, but I don't see one now. It's called Birns and Sawyer TeleZoom 2x for Angenieux I think. The other converter I tried (which I'm selling, it's bayonet mount and has larger glass elements) only fit with a modified lens that had the mount converted to bayonet and worked worse and didn't quite cover Super35. Kubrick must have used a different lens from me. This lens is soft and loaded with distortion and CA. Doesn't look a thing like Barry Lyndon. Looks pretty bad. And I think he had a zoom motor. On the other hand, it seems to cover Super35 throughout the zoom range. I even got a clip on 4x4 filter holder working so I can shoot through Classic Softs for an even weirder look.

While the flange distance of PL mount is greater than that of F mount, the rear elements in many (most?) PL mount and Arri B mount lenses seem to extend much deeper back. I don't want to lead anyone to break their mirrors (the NIKKOR-O 2.1cm F4 I bet will hit the mirror, for one) but I think 99% of Nikkors should be good!

I don't! Maybe something else happened in this case. I'll just buy a few extra desiccant packs and store the camera bodies as-is. Lenses I'm being careful about. Perhaps unduly so, but I have had two lenses spontaneously develop fungus, and from what I understand it has more to do with humidity than with spores present. (18-55mm f3.5-f5.6 Canon and a Pentax 50mm f1.7 prime). But in both cases not much.

Thanks. For now I am just going to put in storage and use another taking lens, I appreciate the advice.

I've been storing my lenses in sealed Pelican cases with desiccant packs, and have recently upped my game with a humidity-controlled cabinet to prevent fungus. But not everything fits in there. I recently purchased three 35mm film camera bodies, a bunch of magazines, etc. and a lot of them are stored in leather cases. Where I'm storing them isn't too humid but it can be during the summer and I've seen binoculars in a leather case like this fill with fungus, not a great look... What do you recommend? I was thinking for the 35mm film cameras, which I doubt I will use for a while, storing their cases in sealed trash bags with desiccant canisters? Same with the leather cases that store the mags... And a flight case with desiccant in it for a 16mm camera? Which I would use more often... Thanks.

I removed some bits to try to access the optical assembly... here it is with them put back on. You can see a scratch mark on the retaining ring where I tried to open it up with a spanner wrench. It didn't work so I left it. The scratch is just on the surface of the ring. I think I'm very ignorant but I assumed I could just rotate the optical assembly within the threads in the lens and it would adjust the infinity focus. How does the aperture fit into this? I don't know how the lens is held together... I don't like fiddling with infinity focus and I liked the idea of matched coatings and a pseudo-monoblock so I was hoping I could get this set and stick with it. I tried using it like this and it's focused way past infinity still. It's not just a tolerance error with the Nikon adapter, it's WAY off. I also bought a 50mm 1.8 FL as a back up, though. This might be a fool's errand.

This thing... the entire assembly needs to move forward more than a few mm to focus on infinity.

Hi, I'm working with an Iscorama pre-36 with a Nikon taking lens that came with the Iscorama. I assume (correct me if I' wrong) that the taking lens is meant to be focused at infinity? It's not. It's focused well past infinity. But there's no focus ring that I see to adjust it. I tried opening things up with a spanner wrench but quickly realized I was going to break something as soon as I removed one retaining ring and the rest didn't turn easily. I can provide photos, but maybe someone knows something?

That's fair, but it's difficult to show what I mean unless I look for extreme examples. I wouldn't want everything to look like this either, but how else can I showcase what I mean? Cooke S2s still look like Cooke S2s at t4 or t5.6, they just don't have as much "character" as they do wide open so if I'm to pick a thumbnail that illustrates their look it would be when they're worse-behaved. Perhaps I should have searched a bit harder, but I think you know what I mean. Regardless, I think rather than "detuning" an anamorphic system, the easier approach is complementing it with the appropriate taking lens. Which is what the Panavision article alludes to. But I don't know what Dominik is working with so, again, I might be coopting this into my own little thing where I'm looking for taking lenses with nisen bokeh.

No, I know. I might have been unclear. Or I might be confused about what Dominik is after, I'm not sure what he's working with in the first place. Perhaps I'm just turning this question into one I have myself. There's a discussion elsewhere about Iscoramas and taking lenses. Contemporaneous (or older) taking lenses seem to enhance the anamorphic look as their harsher bokeh and oval edges and fall off already look kind of anamor-fake. Here's some Iscorama footage that I find to have a stronger (imo better) look than most, not that it looks anything like Panavision. It just looks good for what it is imo: That's using an old 50mm f2. So I guess what I'm getting at is the bubble bokeh complements an anamorphic system by enhancing the oval look where otherwise it might be less apparent... Elsewhere, Panavision discusses the importance of the spherical system in defining the C-series look: https://filmmakermagazine.com/107908-panavision-dan-sasaki-customizing-lenses-once-upon-a-time-in-hollywood/#.XhIyAC2ZN24 So I guess what I'm getting at is–if Dominik is using an anamorphic set up, the taking lens is probably what to focus on. And it's the less expensive part of the system. If he's using a spherical one, rather than detuning what you have, just buy (or rent) bubble bokeh lenses. They're cheap enough. Am I the only one that finds certain Cooke Panchros (32, 50m 75) to have a bit of bubble bokeh? However they are not "cheap enough" I checked eBay. ? Edit: maybe not "bubble bokeh" outright, but something close to it: The combination of sharper edges (nisen bokeh? bubble bokeh?) and the sort of swirly look is what I think would complement an older anamorphic adapter well.

Is this what Canon is doing with the Sumires? I think the "bubble bokeh" helps sell the anamorphic look. But there are cheap options to get it imo.

I believe the 10-100mm t2 Zeiss, while highly regarded, is known to breathe worse than many still lenses. It's an interesting question. K35s and FDs are purported to share optical similarities, and my older cinema lenses appear to be unit-focusing. I've heard the Master Primes and other modern designs are designed to avoid breathing–but are older cinema lenses just as bad as old still lenses?

This thread is old enough that you likely have your answer by now, but I own this combination and figured I would chime in. The above photos don't reflect what I own. The photos seem to have the base of the Arri standard mount removed from a zoom (at the "universal mount" Dom mentions, I suppose) and the universal mount to Arri mount component is attached to the extender instead. My adapter and lens both have Arri standard mounts, nothing unusual. So that one looks like it's been taken apart differently, at the universal mount rather than the standard mount, I'd guess? For me, the adapter and lens attach together just fine and rather surprisingly seem to cover S35. The lens is incredibly slow but appears to have infinity calibrated correctly and it's pretty fun how relatively small it is. I just bought a zoom crank for it, too... I have also used a second 12-240mm that had been converted to Arri Bayonet mount and the metal ring around the rear element was removed, allowing it to fit in a generic Bayonet mount extender (I think I was using a Colcine/Optex). The Bayonet adapter I was using had a much larger rear element but performance and coverage seem worse here. Edges are very soft and I saw a hint of vignetting on S35. But the above combination works fine. The Birns and Sawyer Angenieux AR 2x telezoom (co-branded French and American and made in Japan, it seems) works with the 12-240mm just fine from what I can tell, at least if you like really slow, really soft lenses. I think Larry bought one that had a universal mount adapter already attached to it. With that removed, it should work. Which seems weird, but then again my 12-240mm had a macro tube attached to it when it arrived and seemed to be focusing inside itself. ?

Looks like smoque 1 almost.

Thanks, Simon. Of course, as regards ratio of what spectra are transmitted, improving transmission selectively is effectively cutting back whatever isn't improved, but point taken. This is way over my head, though what you've written makes sense. I appreciate the detailed response and will continue to trust my own eyes rather than my weird theories. Zeiss does state that the additional warmth of the blue t* coating is trivial, whereas the blueness of the flares is not. And it makes sense that lens design is a bigger factor... How different is a Baltar from a Gauss-Tachar from a Schneider Xenon from a Biotar from a Primoplan? (Or those may not be equivalent designs, but of similar vintage designs from different manufacturers.) I notice the Xenons going for $300 on eBay and some of the others going for twenty times that. Curious what justifies that big a difference in price. Is a 50mm Cine-Xenon that different from a Cooke S2 or Baltar?