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Switar 10mm on S16 Bolex


Elliot Rudmann

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Will the switar 10mm give enough coverage on my Super 16 Bolex EBM to prevent any sort of vignetting? I have tried to find information about using this lens on a S16 bolex but haven't found anything helpful. Thanks for your time and response.

 

Elliot

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Will the switar 10mm give enough coverage on my Super 16 Bolex EBM to prevent any sort of vignetting? I have tried to find information about using this lens on a S16 bolex but haven't found anything helpful. Thanks for your time and response.

 

Elliot

As far as I know, the Switar 10 covers the S-16 frame. This is information I have gotten from this site (and others like it), it's quite a common question, which is probably why you haven't gotten any answer yet...

B.

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As far as I know, the Switar 10 covers the S-16 frame. This is information I have gotten from this site (and others like it), it's quite a common question, which is probably why you haven't gotten any answer yet...

B.

 

It covers just, but the lens centering must be spot on - even a Bolex modified bayonet mount has some play/rotation around the reg/super16 witness marks that the centering must be eyeballed before locking.

 

That being said the lens solution is far from perfect around the extremities, especially when wide open.

 

Dont rely on any footage without a test

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Will the switar 10mm give enough coverage on my Super 16 Bolex EBM to prevent any sort of vignetting? I have tried to find information about using this lens on a S16 bolex but haven't found anything helpful. Thanks for your time and response.

 

Elliot

 

Elliot,

 

I spoke to Deiter Schaefer at Bolex USA (aka Procam in Prescott, AZ) about this yesterday. He says the 10mm will cover S16 most of the time with the possible exception of some extreme closeups.

 

-Fran

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:ph34r:

 

Would be interesting to see side by side comparisons with the same shot wide open with ND or a faster frame rate/smaller shutter angle

 

Who is going to pay for the stock, processing, and transfer? :)

I have water footage with an ND 0.6 at F5.6... I'll post a clip or grab if interested

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Hey guys - thanks for all the responses. Kori thank you for the links to those clips. Do you think the colorist might have repositioned them at all during telecine? (Like zoomed in a bit to hide vignetting?) I'd love to see that other clip you were talking about as well

 

I'll do a few tests myself. I will be renting out the 10mm Switar and testing it in a week or two on my S16 bolex EBM. I'll shoot wide open, stopped down, focus close. etc.., do a variation of those things, I'll get them scanned on the arriscanner here at work I'll post them up on my website. Might be a few weeks though. Thanks again!

 

Elliot

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Hey guys - thanks for all the responses. Kori thank you for the links to those clips. Do you think the colorist might have repositioned them at all during telecine? (Like zoomed in a bit to hide vignetting?) I'd love to see that other clip you were talking about as well

 

I'll do a few tests myself. I will be renting out the 10mm Switar and testing it in a week or two on my S16 bolex EBM. I'll shoot wide open, stopped down, focus close. etc.., do a variation of those things, I'll get them scanned on the arriscanner here at work I'll post them up on my website. Might be a few weeks though. Thanks again!

 

Elliot

 

 

If your EBM has been converted retaining the use of reg16 (slotted bayonet mount holes and registration marks) and the GG mask :ph34r: is correctly sized and placed I'd try loosening the mount up a little and moving it around with the lens on - you should be able to see the extent of its 'coverage' through the viewfinder ...

 

I use inverted commas on the word coverage as vignetting isn't the only issue we should concerned with, depending on the design many lenses will lose optical quality (think for instance chromatic abberation) around the edges before they vignette ... some even may vignette first, not the case with the Switar 10mm models.

 

The abberations are more noticable in certain subjects - I imagine a checker board (face on) may not render so well.

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  • 1 month later...

Recently purchased a 10mm Switar preset lens and noticed that there IS vignetting on the right side when viewed through the viewfinder. It's subtle, but definitely there. Does anyone know if there's any reason why the preset 10mm would vignette and not the regular (nonpreset) 10mm RX (as Kori showed in his examples?). Would appreciate any help/feedback before I sell this lens back and buy the older/non preset 10mm RX. This is quite frustrating!

 

Elliot

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Recently purchased a 10mm Switar preset lens and noticed that there IS vignetting on the right side when viewed through the viewfinder. It's subtle, but definitely there. Does anyone know if there's any reason why the preset 10mm would vignette and not the regular (nonpreset) 10mm RX (as Kori showed in his examples?). Would appreciate any help/feedback before I sell this lens back and buy the older/non preset 10mm RX. This is quite frustrating!

 

Elliot

 

Because the footage may have been zoomed in slightly in transfer ... like having a slightly longer lens on a correspondingly smaller format ...

 

loosen up the mount and move it around whilst looking in the finder :ph34r: you'll see the extent of the coverage ;) and centre it properly in the process - I have noticed that some super16 Bolex masks are sometimes lightly smaller than the gate aperture too - so really its anyones guess :rolleyes:

Best examine the neg, and not transfered footage huh

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I guess so Chris, and adjusting the lens mount was something I really wanted to avoid, seeing as how it has the potential to screw things up, but I guess I have no choice. I'll give it a try and see how things turn out. Thanks for your suggestions and feedback!

 

What confuses me is that the vignetting is on the right side of the frame, where the perfs are on the S16 frame. You'd think that if a lens didn't have enough coverage for a S16 Bolex it'd vignette on the left side, where you're getting the extra 20% of the Super 16 image. Oh well, maybe the centering is really off! The test footage I shot with it came out great, but that was only with 35mm Canon FD lenses, which would have considerably more coverage than then any 10mm lens for the S16mm format.

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I guess so Chris, and adjusting the lens mount was something I really wanted to avoid, seeing as how it has the potential to screw things up, but I guess I have no choice. I'll give it a try and see how things turn out. Thanks for your suggestions and feedback!

 

What confuses me is that the vignetting is on the right side of the frame, where the perfs are on the S16 frame. You'd think that if a lens didn't have enough coverage for a S16 Bolex it'd vignette on the left side, where you're getting the extra 20% of the Super 16 image. Oh well, maybe the centering is really off! The test footage I shot with it came out great, but that was only with 35mm Canon FD lenses, which would have considerably more coverage than then any 10mm lens for the S16mm format.

 

Elliot, I used to have a Bolex S16 and a 10mm Switar Preset. Mine unfortunately vignetted as well. I believe it depends on the specific example of the lens. I know my Bolex S16 conversion was excellent (JK) so it wasn't an issue with the recentering of the lens mount. However it could be a problem of the centering of the lens itself, and as a result you see the edge of the image circle on the S16 frame. I believe the Angenieux lens covers the frame.

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Elliot, I used to have a Bolex S16 and a 10mm Switar Preset. Mine unfortunately vignetted as well. I believe it depends on the specific example of the lens. I know my Bolex S16 conversion was excellent (JK) so it wasn't an issue with the recentering of the lens mount. However it could be a problem of the centering of the lens itself, and as a result you see the edge of the image circle on the S16 frame. I believe the Angenieux lens covers the frame.

 

Thanks Babar,

 

I read on another post on this site that confirmed that the Angenieux does not, in fact, cover the whole S16 frame. I think the Schneider 10mm F1.8 cinegon is my last hope. I've heard that lens has a lot of coverage. The only disadvantage I can see to that lens is that it's not RX.

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I think the Schneider 10mm F1.8 cinegon is my last hope. I've heard that lens has a lot of coverage. The only disadvantage I can see to that lens is that it's not RX.

 

Hi Elliot,

 

IIRC there is a RX version of the Cinegon as well. Try ebay!

 

Cheers, Dave

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  • 10 months later...
And what's about the Schneider Cinegon 10 mm c-mount ?

 

Will it cover Super-16 too ?

 

It should according to posts that I've read here (I got one myself a while back but haven't been able to test it). Just have somebody by like Bernie at Super16 or Dieter at procam re-collimate it for RX distance and you should be good to go.

Edited by Sir Alvin Ekarma
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It should according to posts that I've read here (I got one myself a while back but haven't been able to test it). Just have somebody by like Bernie at Super16 or Dieter at procam re-collimate it for RX distance and you should be good to go.

 

The 'RX' on a lens isn't just collimation it's an actual optical formula change (I'm not even sure if there is any collimation necessary ?). So when it comes to wides a lens is either RX or not . As for the actual effects on the image of using non RX lenses, you might get lucky - test ;)

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The 'RX' on a lens isn't just collimation it's an actual optical formula change (I'm not even sure if there is any collimation necessary ?). So when it comes to wides a lens is either RX or not . As for the actual effects on the image of using non RX lenses, you might get lucky - test ;)

 

Well that's news to me. Places like JK camera have recommended non RX c-mounts as long as they are re-collimated for RX c-mount distance and Dieter at Procam re-collimated a 15mm Angenieux and a 12.5 Cosmicar with nice results.... :)

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Well that's news to me. Places like JK camera have recommended non RX c-mounts as long as they are re-collimated for RX c-mount distance and Dieter at Procam re-collimated a 15mm Angenieux and a 12.5 Cosmicar with nice results.... :)

 

 

Chris is right. The regular 10mm and the 10mm RX are different lenses with different optical formulas.

Re-collimation changes nothing. Those who say they get nice results are not shooting wide open. Loss of sharpness and contrast is the result.

I have seen enough of these on the collimator to attest to the difference.

Why would Bolex have manufactured these RX lenses in the first place if the regular lenses could achieve acceptable results by re-adjustement only?

 

Cheers,

Jean-Louis

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Well I can only speak from personal experience but I tested the 15mm angenieux from wide open (I think f1.5) to f2.8 and f4 shooting indoors. Wide open was pretty lousy but at the other stops it looked great--- better than the 16-100 RX poe zoom at 16mm and at the same f-stops. Admittedly, this wasn't exactly scientific and there's way more glass in a zoom lens, but I'm just sayin' ;)

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