New Zeiss anamorphic lenses in 2012

Shawn Martin · December 10, 2011

According to Film and Digital Times, page 17.

A whole set of primes, with a 2x squeeze.

I wonder 1.) how they flare and 2.) what they'll call them.

alan doyle · December 11, 2011

they will not flare zeiss see this aberration as an error...

anamorphot looks like it is in middle section of lens.

so it looks like zeiss are well on the anamorphic way...

i saw a prototype about 2-3 years ago but it was shelved because of price point and the hawk competition..i think 1 optic was double the price of a hawk.

as anything made by arri or zeiss is kind of perfect so it was with this optic.

roger deakins got to shoot and test it,but he does not like anamorphic so kind of pointless exercise getting him to test.

anyway i assume this is a reaction to the massive worldwide success of the

arri alexa..

the guess costing from a few years ago which i think worked out at 300 hundred thousand dollars for the set..will have to be revised down.

so my guess is they will buy the anamorphic heads from isco/schneider then use japan/china for housings and spherical optics maybe with assembly in germany so they can put made in germany on it.

they will either stay high on price or find a low mark 8-15 thousand euros each.

state of the art sharpness and latest generation coatings.and i am sure for an extra 3000 they will give you an uncoated lens.

what you will get will be the most update lovely slick fast optic with super computer design with an amazing focus system relationship between the anamorphot and spherical.

at a min it will have to be as good as the hawks.

an optic that would blow chretiens mind.

if zeiss use the word rental a lot it means they will be silly money and we would be looking at an arri anamorphic rental system like vantage hawk.

they may not even be for sale?

this is not the start of an 800 dollar zeiss indie movie lens.

if you have a single coat kowa or an iscorama keep a tight grip on it cos they are under valued unless the end of civilization is nigh.

by the way zeiss where never really in the anamorphic business.

a lot of the old zeiss projection anamorphics where made by moller and isco.

the arriscope system that was a bit of a disaster used zeiss spherical and isco anamorphots.

even the zeiss 8mm home movie optics where made by isco.

i can state with confidence that a zeiss glass company will not be making the anamorphic cylindrical doublets for these optics..

Edited December 11, 2011 by alan doyle

georg lamshöft · December 11, 2011

so my guess is they will buy the anamorphic heads from isco/schneider then use japan/china for housings and spherical optics maybe with assembly in germany so they can put made in germany on it.

state of the art sharpness and latest generation coatings.and i am sure for an extra 3000 they will give you an uncoated lens.

Doing that and still assuring state-of-the-art-quality? I know managements that are stupid enough to do so and therefore creating products that are only cheap and good on paper or early prototype stages.

Zeiss has done that once with cine-lenses and they failed. Now they come up with lenses that are a full-stop faster than any other modern anamorphic lens and Mr. Deakins calls it almost too perfect. No, I'm pretty sure these are true Zeiss-lenses - optical glass from Schott, mechanics from Oberkochen/Wetzlar, lens grinding in Jena and assembly in Oberkochen. Even the CP2, mainly consisting of simpler designs engineered to be manufactured by their Japanese subcontractor for the still photography market (ZF) are made in Jena/Oberkochen/Wetzlar by Zeiss - and these are the so-called entry-level cine-lenses...

I'm pretty sure it's a winner when the lenses offer basically the same comfort and quality as Master Primes but working perfectly with an Alexa Studio.

Dom Jaeger · December 11, 2011

anamorphot looks like it is in middle section of lens.

Judging from the prototype photos, or have you more info?

I'll be pretty curious to see these. I'm not sure how they can make top class anamorphics with an aperture of T1.5 (maybe) that are also lightweight and compact without costing an absolute bomb, even outsourcing everything but assembly. There has to be a compromise somewhere.

I'm glad they've stuck to 2x squeeze though, despite the obvious market for 16:9 sensor cameras. Lower compression ratios never really look anamorphic enough to me. But it means the target is pretty much Alexa Studio or D-21 (or 35mm of course) until another 4:3 sensor camera gets released. (Having said that, we recently supplied Lomo anamorphics for an Alexa job that was going to get cropped to 1.78 - utilising half the sensor just to get an anamorphic 'look' - so these days it seems anything goes.)

It's true Zeiss hasn't had much success with anamorphics. Their Ultrascopes from the 50s/60s weren't a big hit either. Not sure who made the anamorphic fronts for those.

Dom Jaeger · December 11, 2011

Oh yeah, and I reckon they'll call them "Master Scopes".. :D

Brandon Ruiz · April 29, 2012

Here is the new Zeiss Anamorphic concept lens at NAB. According to the Zeiss rep, ballpark of $30k per lens, 2x squeeze, further details at IBC. I looked in the viewfinder and waved the alexa around at their floodlights above. No flare. Disappointing but not surprising.

Edited April 29, 2012 by Brandon Ruiz

georg lamshöft · May 8, 2012

Just stumbled upon their conference video regarding the "Concept Anamorphic":

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So the output resolution is 2880x2160, how is it processed then? Given 1.5x oversampling for a sharp image, they would end up with 1440lines and 3840pixels (but interpolated) horizontally? Or a perfectly sharp image with 1920x720pixels?

Is 1:2.66 a desirable aspect ratio? Or crop it down again to Cinemascope? Why do they use a 4x3 aspect ratio on the sensor, why not 1:1.2 (the sensor is large enough)?

Edited May 8, 2012 by georg lamshöft

David Mullen ASC · May 8, 2012

They would most likely finish it at 2K and crop a tiny bit to get a 2.39 : 1 image, i.e. 2048 x 858, which is the 2K DCI standard for digital projection of scope images. Or they could work at 4K, which would be 4096 x 1716 for a 2.39 image. As for why they record slightly more width than they need, they just do. If you shoot in 35mm anamorphic, some people would scan the 4-perf Full Aperture negative (4x3) as a starting point before trimming to the 1:1.2 scope projection area.

Rob Stiff · July 12, 2012

Brandon is right.

At NAB, I took a flashlight right into the Zeiss Concept Anamorphic 50mm Lens and could not get any flares.

The design is too perfect. Also, the Zeiss product development person for the anamorphic lenses was looking for input

and was uncertain at the time as to what focal lengths where to be first released.

As perfect as Zeiss claimed the concept lens to be not having flare ability, it did look much more cinematic with the Alexa when side by side shown on monitors

with an Alexa using a new Fujinon/ARRI Lightweight Zoom lens.