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Vintage lenses


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I personally like older Lomo lenses, although CA may be an issue with some of them. usually these are sharp lenses with quite warm look and creamy bokeh. older ones can also be low contrast (I have two Foton zooms which are quite low contrast with creamy bokeh even stopped down (these are not usable wide open due to mushy image and huge amount of CA, but stopped down to T8 or 11 are usable although the ca may still be an issue in some scenes and the wide end is not that good at the edges. the overall sharpness is usually very good with them) )

 

If using still lenses, you can try Super Takumars or Russian still lenses.

 

Uncoated modern primes may also be an option if you want high-end mechanics and uniform lens sizes

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This sort of depends on the format/camera you're shooting on, plenty of "vintage" options if you can use old still photography lenses or C-mounts or something.

 

For vintage cinema lenses in PL mount or other mounts that could adapt to PL you could rent Cooke Speed Panchros or Bausch and Lomb Super Baltars or Schneiders or old Angenieux zooms. Panavision also have some quite dated lenses, including a line of "legacy" primes. All these options are not necessarily low contrast, but that's something filtration can easily achieve anyway. Actually a lot of what people sometimes imagine a vintage lens will give them can be achieved through different means, like filtration or post manipulation, but not always. Flares and other lens aberrations that respond to real lighting environments are hard to replicate, as are the out-of-focus characteristics of a particular lens.

 

I did a little comparison of some vintage cinema lenses on my blog, the Alexa screen grabs at the end might be of interest to you:

http://cinetinker.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/comparing-lenses-blur-characteristics.html

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  • 2 weeks later...

Canon K35 lenses -either in BNCR or PL mount- could deliver this look as well. Very nice flares, too.

Older anamorphics (JDCs, Cineovisions, Kowas, Todd-AO 35s) or zooms (Cooke 20-100mm, Angenieux 25-250mm early 60's design) also can be used for this purpose.

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I did a little comparison of some vintage cinema lenses on my blog, the Alexa screen grabs at the end might be of interest to you:

http://cinetinker.blogspot.com.au/2013/10/comparing-lenses-blur-characteristics.html

 

Thanks for the tests - that meyer gorlitz primoplan bokeh is pretty phenomenal - where do you rent those/are they pl mount? I hadn't heard of those lenses before...

Edited by Mathew Rudenberg
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  • 4 weeks later...

On the really low budget I have had great results with the Zeiss Jena for Pentacon 6x6. Especially in the longer lengths 80mmf2.8 120mm2.8, 180mm2.8, 300f4 are fantastic. Lowish contrast, organic, flatter in color, gorgeous flares. The flares arent sharp or sci-fi ish like say panavision, they instead just kind of soften the blacks and add an overall tone. I like the sonnars the best. Biometars are good to(and super cheap). They have very round apertures and robust housings. Can use them with PL mount or any other mount. Go for the older single coated variety. I read somewhere some of this east german glass was rehoused and used for shots in "The Master". With more budget my personal favorite are cooke vintage s2/s3..

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Thanks for the tests - that meyer gorlitz primoplan bokeh is pretty phenomenal - where do you rent those/are they pl mount? I hadn't heard of those lenses before...

 

Sorry Mathew, I missed this question.

The Meyer lens is from a museum WW2 Arriflex, one of the very first lenses supplied in Arri Standard mount. At the time sort of a lower cost alternative to the Zeiss Sonnar, an early high-speed design. I don't think production in this form lasted beyond the war, so they're relatively rare. The glass is uncoated.

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