Hi,
Could someone post brand/model of affordable PL lenses to be used on a PMW-F3 ?

I'm thinking in buy a F3L (without lenses), then start using some cheap lenses until the day my budget can buy some great Master Primes, ..

So i want to use this post to list affordable 35mm PL lenses, ..
Please post details and experience if you own ..

Affordable i mean from 500$ to less than 5000$

I fully expect companies like MTF, Mike Tappas or Adaptimax to have 'F" mount adapters for DSLR lenses available when the camera launches. There are some very nice DSLR lenses for not a huge amount of money.

Red Primes must be amongst the lowest price PL mount lenses, also the Zeiss Compact Primes. Schneider have a set of Cine-Xenar lenses which look like they're in the lower price range for PL mount quoted at 15k Euro for 5 lenses from one source.

The Master Primes are in another scale entirely, best rent those unless you've got a large amount of high end work.

With a number of lower priced cameras in the S35 ( more or less size) format, I'd imagine more lower price manual focus lenses will come onto the market to meet the demand. Either that or Birger type mounts to control electronic stills lenses.

The RED market has eaten up the second hand lenses and PL S35 lenses are no longer as cheap. You could check out UK film camera dealers/agents for good lenses, it's pretty cheap flying to London for a day on a budget airline to look at suitable lenses before you buy.

Visual products in the US also sell them. http://www.visualproducts.com/store04.asp?ID=24&Cat=8&Cat2=15

I've just come across these people being recommended by someone.

http://www.rplens.com/

For affordable PL mount primes you're currently looking at Zeiss CP2s and RED Pro Primes as already mentioned, but there's also Illumina, uniqoptics, IB/E and Schneider Cine-Xenar.

lumatechinc.com - Illumina lenses; Quality and Speed! (http://www.lumatechinc.com/S35.html)

uniQoptics | Cinema Lenses, Hi-G lenses, mounts, adapters (http://www.uniqoptics.net)

Schneider Cine-Xenar 5 Lens Set :: Schneider Cine-Xenar Lenses :: Prime Lenses :: Film & Digital Cinema Lenses :: Lenses :: Lenses & Lens Accessories :: Equipment Sales :: Abel Cine Tech (http://www.abelcine.com/store/Schneider-Cine-Xenar-5-Lens-Set/)

WELCOME TO IB/E OPTICS (http://www.ibe-optics.com)

Of course, you can always get your favorite stills glass rehoused - essentially that's what the Zeiss CP2s are.

If you're buying new, you mightn't need to physically go, but second hand it's best to check out the lenses, especially given the price of PL mount cine lenses.

There are other locations where you can buy lenses in Europe you can buy apart from London .

UK wise you could check with;

ICE Film Equipment
ICE Film - Film Equipment Sales and Rental - Arri, Aaton, Transvideo, 35mm, Super16, 3-Perf, 4-Perf (http://www.icefilm.com/)
Optical Support
Optical Support Lens Centre (http://www.opticalsupport.co.uk/lenses.php)
Movietech Camera Rentals
Movietech Camera Rentals Ltd. (http://www.movietech.co.uk/Sales.asp)
Van Diemen
Vandiemen Broadcast - Optical Fibre Specialists to the Film and TV Industries (http://vandiemenbroadcast.co.uk/)
Cooke Optics
Cooke Optics Limited : Home (http://www.cookeoptics.com/)

PL mount lenses have never been cheap, but the demand has increased (several thousand REDs out there), so that even very old film lenses are getting expensive,

The Digioptical looks rather like the RED zoom.
Uniopticals are at the upper end of your price range ($5750 - $6750 each)

Russian lenses are another possibility:

http://www.optica-elite.com/

Older Oct 18 mount lenses can be converted to PL.

Here is likely to be your most cost-effective option that lets you still carry the camera around:

DigiOptical 18-50mm & 50-150mm T3 PL Mount Zoom Lens Kit B&H

These are the lenses Red originally sold for $6500 and $8500. I bought both used, and spent $12K on mine. Now they can be had for almost half that.

They're rehoused Sigmas, but they are plenty sharp and work well when you want/need PL but need to stay small and relatively light.

Hi Nate,

Is the 18 to 50 rectilinear when going wide? If these are lenses that can stand up against the more inexpensive Zeiss lenses then this is a screaming deal.

Thanks for the tip-off on those lenses, Nate.

It looks like a brilliant deal!

Anything on the American side of this discussion? I never heard of those JSC lenses but they seem quality made. Anything else like that around here in the USA?

The range of 35mm SLR lenses that can be used is far too extensive to list them all.

My current favourite all rounder is the Tokina 28 to 70 mm f2.6 ATX Pro Mk1 or Mk2. These lenses share the same optical design as the Angineux 28 to 70mm lens and are very good. They are highly sought after lenses (Must be the Mk1 or Mk2, not the ASV version) but you can pick them up for around 250 Euros. They are not all that fast at T3 but are good all round performers.

Other nice lenses are the Nikon 50mm f1.4D, the Zeiss ZF 85mm f1.4 and the Nikon 28mm f1.4 ASP.

Best mount to get is Nikon as these will have proper Iris control. Modern Canon lenses only have electronic iris.

Optically 35mm SLR lenses can be very good, but they don't have the witness marks found on decent PL glass and the focus scale tends to compress greatly as you get closer to infinity, so they are not as straight forward to use as PL's. They also don't tend to be as fast, a 35mm SLR f1.4 lens is often more like a T2 or T2.8 lens.

Hello,

Do you think Sony (or someone) will make a F3 to Alpha lens adapter for this camera?

Thanks.

MTF services makes a variety of adapters. The F3 mount is similar to the EX3 mount, but has a small change which will require new adapters to be made. I think MTF will be able to make these adapters in no time, and will have Nikon, Canon FD, and others available. I know they make a different Alpha adapter, so they might make one for the F3.

Andy

Andy, William

The Nikon G and Canon FD adaptors are being made now and we have already taken many pre orders for shipping in January.

We have already been given permission from Sony UK to make an Alpha/Minolta to F3 adaptor (of course with an aperture control ring) and this will follow very soon after.


All the best

Anyone have any experience with this lens? I know this has been used on the RED a lot but just wondered if anyone has hands on with it and how it performed... The price is nice and it has the Cook contacts for Lens Metadata may be a cheap PL zoom for the F3.

DigiOptical DO1850F 18-50mm T3 (f/2.8) PL Mount Zoom Lens


DigiOptical DO1850F 18-50mm T3 PL Mount Zoom Lens DO/18-50F B&H

I've been shooting for almost 3 years on one regularly. Despite it has zero "wow" appeal for Red work, its been my go-to lens for a long time.

It's as sharp as you could ever hope for. The only zooms I've used that are sharper and more consistent are the Optimos.

The only real downside to this lens has been that the mechanics have always been inconsistent. I've used some that grind a little, some that feel a little loose, some that feel a little tight, etc etc. But the optics have always been consistent.

Moreover, the later manufactured units seem to have been much improved mechanically. For what these lenses are going for, they are WELL worth it. Many folks paid $6500 for them and they were rightfully dissapointed. At $3K, it's a steal.

Back in the day, man, people paid $14k for a Century rehoused Canon 17-35 that wasn't nearly as good. You kind of need that perpective to understand where this lens sits in the spectrum.

Andy, William

The Nikon G and Canon FD adaptors are being made now and we have already taken many pre orders for shipping in January.

We have already been given permission from Sony UK to make an Alpha/Minolta to F3 adaptor (of course with an aperture control ring) and this will follow very soon after.


All the best

Hello,
Are you planning a Leica M bayonet to F3 adapter?

Thank you in advance.

What sort of timeframe do you have for the Alpha to F3 w/ aperture ring? As a former Alpha photographer, I can attest to their outstanding glass including: Zeiss 24-70/2.8, Zeiss 135/1.8 and my favorite lens of all-time, the Sony 135 STF f2.8/T4.5 - stunning bokeh and tack sharp.

My only concern with fast SLR lenses is that almost all of them from every manufacturer have problems with longitudinal CA. The Sony/Zeiss 85/1.4 is technically better than the Nikon/Zeiss version but they exhibit large amounts of purple fringing known as L-CA.

The double edged sword of a lens with high MTF. Generally the sharper the lens the more CA as different wavelengths of light focus at different points. A soft lens will hide the CA as the colours blur into each other. Make the lens sharper and you start to see different colours focus on different planes, the most noticeable being the far extremes of the spectrum, violet and red. You can mitigate this by combining different exotic glasses with different refractive indexes, but these special glasses are often grown from crystals and as a result can be extremely expensive.

Lo-CA is different because it rears its ugly head more and more as the aperture gets wider which is why the f1.4 & f1.8 lenses have the biggest problem with Lo-CA. Furthermore, as the aperture gets wider, the MTF decreases while the Lo-CA increases.

Image below is from Zeiss ZA Planar T* 85mm f/1.4 ( Sony SAL-85F14Z ) - Review / Test Report - Analysis (http://www.photozone.de/sony-alpha-aps-c-lens-tests/374-zeiss_za_85_14?start=1)
Testing the Sony/Zeiss 85/1.4 on an A700. Notice the purple fringing on the lower numbers and the green fringe on the numbers above the focus plane. That is Longitudinal CA.

Just so people know that other Zeiss lenses have this issue, I have included the Nikon/Zeiss 85/1.4 from the same site Zeiss Planar ZF T* 85mm f/1.4 - Review / Test Report - Analysis (http://www.photozone.de/nikon--nikkor-aps-c-lens-tests/256-zeiss-planar-zf-t-85mm-f14-review--test-report?start=1)

If people want the very best Zeiss SLR lenses for the F3, then get the Sony's: 24/2; 16-35/2.8; 24-70/2.8; 85/1.4; 135/1.8; for a budget zoom, the 16-80/3.5-4.5. And you can't go wrong with the Sony 'G' 70-200/2.8 and the Sony 'STF' 135/2.8(T4.5).

Lo CA is CA and the cause is the same as any other CA. The problem gets worse as you open the iris because the amount of glass being used increases and as a result so does the amount of dispersion, or to be precise variation in dispersion across each lens element as dispersion is dependant on glass thickness and this varies across the width of a lens. It's why for very large focal length, big aperture lenses, ie telescopes, mirrors are preferred as these don't suffer from CA.

The range of 35mm SLR lenses that can be used is far too extensive to list them all.

My current favourite all rounder is the Tokina 28 to 70 mm f2.6 ATX Pro Mk1 or Mk2. These lenses share the same optical design as the Angineux 28 to 70mm lens and are very good. They are highly sought after lenses (Must be the Mk1 or Mk2, not the ASV version) but you can pick them up for around 250 Euros. They are not all that fast at T3 but are good all round performers.


Just got one on eBay for $314US including shipping from Japan to Canada... 'Been looking for this one for some time...

I had a Tokina 28-70 and it was pretty good (great for the price) but not as sharp as my other Nikon or Canon glass so I sold it. I did compare it to a couple of Tamron 17-50 f2.8 VC lenses and I found it to be sharper, but it did have some distortion at the wide end.

I don't know how much the F3 will show up the weaknesses of 2nd tier glass.

F3 is still not on market, so we don't have all accessories yet... I would love to see some Canon EOS lens adapters for F3 (with possibility to adjust f stop). As I do have a very nice collection of high speed "L" primes. For now, Tokina 28-70 with Nikon adapter will do until I actually try it on the camera body.

Of course if the proper (EOS) adapter shows up sooner than later, my lens collection for F3 would be more than completed overnight... We'll see...

Same here, I'd love to be able to use my EF L lenses with the F3 but I don't see how it would be possible to have aperture control. There is support for talking to Cooke and ARRI lenses but I don't know if Canon EF lenses was ever considered. I am sure will see support for Alpha lenses sooner than later.

Thierry.

Well you could use Canon lenses by setting the iris to open or a stop or two down from open where it probably performs a little better and then using a vari-ND to control exposure. Not quite as nice as proper aperture control but not too bad a compromise.

Didn't RedRockMicro make an electronic Canon adapter for their M2 DOF adapter? If they can do it, why can't others.

Same here, I'd love to be able to use my EF L lenses with the F3 but I don't see how it would be possible to have aperture control. There is support for talking to Cooke and ARRI lenses but I don't know if Canon EF lenses was ever considered. I am sure will see support for Alpha lenses sooner than later.

Thierry.

I've heard that Birger Engineering plans to make an EF to F3 adapter, which will power the lens and allow for aperture control. But I think this would take some time to complete.

Andy

Also just to let people know, eventually it sounds like MTF will be planning on making a BNCR adapter for the F3, which can open up another world of lenses available on the used market as well.

Possibly they could do an OCT19 as well ?

My current favourite all rounder is the Tokina 28 to 70 mm f2.6 ATX Pro Mk1 or Mk2. These lenses share the same optical design as the Angineux 28 to 70mm lens and are very good. They are highly sought after lenses (Must be the Mk1 or Mk2, not the ASV version) but you can pick them up for around 250 Euros. They are not all that fast at T3 but are good all round performers.

What is the "ASV" version Alistair? I can't find any Tokinas quoting the Mk1, Mk2 or ASV markings on the second hand market.

Cheers,
Peter

They don't have Mk1 or Mk2 markings. You need to look at the end of the lens and the way the hood fits. Mk1 has a screw fit hood and Mk2 bayonet. ASV is a later lens and will say ASV in the lettering around the front element. Avoid the ASV's. There is also a later version where the focus scale is behind a plastic window, avoid these as well. Your looking for one with a traditional focus ring. These lenses went out of production quite a few years ago. There's a Mk2 on ebay in the US Tokina AT-X PRO 28-70mm 1:2.6-2.8 Camera Lens for NIKON on eBay (end time 25-Jan-11 03:40:01 GMT) (http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Tokina-AT-X-PRO-28-70mm-1-2-6-2-8-Camera-Lens-for-NIKON_W0QQitemZ200565618921QQcategoryZ3323QQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp5197.m7QQ_trkparmsZalgo%3DLVI%26i tu%3DUCI%26otn%3D3%26po%3DLVI%26ps%3D63%26clkid%3D6496075791014786256)

Many thanks Alistair. I wish there was a suitable way to mod my C/Y Contax lenses to Nikon mount. I may have to look harder at the Nikon range.

Hi Alister,
In taking a look at the pix of the Tokina lens on eBay, I noticed that there are what seem to be a series of reference marks for focus depending on focal length. Not sure if I've missed anything in the thread, but does that indicate the lens is a vari-focal rather than a zoom -- ie, do you need to re-focus whenever you change focal length? (or pull the focus ring to maintain focus distance while zooming?)
Or is this feature restricted to a certain version of the lens?
Thanks,
Dave S.

Almost all stills zooms are varifocal. It's extremely rare to find a stills zoom that accurately tracks focus, it's not normally needed as you zoom, focus, shoot, re-frame, focus shoot. I have no plans to use it as a zoom, just as a multi focal length lens.

Hi Alister,
Thanks for confirming my suspicions!
Best,
Dave S

Hi Allister,
Have you have any experience with the Tokina AT-X 12-24 DX?

No I don't Chuck.

I have a project for my sony f3 and a dslr. I am trying to decide if I can use a 7d or 5d mark 2 and share the lenses. I have some nikon glass for the f3, but wanted to see if could use canon lenses for cost and convenience on both cameras.

Andy
Get a canon body to Nikkor lens adapter and stay with the Nikon for both cameras. You will find using a common lens with manual controls best suited for both cameras. Now as to having both on the same gig, set your canon to a neutral setting (low con)and grade the canon to the F3.
The German adapters are best. Name escapes me. Novoflex I think. Way tighter than t he cheaper ones.
I would send you mine, but I'm in Haiti this week till the 24,

As Dennis suggests I'd use your Nikon fit lenses on both.

If your investing in new glass then the low cost but high quality Samyang/Rokinon lenses are worth a look as you can get these in Canon mount with manual iris and focus rings, they even do full cine versions that include gears for follow focusses etc. My biggest issue with Nikon lenses is that they focus in the opposite way to Canon and most other lenses. Most Sigma Nikon fit lenses focus the same way as Canon, just to confuse things.

My F3 Canon picture profile is closer to a Canon DSLR than the stock F3 settings:

XDCAM-USER.COM • Login (http://www.xdcam-user.com/forum3/viewtopic.php?f=42&t=201)

I heard that Joe Dunton will be introducing new lenses in the near future. For now, I have a full set of F mount primes. I've been using the Red 17 - 50 zoom recently for an EPK project and have been very pleased with the results. The fact that it's 6k is a plus. Just wish I could find a 17 or 18 to 85 for under 10k.

Just wish I could find a 17 or 18 to 85 for under 10k.

Just in case you didn't know, The Red 18-85 can be had for $6K. It's just not a handheld or run+gun proposition.

Anything of that range and a 2.8 stop is gonna be big and heavy...until they figure out a way to get around some old physics problems.

I've had good luck with my prior generation Nikon zooms being parfocal or very close to it. (the ones with iris rings). Even when using as a multi-focal lens they are much easier to use than Canon zooms which are just a big PITA to me.
Tamron says their 17-50 is parfocal