Since the main draw of SI2K for some of us is -Acceptable Quality at an Affordable Price, I seek the following clarification on the issue of Lens.

Zeiss & Cooke Primes & Zooms are initially out of my reach (at least till i ROI on the SI2k) so i am interested in The Cheaper Fujinons.
Since you guy's obviously have experience, using these c-mount lenses (especially as you were initially planning to bundle them in), i'll request that you make a detailed assesment & publication, perhaps a White Paper on its use with the SI2K.

What most of us will want to see are its Pro's & Con's, particularly its Con's. We are aware its basically a quickfix solution & has limitations as compared to its more Expensive Sisters.We know better than to expect too much from them ,but that's still in the spirit of the SI2K development- Cutting Cost.
I personally will like to know & assess before-hand if i can rely on them in making TV Commercials & Grade-B movies destined for the Silver Screen.I'll like to know what Scenerios to avoid, those that bring out their downsides so that i can Shoot Intelligently.
Thanks.

Well, the main "con's" are:

1) While very smooth and precise, they have a very short focus throw

2) No gears on the focus or iris so you can't use a follow-focus

3) No distance marks on the focus ring

4) There are "clicks" at each iris f-stop, meaning that it's not a completely smooth iris pull like a normal cine lens, and as a result, trying to get a hot or cold f-stop is a little hard-er to-do, but probably not that big a deal since you can see you image WYSIWYG.

5) They won't fit a normal matte-box . . . maybe with some sort of adapter, but they only are 52mm on the front filter element, so that's a lot smaller than the 92mm you see on the Zeiss lenses

The "pro's":

1) Fast . . . they go to f1.4

2) Really close focus

3) Primes, so fairly sharp and good MTF without a whole lot of glass

4) Light

5) Cheap

Jason

Apparently Linos came out with lenses that fit SI-2K.

Some people say that Linos

https://www.zgc.com/webstore.nsf/products/pstech_23104

are sharper/better than Fujinons

Fujinon Industrial Lens | B&H (http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/404222-REG/Fujinon_HF125SA1_HF12_5SA_1_2_3_12_5mm_F1_4.html/BI/2187/KBID/2932)

In your opinion... in practical applications of SI-2K (commercials, interviews, music videos, short films) - is the lens quality difference significant and worth 4x the price difference?

just did a side by side comparison with my schneider xenon 0.95 lenses (25mm and 50mm) and the linos 16mm and 50mm.

I found that the linos lenses seemed to show more 'blue grain' in the image. Not sure why that is.

This Schneider lenses are soft at t0.95, but up at 1.4 they are just fine.

I would choose the schneiders over the linos lenses, however if you are looking for consistency and being able to use the same follow focus gears on all lenses, the linos lenses are all very similar build. The schneiders are all different sizes/diameters.

FrameDiscreet.com transfers // cinematography (http://www.framediscreet.blogspot.com)

Justin

Blue grain?


My thinking is that the Linos lenses may be warmer and blue channel gain has to come up higher when you white balance in lower light levels, therefore more blue channel gain noise.

Justin, with Linos:

1. do they suffer from the same very shallow DOF that Jason described with Fujinons?

2. how's the image quality on the level of: sharpness and like/dislike the image. Say, I own Zeiss 100m Makro T*2 (F-mount) and it produces fantastic image, both sharp and very much likeable. But... with 2.5x magnification, it becomes extreme telephoto 250mm equivalent on SI-2K... so I need to look for the alternatives...