Kinoptic primes with Cameflex mounts

[Claude Mangold]

Hi there glass specialists - Don't know where to post - so here because this could go onto the PL-adapter.

I may have the opportunity of purchasing some Kinoptics.

But I need PL and read somewhere that cameflex/Eclair mount can't be converted to PL - is this right ?

Thanks !

[Bob Hart]

The Kinoptik Tegea 5.7mm is not a lens compensated for 3 x CCD prism sensors. If you intend to mount it direct to the JVC I think it will not yield a satisfactory image to the smaller 1/3" sensor, possibly unacceptable softness and with vertical chroma artifacts.

Given you are talking about a PL-Mount, I am assuming you will mount the lens to the JVC via JVC's own optical adaptor for 16mm film lenses. If you are using the JVC 16mm optical adaptor, then you should see a better result.

It is a 16mm film lens and has a vide enough view to permit Super16mm.

It will sit well back inside a PL-Mount. The aperture ring is way back in the rear and new extention pieces may have to be attached to the ring to enable it to be adjusted. If there are ear shaped extension handles for the Cameflex version, these may interfere with the inside diameter of the PL-Mount.

The Kinoptiks I have played with have not been the sharpest. Onto the smaller 1/3" sensor direct and not compensating for the 3 channel prism split in the camera, you may be disappointed with the result.

One other gotcha is a that the rear element of the lens is way rearwards from the flange face because it is a wide-angle lens. This element may clash with the foremost optical element in the JVC optical adaptor. How much depth do you have from the flange face of your PL-Mount to the face of the next optical element behind?

With JVC's genuine 16mm film camera lens optical adaptor, through which the camera will see the full 16mm lens image as I understand things, the image yield to the JVC should be comparable to the linked clip, except for dynamic range. Distance from front of lens to subject was about 16 inches due to the confined workspace of the aircraft, which was why the Kinoptik was used.

http://exposureroom.com/members/DARA...714d445c8a62f/


It may be possible to remove the Cameflex mount altogether and have a PL-Mount made up. I made up a CP mount for a Kinoptik 5.7mm. The lens I had was an older version without filter slot. It had a C-mount which was removable from the back of the lens body. I refitted the C-Mount for use with the SI2K. I think the lens body may be the same for all mounts. The C-Mount appeared to be an add-on retained by a threaded ring so that was the way I fitted the CP mount.

This lens has no focus adjustment so your mount has to be spot on or the focussed image will miss the camera focal plane. It is normally set up so that objects from about 3ft to infinity are sharp. The lens has a very deep depth-of-field.

[Claude Mangold]

Thanks a million,Bob. Yes, my «adapter» is the HZ-CA13U 16mm relay lens.

Your clip is very impressive. I see very little distortion for wide angle. The Tegea on offer is not as short as yours: it's the 9.8 f1.2. other primes on offer are apochromats, one a genuine 16mm lens 18mm f1.8. the other apochromats are 25mm1.2, 25mm 1.2, 28mm 2.0, 35mm 1.2, 40mm1.2, etc up to 100mm - all f are offered in the USD 500 range.

i might go for the tegea and the apochromat-16.

lenses - zooms or primes - which give odd image qualities always fascinate me. i am presently esperimenting with some trashy cheap East german lenses in lowlight, which give really interesting picture 'quality".

one other question: I was offered elsewhere a Konica 50mm f1.0 24x36 lens. which would be a true bonus for all the lowlight shoots i do, particularly with the JVC relay lens. faster than Ultras 16s, and quite a bit dirtier. I'll ask the seller wich mount it has but it would only be useful if I could get it onto the HZ-CA13U. But can SLR leses even be adapted to PL ?

[Bob Hart]

The 9.8mm Tegea is a 35mm lens. You may find it a little softer than more modern 9mm lenses for 16mm frame. Century rehoused these lenses in an industry geared body with PL-Mount. I can give you the flange to rearmost object for the 9.8mm Tegea. It is in the ballpark of 27.5mm. Your lens will need a PL-Mount adaptor. I can only speak for the ARRI mount versions. But if there is a Cameflex to PL-Mount adaptor, the PL-flange to rearmost object distance will be the same. By "rearmost object" think how far back the thing penetrates inside from the flange face.

There are two styles of older ARRI mount, both lens mount styles retained in the mount by an expanding spring ring. They are ARRI standard and ARRI bayonet. The older lenses used to turn on the mount which was a pest. The bayonet lug avoided that. The PL adaptor for ARRI standard is slightly different to the ARRI bayonet.

For the ARRI standard, the non-grubscrew style PL adaptor slips on, the snap ring goes in the rear groove, then a threaded collar in the rear of the adaptor body, screws out anticlockwise to load against the ring to keep the lens against the flange. The lens tends to twist in the mount if the focus movement is stiff and loosen that rear collar so a little bit of glue on it is needed. You also need a lens spanner to tighten it but you can get by with a home-made wrench or two screwdrivers and a crossbar.

The bayonet style PL adaptor has a different retention collar and this has a clearance for the bayonet lugs but uses the same style of anticlockwise tightening to security. The front stainless PL-Mount section is identical, complete with bayonet clearance groove.

This is only applicable to the PL adaptors I have. There are other styles.

In using mine on a Mini35 adaptor and on the SI2K, due to a thick glass between the lens and focal plane on both appliances, possibly an issue on the REDs as well, I had to machine about 0.7mm off the internal contact face of the PL adaptor to move the lens slightly rearwards to achieve infinity focus.

If the 16mm adaptor on the JVC cannot achieve infinity focus with this lens, you might need to do the same and then to correctly collimate the lens, you would need to add shims between the internal face of the adaptor and lens. I actually skimmed and tried in very small steps until I got it right.

If you encounter this problem and want a machinist to adjust the adaptor by skimming, please contact me first because there is a wrong way which will total your adaptor.

SLR lenses have a flange to focal plane distance in the ballpark 42mm to 46mm depending on brand. The PL-Mount and the ARRI standard/bayonet flange to focal plane is from memory 50mm. The internal shoulder diameter is 52mm from memory.

Most SLR lenses are of a wider diameter and either cannot fit in that space or there would be insuffience wall clearance to allow a dished adaptor with any useful strength. The aperture control would be impossible to get at.

There are reverse B4 to PL-Mount adaptors which I think have an optical element in them to extend the flange to focal plane distance from the 44mm or so to 50mm. They will be hell expensive. You might be able to find a Nikon F-Mount to B4-Mount adaptor. Nikons are 46.5mm. It would be a convolution.

The lenses may not come up to the sharpness of 16mm lenses and the last half to full f-stop to wide-open will be flary and softer.

For the older look, maybe hunt down some old Schneider Kreuznachs from Bolex H16 turret cameras. Be careful that they do not come from a H16RX* because the focal plane and iris rings were adjusted for the thickness of the reflex viewfinder splitter prism and the one stop light loss it introduced. Old Cooke Speed Panchro series 2 35mm camera lenses ARRI mount are not bad but don't have modern coatings so they flare a bit. They are findable on eBay in 28mm, 50mm and 70mm from memory and resolved almost as sharp as my CP Ultras and as good as the best of my Nikons which was the 58mm.

[Bob Hart]

Here's a link to a 35mm grounglass adaptor test which includes the Kinoptik Tegea 9.8mm. The aspect ratio is vertically stretched. The clip hails from older times when you had to play tricks with youtube to make it display correctly. This is 35mm motion picture film format and not 16mm but it should give you a general idea of what to expect. The Kinoptik vision is towards the end of the garden stuff.

There is distortion with these lenses. They are rectilinear which means straight lines stay straight but the corners are diagonally stretched. It is one of the trade-offs in wide-angle lens engineering.

SONY PMW-EX1 - P+S TECHNIK MINI35 TEST - YouTube
There are some stills from the 50mm Cooke Speed Panchro Series II and old Pan Cinor Som Berthiot zoom to Super16mm SI2K camera here :-

PAN CINOR SOM-BERTHOIT 17mm - 85mm ON SI2K By Bob Hart On ExposureRoom
COOKE SPEED PANCHRO SERIES II ON SI2K FRAME 9 By Bob Hart On ExposureRoom
FURTHUR COOKE SPEED PANCHRO SERIES II ON SI2K FRAME 1 By Bob Hart On ExposureRoom
COOK SPEED PANCHRO ON SI2K FRAME 7 By Bob Hart On ExposureRoom

The Cooke lens was not in good shape. It had been fungussed severely however it cleaned up reasonably well. The 75mm ?? was comparable in sharpness but was a bit flary as it had cleaning marks on the front element. The 28mm was also comparable for sharpness but one iris blade had been damaged, a weakness in the design and construction material so wide open it was a bit weird.

The Som Bertiot lens zoom movement is lever operated and you can do crash zooms to your heart's content.

The Speed Panchros have a weird focussing system. The little rabbit ear handles "seem" to be there for focus adjustment but these are fixed to the lens barrel and serve only for you with one hand to stop the lens from spinning in the ARRI standard mount as you adjust the focus ring with your other hand on the front. Like some older 16mm film lenses and seventies Cosmicar primes, the aperture ring is also towards the front.

[Claude Mangold]

Bob, many apologies for late reply.

Your posts helped me a lot to define what I really am after as a director: a softer look which is remains fully useful for theatrical release. The softness should be accompanied by a glow in the highlights and skies.

There appear to be four ways to achieve this goal:
1-post
2-a set of new PL lenses which have a fairly soft characteristic. The recent test by Ryan Walters included at least one such set, albeit @ a hefty price tag for what are otherwise not top lenses.
3-buy up older primes, try to match them approximately, re-mount them for PL.
4-filters. I've used promist in the past, with ultra-primes.

Obviously, my producers will favour the first solution, maybe I can get by with the second. Three and four are reserved for my personal & experimental work.

Have you got any other ideas which I could try out ?

I passed up on the 5.7 Tegea with Cameflex mount because of the work needing to be done to change the mount, but I'll try & piece together a set once I have not found a lens workshop which can handle mount conversions etc. either in Berlin or Geneva (or London maybe). 9mm rehoused by Century, such as you've got, looks like an interesting option. Did they do entire sets ?

Regarding the Bolex H16, these are c-mount leses. Isn't the flange focal distance far too short for PL ?

I own a Zenit M42 zoom with lever like the Som-Berthot, which I am still trying to get onto my GY-HD251 via my M42 adapter. Flange focal length is 44.5mm vs. JVC's 31mm. I am going to have an adapter for the adapter made.

The JVC PL-relay lens has a flange - to - rearmost space of ca. 55 mm .

[Bob Hart]

Softness.



1-post ---- Yes. Dial the detail level to a lower number or even detail - off if that is an option. You'll have to experiment. Paolo Ciccones Trucolor v3 scene file is a great start. You likely know this already.

I do not know whether minus numbers of detail setting are a reduction of default sensor sharpness on the JVC or whether the centre setting between plus and minus detail settings is simply a comfortable halfway point between default sensor sharpness and maximum detail enhancement.

My memory on this is now a bit vague as I did not have the camera in hand long enough to work without the manual which I no longer have.

Detail you can add in post but like salt in the stew, once it is burned into the recorded image, it is not so easily removed without an artifact becoming apparent.


2-a set of new PL lenses which have a fairly soft characteristic. ---- I'm not so sure they are softer after their S16 frame area has been optically rescaled to 1/3" sensor area by JVC's remarkable adaptor. JVC would not have released their adaptor if it reduced sharpness unacceptably.


3-buy up older primes, try to match them approximately, re-mount them for PL. ---- The older Zeiss-Arri S16 speed lenses are not bad at all. For ARRI-Standard and ARRI-Bayonet mounts, there are PL-Mount adaptors.


4-filters. I've used promist in the past, with ultra-primes. ---- Experiment with the interaction of promist with various camcorder detail settings and aperture (iris) settings. Seriously consider ND filters in mattbox on front to enable maintaining the PL-Mount lenses in their sweet spot. The sweet spot I do not know. For a lens of f1.3 at its widest, my guess is the zone f3.5 - f5.6 may be best.

Please do not take more than just casual notice of my comments. The likes of Chris Barcellos and Charles Papert are the ones to take heed of.


Have you got any other ideas which I could try out ? ---- Nothing more than I have suggested in responses above.

I passed up on the 5.7 Tegea with Cameflex mount because of the work needing to be done to change the mount, but I'll try & piece together a set once I have not found a lens workshop which can handle mount conversions etc. either in Berlin or Geneva (or London maybe). ---- Enquire with Les Bosher in the UK. He has a website easily found by google search.

If it can be remounted or adapted he can likely do it and may already have designs archived for a direct PL-Mount for the bare Kinoptik Tegea 5.7mm and 9.8mm lenses and may even also know the offsets required to correctly collimate these wide lenses to the JVC via the S16 adaptor. You will have to be very clear on this as there may well be an adaptor for PL-Mount direct to JVC-Mount with no optical correction in the path. For the JVC adaptor the lenses and their new PL or adapted ARRI Standard or ARRI bayonet mounts, normal lens collimation as if working on a film camera would likely be the standard. The JVC S16 adaptor is intended to offer the camera to the lens as if it is a film or single-sensor Super16mm format camera.


9.8mm rehoused by Century, such as you've got, looks like an interesting option. Did they do entire sets ? ---- I don't know if Century did entire sets or only adapted select third-party lenses. I think they may have done some Nikons and some Canons which met particular purposes. For sharpness and compact size on the JVC adaptor, I would prefer a Super16mm format 9mm lens versus a 35mm format 9.8mm lens.

Regarding the Bolex H16, these are c-mount leses. Isn't the flange focal distance far too short for PL ?

I own a Zenit M42 zoom with lever like the Som-Berthot, which I am still trying to get onto my GY-HD251 via my M42 adapter. Flange focal length is 44.5mm vs. JVC's 31mm. I am going to have an adapter for the adapter made. ----- I am assuming that with the M42 adaptor, it is a simple spacer, JVC-mount on rear, M42 in front. I also assume there are no optical elements in the path to correct for the prism split in the camera. A direct-to-camera arrangement may not be satisfactory. You may find it impossible to set the lens up to remain in focus through the zoom range and there may be the vertical colour fringes I have previously mentioned when the lens ism operated at close to fully-wide iris settings.

The JVC PL-relay lens has a flange - to - rearmost space of ca. 55 mm. The flange to focal of a PL-Mount is 50mm from memory. There will be optical elements inside the JVC adaptor and sophisticated they will be. There are "in-air" flange to focal plane distances quoted for lenses which fit to 3x sensor prism cameras. I think this may be for the purpose of collimating the lenses on conventional lens instruments.

The linear distance of the optical path through the prism to each of the three sensors I think is longer. How this all works in theory is beyond me and in the realm of competent optical engineers.

[Bob Hart]

C-mount lenses as used on the Bolex non-reflex camera are 17.5mm flange to focal plane. Assuming the lens barrel can even fit inside the inner shoulder of the PL-Mount, the rear element of the C-Mount lens is likely to be too far rearward and clash against the internal optical elements of the JVC S16 adaptor before the 17.5mm focal distance can be reached.

[Claude Mangold]

Originally Posted by Bob Hart

Softness.



1-post ---- Yes.

The older Zeiss-Arri S16 speed lenses are not bad at all. For ARRI-Standard and ARRI-Bayonet mounts, there are PL-Mount adaptors.


4-filters. Experiment with the interaction of promist with various camcorder detail settings and aperture (iris) settings. Seriously consider ND filters in mattbox on front to enable maintaining the PL-Mount lenses in their sweet spot. The sweet spot I do not know. For a lens of f1.3 at its widest, my guess is the zone f3.5 - f5.6 may be best.

Please do not take more than just casual notice of my comments. The likes of Chris Barcellos and Charles Papert are the ones to take heed of.

.

Thanks again, Bob. So, besides post, a combination of older 16mm lenses, filters, & soft spots would be the course of action.

Many of my films deal with a form of magic realism, hence the soft glow to varying degrees.

Below, a few stills from my recent shorts, all with that softness: Max, Mirko-Morgan and Jeunefemme frames were shot with Mini 35 & Leica resp. various Ultraspeeds and filters. Setting = Bleach Bypass with detail = min. VOIR with JVC adapter and Distagon, cam ND only, setting Superwide200, Detail -5.

But always striving to de better, especially managing the whites: soft burn is desired, but I'd love to be able to keep some detail nevertheless! Burned out («blinding», in creative terms) but still with some detail. A tough one for digital, so now experimenting. Would be interesting to know if you guys think that F3 and high-end cameras of th, F23, Alexa, Genesis type can do much better in this area. I am experimenting with film, also.
(I've mastered the same problem at the black bottom of the vectorscope with the 251 - being now able to keep detail in deep blacks thanks to small changes to Tim Dashwood's settings.)

Maybe Chis or Charles will comment ?

[Bob Hart]

F3 and high-end cameras of th, F23, Alexa, Genesis. ----

The closest I have been to any of these has been the Sony PMW-EX1 and the SI2K so I cannot validly comment.

There was a comprehensive 35mm format camera comparative test done and published about a year or so back. There was discussion on dvinfo about it. I recall that the ASC may have been involved.

The F23 I think is a 2/3" sensor camera so it won't be in that shootout.


There is the F3 out of the box and the F3 after it has had the additional firmware upgrades, S-Log and all that stuff done to it. It is as if it becomes two different cameras.


I had never attempted to do any serious grading until I started playing with SI2K footage. I was in for a bit of a surprise when I tried to do the same tricks with the EX1 images as I had become accustomed to doing with the SI2K.


I observe in your landscape image with the hedge in foreground that there is a hint of something I found when trying to overstretch the SI2K image of a peach orchard, a sort of un-natural grey where there should be coloured shadows in greens.

I guess it could be called the expected outcome of image abuse, but personal foolishness makes me to try to know better than accomplished DPs and the camera manufacturers.

I found that subjectively, there seemed to be a nicer look to be had by using ND plus a Schneider Truecut IR filter. The greens and colours like dark purple-brown of ornamental plum foliage seemed to be more faithful. Please bear in mind that I am apparently partially colour blind and I am not using proper calibrated monitors so there are all manner of possibilities for things to be wrong with my observations.

With groundglass 35mm relay like the Mini35, I did experiment briefly with adding light to the groundglass from within the enclosure of a home-made AGUS35 adaptor.

It seemed to have an effect like the old technique of "pre-fogging" motion picture film or the visual effect of apparent expanded dyamic range when smoke of a campfire passes through a night image and background objects buried in black seem to become visible as a curtain of smoke passes.

I could not get uniform distribution of added light across my groundglass and because it was a spinning disk which was not running quite true, there was unacceptable flicker. I believe Dennis Woods (Cinevate) was also trying something similar at one point. It is rather moot now given the demise of 35mm groundglass relay adaptors.

I seem to recall hearing sometime that ARRI had developed some sort of active or light additive optical filter which was intended to function in a similar manner. Proper DPs would likely know of it and whether it worked or was a dead-end.

In meantime, for the aesthetic you seem to be after, my tendency might be towards experimenting with combinations of added ND, Truecut, Polarisers and finally Untracon filter, which itself seems to work a bit like the smoke effect. It seems to be able to pull up what seems to be about a quarter-stop of detail out of underlit areas, like stems of glasses and shadowed sides of trophies in back of a cabinet.

With added ND, the Truecut to keep the blacks true and unredded and your S16 lens irises opened up, there will be some more softening of areas not in focus. It is a bit like the obssessive quest for shallow depth-of-field with the smaller video formats which led to 35mm adaptors and 35mm format video cameras but for a different reason.

Again, hopefully Charles or Chris will comment soone or later and make good any misinformation my comments have inadventently generated.

I guess you are stuck with losing about one stop's worth of detail in whites in order to reach deeper into your blacks. I am way outside of my skill set here. All I can say is that for the brief period I had a play with the JVC, I muchly enjoyed what it could do for me.

[Claude Mangold]

Originally Posted by Bob Hart

In meantime, for the aesthetic you seem to be after, my tendency might be towards experimenting with combinations of added ND, Truecut, Polarisers and finally Untracon filter, which itself seems to work a bit like the smoke effect. It seems to be able to pull up what seems to be about a quarter-stop of detail out of underlit areas, like stems of glasses and shadowed sides of trophies in back of a cabinet.

With added ND, the Truecut to keep the blacks true and unredded and your S16 lens irises opened up, there will be some more softening of areas not in focus. .

Thanks again, Bob , I must get into serious experimenting in the next few weeks ! Must find proper older lenses first, will look for old Arri mounts.

I'll report back.

[Bob Hart]

Something just came to mind I had forgotten.

Ken Hale at Whitehouse Audiovisual has been selling new-old-stock Angenieux 4x17 5B T2.5 zooms on ebay for a while. They have a zoom range of 17.5mm - 70mm. They apparently remained after a curtailed production run on the CP GSMO 16mm motion picture camera.

He has been remounting them from the original CP-Mount to Stainless steel PL-Mount and offering them as well. I have one.

Super 16mm Angenieux Zoom for Cinema Products Cameras | eBay

They are a compact lens. 130mm long from rear element to front face of front cap. 50.5mm widest at the rear aperture ring. The downside is the focus pull "breathes". Some lenses may come with a wide-angle adaptor which screws on and around the front. This does not seems to be as sharp but I did not perservere with testing it.

The sharpness is good, on par it seems with my CP Ultra T* lenses on the SI2K according to the sharpness readout.

The rearmost part of the lens reaches approx 34.5mm rearwards of the flange face of the PL-Mount. the outer diameter of this rearmost part, a tube supporting the rear optical element, is 23.3mm.

They were going for between US$800 and US$900 last time I looked.

Until you can get your primes, it might give you something to work with in the meantime and is cheaper than any of the primes you will find of comparable sharpness.

Here is a short test done on the SI2K. I stepped the zoom movement and you will observe the breathing on the focus trim towards the end of the clip. The lens seems to be constant aperture through its range and does not darken or vignette when zoomed in. There is no lettering on the lens to suggest it is not constant aperture.

ANGENIEUX 17.5 - 70 "COMPACT" ZOOM LENS TEST ON SI2K CAMERA. on Vimeo

[Bob Hart]

Claude. I have sent you a separate email from here on some candidate lenses. Please let me know if you don't receive it.