Personal View site logo
Make sure to join PV on Telegram or Facebook! Perfect to keep up with community on your smartphone.
Please, support PV!
It allows to keep PV going, with more focus towards AI, but keeping be one of the few truly independent places.
Best Clasic C Mount Lenses from the 16mm era
  • JohnBarlowJohnBarlow

    Interested in peoples opinions on classic C Mount lenses in the sub 50mm region.

    Currently looking at Zeiss, Kern, Berthiot

    If you have some experience to share why not put it down here?

    ...and also any zooms you particularly like.

  • 27 Replies sorted by
  • cantsincantsin

    Made some test pictures with my own collection of c-mount lenses, cropping them to the sensor size of the BM Pocket Cinema camera. Observations: As a rule of thumb, avoid cctv lenses if you want to shoot high quality. They might work on a camera like the GH2 as lo-fi lenses, but if you shoot in photographic raw quality, they just look bad (unsharp, bad colors, distortions). That even includes the higher quality Fujinon cctv lenses.

    The following prime lenses that I tested are high quality and cover Super 16/BM Pocket Cinema Camera:

    • Schneider Xenon 16mm/2.0
    • Schneider Xenon 25mm/1.4
    • Kern Switar AR 25mm/1.4
    • Kern Switar AR 10mm/1.6: coverage, but with heavy distortion and unsharpness in the corners;
    • Schneider Xenon 10mm/1.8: clean image, but slight vignetting (black shadows in the corners)

    The following zoom lenses are affordable and cover the sensor size, and have decent image quality:

    • Schneider Variogon 18-90mm/2.0: full coverage & great image quality, and relatively compact size!
    • Cosmicar (=Pentax) 22.5-90/1.5: although this is a cctv zoom that can be cheaply bought 2nd hand under different brand names, quality and coverage is good. Only color reproduction is bad with a green tint. The Schneider is considerably better - great color fidelity, more sharpness, more contrast -, and much smaller.

    The hard part will be to find wide angle lenses (or zooms) that cover the sensor without spending the fortune that you normally need to spend for a professional Super 16 lens.

  • evilkenevilken

    http://www.cinematechnic.com/resources/optics_for_super-16.html

  • spacewigspacewig

    @Paddy What was your impression regarding sharpness, contrast, color rendition, etc? Also, do you think it would match well with the olympus 14-35, 35-100 zoom lenses?

    Thanks for the feedback, much appreciated.

  • balazerbalazer

    As explained already, the Angenieux 6-90 is a Super 8 lens, and a Super 8 lens on a Super 16 camera will produce a very small image circle that does not come even close to covering the frame. Super 8 has an image circle diameter of 7 millimeters. Super 16 has an image circle diameter of 14.5 millimeters. To use such a lens you need to crop by more than a factor of two in each dimension and lose more than 75 percent of your resolution. If you really want to use that lens, put it on your GH2 and use it in 720 ETC mode. It will more than cover the 720 ETC sensor area. Or use 1080 ETC mode and crop.

  • MirrorkisserMirrorkisser

    Any thoughts on this one?

    Angenieux-Zoom 1,2/6-90mm C-Mount

  • PaddyPaddy

    @spacewig: "Curious if anyone has experience with the Zeiss 10-100 lens?" I tested it on a S16 camera many, many years ago and it did vignette when wide open and on shorter focal length (you could see the vignetting in the viewfinder). I don't remember the exact values, but I would say it should cover S16 as of T 3.1 or 3.5 and beyond 20 mm... Apart from this annoying fact, it was a superb lens, much better than the Angenieux 12-120 or 9.5-57.

  • nomadnomad

    Don't know the date, but there's a good chance it will cover S-16 – most of the longer ones for 16mm do.

    But any S-8 lens will give you a nice pinhole only…

  • NorthNorth

    16mm C Mount lens. Century Optics Night Hawk 1.9 50mm. Aside from stabilisations issues, thoughts on this sort of thing as a telephoto lens on the BMPC? Designed for 16mm not S16 and at 50mm so it will be 140mm equivalent-ish? Any one know the date of manufacture of this one?

    614812456_o.jpg
    1024 x 768 - 117K
    614812441_o.jpg
    768 x 1024 - 122K
  • spacewigspacewig

    Not sure if that comment was intended for me but I have googled and read the specs of that lens. I'm rather hoping that someone from this community who's actually put it to use might be able to provide some subjective feedback. PM would be fine also.

  • balazerbalazer

    Google is your friend. The Angenieux 6-90 is a Super 8 lens.

  • MirrorkisserMirrorkisser

    Any infos on the angenieux 6-90mm f1,2? that would be a nice focal length but it will probably not cover the full sensor....

  • spacewigspacewig

    Curious if anyone has experience with the Zeiss 10-100 lens? If so, would you mind sharing your experience/opinion of the lens and how it compares to the better MFT lenses.

    Thank you kindly in advance.

    Cheers

  • JohnBarlowJohnBarlow

    Whilst it is true that lenses designed for 16mm are not guaranteeed to cover S16mm, there is a workround........

    If you shoot with a 2x scope in 16:9 and crop for 2.35:1 WHICH MEANS you discard 16% of the image left and right, then all 16mm lenses are perfectly useful under this workflow.

  • peaceonearthpeaceonearth

    I posted that in another thread:

    I found this and it seems that it is not that easy as it might have looked at the first sight http://eclair16.com/lenses/super-16-compatible-lenses/

  • balazerbalazer

    For guys interested in zoom lenses:

    Another option is the Abakus B4-to-Super 16 converter, in C-mount or PL-mount. It has a block of glass that acts like the prism in a 3-CCD camera (I think), and also 1.32x magnification to enlarge the 2/3" image to cover Super 16. It costs $1500, but very good ENG-style B4 zoom lenses can be had for a few hundred dollars.

    http://www.abakus-scientific.com/Format_Converters.htm

  • JohnBarlowJohnBarlow

    Yes its Angenieux, probably the slow F3.5 version.

    THe Kern Switar are probably the ones to get, but at a great premium

  • nomadnomad

    Right, only the 15 to 150 does, and that's still pricey.

  • balazerbalazer

    Angenieux 12-120, or something similar. Such old 16 mm zoom lenses don't cover Super 16.

  • trevmartrevmar

    Do you recognize the lens on the Bolex, John?

  • JohnBarlowJohnBarlow

    for that money the least they could do is throw in a free Bolex H16

    he he

    http://www.ebay.com/itm/Bolex-H16-/121093663622?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_101&hash=item1c31beab86

  • vicharrisvicharris

    I've been searching for days but can't find anything that's below $2000! :)

  • JohnBarlowJohnBarlow

    My interest is in purchasing now before the goldrush :)

    I keep having dreams about Benoist Berthiot lenses and the other ones LOL

  • trevmartrevmar

    Yes, I would love a compact, bright, zoom lens for the super-16 sensor, even if it only resolved 2000 lines or so (LOL)

  • QuickHitRecordQuickHitRecord

    Any lens that ends up in this thread is going to jump in value. ;-)

  • trevmartrevmar

    John, are you thinking about lens options for the new BlackMagic :) ?

Add a Comment