ICG Focuses On The Latest Lenses For Film And Digital Productions

These are interesting times for lens manufacturers. There was a time not too long ago where a company like Fujinon had little to do with the feature film industry and a Zeiss didn’t bother itself with anything but film systems. But times are changing quickly. As cinematographers continue to experiment with an ever-growing array of cameras and formats, they also want the optics for each format to come in all shapes and sizes.

For a while there, it may have looked like high-end digital cinematography was all headed in the direction of Sony’s HDCAM systems and the Grass Valley (formerly Thomson) Viper, with their 2/3-inch imagers and that meant new opportunities and challenges for lens manufactures. But, while usage of both formats continues to grow, a lot of cinematographers are even more excited about new digital cameras such as Panavision’s Genesis, ARRI’s D20 and Dalsa’s Origin—all of which make use of the same lenses, with virtually the same image area to cover, as 35mm film cameras. And, at the same time, Fujifilm and Kodak continue to improve emulsions to the point where 35mm film maintains preeminence as the medium of choice for major features and 16mm has enjoyed an unexpected resurgence on independent productions.

Today, more than ever, lens manufacturers have to be very careful about what kind of products they allocate their resources to develop. The only thing certain in the industry right now is uncertainty.

PANAVISION

Panavision has added five new Primo Prime lenses to its line-up. The 24, 30, 65, 85, 125mm optics all open up to T/1.8. The close-focusing lenses—they focus to less than eleven inches on the wide end and just over two feet on the longer end—use the same glass, coatings and scales as the rest of the Primo Prime line and are compatible with all the same accessories. “We just had some holes in the line-up,” says Rick Gelbard, VP mechanical engineering at Panavision. “There were focal lengths that cinematographers wanted that we didn’t offer and this is our attempt to remedy that.”

Gelbard also notes the company’s new anamorphic wide-angle zoom (40-80mm) that makes use of a front anamorphic element. “Nobody else does this,” he says. “The last time it was done was for a Panavision lens in the late 1960s or early 1970s. Normally, you make an anamorphic lens by adding a rear anamorphic element to a spherical lens, which doubles the focal length making it difficult to get a real wide-angle anamorphic lens. The answer is to make the lens with a front anamorph, but that makes it very difficult to build and there’s a limited market for such a lens. But we saw a need and we built it. It’s a high-end product and we’re proud of its performance.”

The lens, Gelbard explains, is closest in size to Panavision’s intermediate (E series) line, which is larger than the compact C series and smaller than the really large Primo anamorphics. It opens up to T/2.8 and focuses to 2.5 feet. Gelbard notes that cinematographer Dion Beebe, ASC was among the first to use the 40-80mm on Memoirs of a Geisha (see Dec. ‘05 issue). “They used this lens throughout and it looks amazing,” he says.

Gelbard adds that Panavision has seen a lot of interest in their new specialty accessory, the Hylen System, named for creator Steve Hylen, and co-developed in product form with Smart Lens, Connecticut. The system is designed to give the user selective focus in circumstances—such as a narrow aperture and/or a very wide lens—where the image might have more than the desired depth of field. “It lets you isolate one part of the frame,” he explains, “and defocus it or refocus it during a take. The controller is laid out like an X-box or Play Station control unit.”

Gelbard acknowledges that selective de-focus can be achieved in a digital suite, but notes that Panavision has seen significant demand for a tool like the Hylen System. The glass plates in the system is laser etched such that the effect is more 3D, more volumetric in a way a post effect is not, and can be increased, decreased or eliminated altogether within a take. Furthermore, he adds, “It’s so much less expensive than doing it in post,” he notes, “and it can be controlled on the fly by the actual creative on set and that’s often much better than trying to explain the effect to someone in a room long after the production is wrapped. People are already using them and we plan on stocking 25 of these for rent in the first quarter of 2006.”

COOKE

Cooke Optics’ Chairman Les Zellan points to his company’s new “i” lenses, which continue the line that contains the additional “intelligence” connector that allows users to capture shooting metadata. The midrange S4/i 15-40mm T2 zoom, he notes, “should be very good for handheld and Steadicam situations,” and the S4/I 100mm T2 prime for medium telephoto use.

Cooke also recently ushered in a set of lenses for the Super 16 shooter. “We’ve seen a resurgence of interest in the format,” he says. “Many companies think 16 is dead. The video guys have been saying so for years. Sometimes even we believed it. People get caught up in buzz and there’s an idea that you have to shoot this way because ‘everyone’s doing it.’ That’s often the first wave. Then people realize the technology that they were so excited about isn’t always best. People jumped on the video or HD bandwagon where often 16 makes more sense.”

Zellan is quick to point out that his company’s line of S4 lenses have been successfully used for a great many 16mm projects. “But,” he notes, “The widest S4 lens has been the 14mm, which isn’t very wide when you’re shooting 16. We introduced a 12mm lens but it’s very big and expensive. So we saw a market for wider lenses that could be used for Super 16 projects. Naturally, it would be less expensive to build wider lenses if they didn’t have to cover the full Super 35 image area.”

So Cooke introduced its 9.5 and 12mm SK4 lenses specifically for that purpose. “And we may do more,” Zellan adds. “Filmmakers using Super 16 will be able to use the SK lenses for wide angle work and then go to the S4 series all the way out to 180mm.” Zellan says that while Cooke is keeping an eye on digital cinematography, he expresses relief that Cooke didn’t buy into predictions about HD becoming a “film killer.”

“My feeling is,” he says, “is that as time goes on, we’re seeing the high end staying with 35mm or going to cameras like the D20 and Dalsa, which use the same lens design. Meanwhile, a lot of the work that uses 2/3-inch [imagers] are migrating to smaller chip sizes. I think it would be ironic if film was still alive after the 2/3 inch format was dead.”

ZEISS

Cooke is not alone perceiving Super 16’s resurgence. Zeiss also offers a set of wide-angle lenses designed specifically for Super 16 work. Zeiss’s Kornelius J. Mueller explains that the origin of that product line goes back almost two years to Kodak’s introduction of 16mm versions of their Vision 2 stocks. “When I heard from Kodak that they’d introduced significantly improved emulsion for Super 16,” he recalls, “emulsions that were so good and so low in grain that existing 16mm lenses would not be good enough to show the improvement, it was music to my ears.

“I tried to convince our partners at ARRI that this would be a good time to come up with a new, improved series of Super 16 lenses. It took a while for them to ponder the proposal. Some time went by and the new emulsions came out and Kodak reported sales of Super 16 stock had gone up 30% in one year. ARRI confirmed those figures from inside sources. So last year at IBC I saw that Cooke had come out with new lenses for Super 16! I took the heads of ARRI to the Cooke booth and I said, ‘Cooke reacted to my proposal and I didn’t make my proposal to them!’ At that point ARRI quickly developed significant interest in having us design a new set of lenses that could be used with existing Ultraprime lenses but offer something significantly shorter, and have a smaller diameter in front than Ultraprimes. Finally, with these short focal lengths, these lenses would have to be faster so the user could still have some kind of selective focus. So we created our T/1.3 lenses for Super 16.”

Zeiss has also gone wide with its newest Ultraprime, the 8R—an 8mm rectilinear lens that covers the full Super 35 frame. “Some visionaries in motion pictures have asked for such a lens for a long time,” says Mueller. “It covers an image angle that has been available in still photography for decades. I was surprised no one had come up with such wide rectilinear lenses.” They introduced one for 35mm work and a Digiwide 3.9 for 2/3-inch chip cameras to go along with their Digiwide 6-24 zoom. A 17-112 Digizoom will also be available shortly.

Mueller admits that Zeiss got into servicing the 2/3-inch chip cameras late in the game. “Others were there earlier making lenses for the Thomson Viper and Sony’s F900,” he says. “but cinematographers were not always happy with what they had and they called on us. The 2/3-inch system has such a small image size that the depth of field is more than you usually want. To counter that you want to open up the aperture as far as you possibly can and still have optimal image quality.

“With these systems,” he adds, “the widest you can go is T/1.4. The beam splitter is the limiting factor. But we decided that we should make lenses that can routinely be used at that aperture with no drop in quality but this was an extreme optical demand. This is why optical system in Digiprimes are so much bigger than others [in this market]. Other companies’ optical systems are quite small. Even if the lens barrel is big, the optics inside take up a small space. Ours is bigger because if you want quality from an optical system you have to invest in glass, which has more length and diameter.”

CANON

Canon has also been developing wider lenses for the 2/3-inch chip world. “Whenever we talk to shooters and directors,” says Gordon Tubbs, assistant director Canon USA Broadcast and Communications division, “the one thing they always say is, ‘Can you get wider?’ Well, wide angle is one of the most expensive features to design. The technology is harder to develop. How do you keep it reasonably priced and give the users what they want?”

Tubbs answers his rhetorical question by explaining that Canon is able to leverage R&D of their most expensive broadcast lenses and incorporate design elements into the market segment it calls HDEC, or High Definition Electronic Cinematography. Canon’s new 8.5-170mm zoom, he says, “is particularly noteworthy because it goes to 8.5mm. That’s a number that typically costs much more money. But we wanted something that had that capability and could be used in the indie film market.”

Canon currently offers three zoom lenses and six primes for this market , all designed to look, feel and operate like motion picture lenses. The company also offers a specialty item specifically for filmmakers using HD or Viper technology—an optical anamorphic converter that horizontally compresses the 16x9 image such that it can be unsqueezed into 2.35:1 widescreen format without the resolution loss that results from masking the image and blowing it up to get a 2.35:1 aspect ratio.

“A lot of projects in the $5- to $15-million range,” says Tubbs, “are aiming for a theatrical release and we want to service that market. I’d say we’re not going after the very highest end of the theatrical world—though if someone wants to use our lenses, they can certainly get wonderful results—but we’re thinking a lot about mid-range feature and episodic production.”

FUJINON

Fujinon is currently holding steady with its lenses for the cinema market. The company’s optics have been used in a number of high-profile HD features, including Revenge of the Sith and Sin City. “We haven’t introduced anything new in a while,” says Dave Waddell, marketing director Fujinon Broadcast and Communication Products. “We feel we have a good complement of product now.”

One feature that may be new to many in the industry is Fujinon’s Precision Focus mechanism, which is built into the latest iterations of their lenses for this market. The system uses an optical beam splitter and two separate CCDs to sample a portion of the light reflected in a scene determine ideal point of focus on the lens. “We don’t use the term ‘auto focus,’” he says, “because it doesn’t prevent you from pulling focus the normal way. But if you put the lens in automatic mode, it can lock on the selected object and track its movements.

“At first, when we show it to operators, they say, ‘Oh, I don’t need that.’” Wadell says. “But once they realize we’re not trying to take their jobs away, they’ve given us some very positive feedback.”