Why are cinema lenses so big?

[eolake]

Why are cinema lenses so big and expensive?

I am aware that quality in lenses comes at the expense of size and weight and money. But I'm wondering how far you need to go. For instance I have many lenses for Nikon and Canon... and the latest one I got is a Canon 100mm F:2.0. It is $500 and around 400 grams, I think. This lens is just *awesome* sharp. Seriously. And it has a nice bokeh (background blur) too. It is hard to imagine how one can justify paying many times the price and carrying many times the weight for a cine lens, just to gain what has to be a rather marginal gain in picture quality.
And after all, isn't the audience to a movie following the story rather than looking for lens performance?

What am I missing?

Yours, Eolake

[Paris Remillard]

The size usually has to do with the speed of the lenses. You need a lot of glass to make large apertures. And most cine lenses are made with consistently large apertures. Look at a canon 85mm f/1.2. It's big. About the size of a Cooke s4. Then there are things like making them all the same size or close to the same size for ease of use with accessories like matte boxes,follow focus, etc...

The price has simply to do with economics. How many cine lenses are made and sold vs. how many stills lenses are made and sold. If cine lenses sold in the numbers of stills lenses, they'd be just as cheap. I haven't personally done comparisons or checked all of the lens tests and charts, but I'd be willing to bet that cine lenses aren't any sharper or better than stills lenses. Most longer lenses for cine are in fact converted stills lenses. And Zeiss makes a set of lenses in Nikon mount which they claim to be the same glass as their cine lenses. But "better" is very subjective term if one views cinematography as art. All brands of lenses have subtle or not so subtle variations in the way that they look. It really is or should be, in my opinion, an artistic choice which brand one goes with for any given project the same as it is a choice which focal length one goes with for a given shot.

But, and this is a big but, the problem with stills lenses doesn't have anything to do with resolution or contrast or anything visual. It's in the mechanics or construction of the lens. Cine lenses, well most of them, are designed not to breathe, or have slight changes in focal length, as one focuses. Stills lenses aren't. Look through the viewfinder of your still camera and focus on an object near to you. Then rack focus to something farther away while watching the edges of the frame. With most still camera lenses, you'll see a slight zoom effect as you do this. This can be distracting in motion projects, while you'd never notice it on a still.
Also, there are no gears for focus or iris, and focusing usually has a shorter throw, meaning there is a much shorter distance between closest focus and infinity. So, one can't attach a follow focus unit (well that's not true. Redrock micro and others make gears that one can add and follow focus units with longer throws so that follow focusing is possible with still lenses. But...) or pull the iris in shot. These may not seem that significant, but take your still camera again and try to keep a moving subject, like a person, in constant focus, manually,with that 100mm lens you mentioned. It's not easy. Or try pulling the iris as you go from a bright exterior to a dim interior by clicking the aperture ring on a canon or nikon.

So, in terms of pure visual quality, your still lenses are without question capable of making some beautiful, cinematic images under the right circumstances and in the right hands. I've seen some beautiful stuff shot with nikons on mini35-type adaptors. But when time is money, and you can afford to not make compromises, cine lenses are simply designed for the job and can't be beat.

I'm sure I've left stuff out, but this all that I can muster right now...Hope it helps.

[Poi Boy]

Great explanation..hopefully all the Red cameras that will be sold in the next couple of years will make it more attractive to a cine lens manufacturer to be able to reduce prices.
Aloha
-A

[Evin Grant]

Or maybe some solutions will present themselves that can counter the issues that challenge the still lenses ergonomics. Pernoslly I'd like to see the cine-lens market decimated by inexpensive high quality optics that can be used to the same level of efficiency as cinema glass. It would only benift us if the price of a prime set came out of the clouds and settled even in the high end of the still market (leica).

[Stephen Williams]

I haven't personally done comparisons or checked all of the lens tests and charts, but I'd be willing to bet that cine lenses aren't any sharper or better than stills lenses.

Hi,

I think you will loose that bet. Quality control for one is very different. When still lenses are converted for cine use more than 1 still lens is needed to produce 1 conversion. The elements are individually selected, and their alignment is optimized.

Still lenses are designed to be sharper in the middle, motion picture lenses are sharpest around the middle, with less fall off. Focusing is also far more complicated on cine lenses, to reduce or eliminate breathing the lens has to zoom slightly!

Stephen

Edit Bear in mind that the resolution of a 35mm adapter is fairly low, so its not a good way to evaluate Nikon's.

[Michael Hastings]

Probably the best hope for that is RED itself. Since Jim's other business is heavy into optical coatings and optics manufacturing they probably have the expertise to pull off making good lenses and the number of REDs being sold help the volume economics. The volume will help Cooke and zeiss too but they will probably hold prices for a while to keep profits and protect current owners investments.


Great explanation..hopefully all the Red cameras that will be sold in the next couple of years will make it more attractive to a cine lens manufacturer to be able to reduce prices.
Aloha
-A

[Stephen Williams]

The volume will help Cooke and zeiss too but they will probably hold prices for a while to keep profits and protect current owners investments.

Hi,

I don't think you will find Cooke & Zeiss are making huge profits.

Stephen

[martinnoweck]

Hi,

interesting thread parisrem - didn't someone offer a workshop on "how-to-get-rid-of-the-click" of the aperture of still lenses a couple of days ago ;-)

martin

[Evin Grant]

Hi,

interesting thread parisrem - didn't someone offer a workshop on "how-to-get-rid-of-the-click" of the aperture of still lenses a couple of days ago ;-)

martin

I was going to post this but realized not all Nikkors are so easy to modify. My 50mm 1.4 AI was fine as was the 135mm f2 but the 85mm 1.4 and 17-35 2.8 were not user servicable as it were. So I'd recomend anyone who wants this option to find their nearest authorized Nikon repair shop and ask them to do it. I doubt it would cost much.

[martinnoweck]

Thanks for the quick info Evin!

[chuck colburn]

Hi,

I don't think you will find Cooke & Zeiss are making huge profits.

Stephen

Stephen,

I agree with you that Zeiss isn't making huge profits on it's movie and still camera optics. That division is but a small part of what Zeiss is. Where they make the bucks is in coordinated measurement equipment, the worlds finest optical and electron microscopes and related equipment.

http://www.zeiss.com/4125682000247242/Contents-Frame/0ec618a552bb2946c1256af7003d8e9a

Zeiss started out as a producer of camera and telescope objectives, and I'm glad they have kept up the tradition even if they make minimal profits from such ventures. I'm sure they use those measurement machines during the manufacturing of the lenses they sell. Which makes me sleep better at night! lol
Oh, and they make those wonderful planaterium projectors that bring so much joy to people around the world.

Chuck

[Evin Grant]

Hi,

I think you will loose that bet. Quality control for one is very different. When still lenses are converted for cine use more than 1 still lens is needed to produce 1 conversion. The elements are individually selected, and their alignment is optimized.

Although this is true, newer computer designed, robotically built lenses have the advantage of a much more sophosticated and precise manufacturing than any previous still lenses. As well as the fact that new lenses are being designed specifically for imaging on a digital sensor and all that that implies. Overall quality controll has become much more strict because of this. AFAIK The Zeiss Master primes are the only 35mm cinema optics that have been designed with some digital imaging in mind.

I know quite a few here are using the older manual Nikon lenses and not the very newest designs but most of the testing I've done shows that even back 20 years the quility was still quite good. But I agree with you in one respect Stephen, you may need to try more than one of these lenses to get a top performer.

[Martin Drew]

I can't see that image quality is the big issue here, otherwise I would expect to see lots of people converting movie lenses for use on still cameras. The most significant issue is about the appropriateness of the lens control mechanism.

Movie lenses are manfactured in a different way, because the market is much much smaller than the market for stills lenses. They are intrinsically very expensive so they are likely to be built with higher production values. The economics of mass market stills camera lens production does not allow for such indulgencies in manufacture but allows for greater design investment. Just look at the advances in ultra cheap optics over the last few years. lens assemblies in camera phones which cost cents yet can better the kind of quality you were getting from first generation mass consumer digital stills cameras.

M

[eolake]

Thank you very much, parisrem. This was a better answer than I'd dared hoped for, I had no idea about those technical differences between still and cine lenses!

[eolake]

... Uh, and one reason for my ignorance is I haven't shot an hour of video, much less cinema, in my life. I hang here for a while because I love optics and photography, and Red interests me as an extraordinary product. I've blogged it.

[Stephen Williams]

I can't see that image quality is the big issue here, otherwise I would expect to see lots of people converting movie lenses for use on still cameras.
M

Hi Martin,

Those people bought Leica, not Nikon or Canon.

Stephen

[Martin Drew]

So Leica stills lenses are better than Movie lenses Stephen?

M

[Steve Gibby]

If you're using 35mm still photo lenses on a motion media camera of any kind, and you're familiar with the breathing tendencies of that lens, then you'd naturally avoid racking focus during a shot you're recording. When you gain something, you give something up, I.E., gain a lower price for the lens, give up some ease of use. If a lens is sharp, but breathes, and you need to rack focus for the shots at hand, don't use that lens. Workarounds are often the additional "price" you pay when you pay less for a lens. Is it worth it? Yes and no, depending on the project at hand, your budgetary situation, and your tolerance for workarounds. Personally I'll use both cine lenses and 35mm still lenses on my REDs. I'll choose the most logical lens from my kit for the shots I'm trying to get - and incorporate any workarounds that use may entail.

[Stephen Williams]

Hi,

The biggest difference on the screen is the look! If I shoot on SuperSpeeds & a Cooke zoom, it looks like 'The Shining' because that's what SK used. If I shoot with Cooke S4's the look is very different.

Stephen

[Paris Remillard]

I think that Stephen and Gibby have both just made great points, and it's something I tried to touch on before. It's all about choices. Each of the choices will probably have some kind of compromise or opportunity cost. But they are all valid options when one is creating a look. I mean, a lensbaby could be a viable option if that is the look you want. Luckily, the RED gives us the ability to make those choices more easily than most systems that came before.

[Stephen Williams]

It's all about choices. Each of the choices will probably have some kind of compromise or opportunity cost.

Hi Parisrem,

That sums it up perfectly.

Stephen

[Robert Jackson]

Great explanation..hopefully all the Red cameras that will be sold in the next couple of years will make it more attractive to a cine lens manufacturer to be able to reduce prices.
Aloha
-A

Ever checked this out?

http://www.canon.com/camera-museum/tech/l_plant/f_index.html

With some steps kept under wraps, Canon takes you through their lens manufacturing process from a pile of powder to a completed lens. It gives you some idea how complicated the process of making a lens can be from start to finish. Of course, a lot of places don't make their own lens blanks. As annoying as Canon can be, they've always tried to keep everything in-house, which is pretty cool, IMO.

That said, I haven't owned a Canon product since the 70's. Heh...I used to think the F1 was really nice. Then I was at a camera show in '79 where the newspaper that hosted the show was offering free bench-testing of cameras and my Canon's specs were FUBAR. In retrospect, I'd carried that camera on my person pretty much 24/7 for a couple of years at that point, but it was still disappointing.

[eolake]

Man, that Canon video rocks, thanks.