RED LENS vs Nikon LENS Side by Side

[cinemano]

Hello

Could anyone please post links here of an image side by side taken with the RED LENS side by side with Nikon Lens on RED ?

Im thinking of saving up for a RED Lens but want to be sure if its worth every dollar to me..

I use cheap Nikon lenses for now, but on my R3Ds I dont see as much sharpness than when using the very same Nikon lens on its original D80 body.. i.e: same lens looks sharper on D80 photos. So if my RED doesnt use all the full potential of my nikon lens, why go as far as a Red lens?

Please no-one get upset, its a hipothetical question to stimulate a discussion to help me decide on my savings..

(yes my RED was propery calibrated and back focused by DPs etc)

[Justin McAleece]

I have some stills up at

http://www.redonerental.net/canonbirgermountinfo.php

There are no direct comparisons but there are a few Birger mount with Canon shots. These are Canon Lenses not Nikons, but comparable lenses will produce comparable shots ie 16-35 vs 17-35.

[Andrew Walker]

I think the D80 does some internal sharpening and that might be the reason why it looks sharper in that camera. Which Nikons are you using?

[Joe G.]

The D80 "digital" lenses are for a smaller sized sensor, no? The larger Red One sensor might not be optimal for that particular lens series. Something to look into.

[Stephen Williams]

The D80 "digital" lenses are for a smaller sized sensor, no? The larger Red One sensor might not be optimal for that particular lens series. Something to look into.

Hi,

The sensor of the D80 is very close so the size of the Red sensor.

[cinemano]

wow.. thanks for all this info.. you guys are great! Thanks for the link Lotar1, I opened the Jpegs of Canon 18mm and or RED 18mm next to each other and the diference is so small.. Canon a bit less blacks on the lines.. but to human eye, looks like similar sharpness.. wow!! Saving so much money for similar results! :) I wonder if its as good with a Nikon mount.

[Robin Balas]

wow.. thanks for all this info.. you guys are great! Thanks for the link Lotar1, I opened the Jpegs of Canon 18mm and or RED 18mm next to each other and the diference is so small.. Canon a bit less blacks on the lines.. but to human eye, looks like similar sharpness.. wow!! Saving so much money for similar results! :) I wonder if its as good with a Nikon mount.

You need to understand that lense quality is not equal independent of construction parameters such as focal length and aperature. Certain constructions are harder to design than others.
Most cheap dSLR zooms are awful when used wide open, stopped down 2-2.5 steps they are medocre to decent. Even expensive wideangle dSLR lenses are in my opinion rather poor as well in the wide end when fully open. Especially the Canon wide angle lenses - wich I own most of or have owned. Especially the 17-35/2.8L is terrible in the wide end when wide open.
To get perspective on how good it can be you need to look at photos shot on the best equipment and you will be astonished at the differences.
If you want cheap dSLR lenses that are good wide open and great when closed down 1 stop - try Canon EF 50/1.4, 35/2.0, 85/1.8, 24/2.8 or the 100/2.0. They are all much sharper than the zooms and have a much larger workable aperature. If you shoot at f/8 it doesn't matter as much what you get, but then you need the sun for lighting and you get alot of DoF.
Cine lenses tend to be more consistent over the aperature range and deliver what they promise, and they are really expensive compared to still glass.
When getting raw files off a bayer sensor with an OLPF you absolutely need to master the sharpening techniques to get back the crispness which is hidden in those files. There are books written on this sole subject for stills photography and several dedicated software solutions to achieving consistent perfect results independent of sensor, software and reproduction size. I feel this is a much neglected field in cine work and most often the answer I get is that it is not a desirable look to have the crisp look on film, it looks to "video" - which I totally don't get as video is in my opinion not very crisp and detailed wheb watched. So if the soft look is desirable you will do well with a cheap 3.party dSLR zoom as it comes with the lens baked in ;)

As an example you can open the milk-girls stills, if they are still around, and sharpen them in Photoshop with the USM filter and use a radius of 0.5 and amount 250%. Then you see how much detail is inside a soft original. I do not advocate using this amount and kind of sharpening - but it shows whats hidden inside the files. Make sure to look at the pictures in 100%.

MHO.

[hans de vries]

interesting subject robin. i wonder what you think about the sharpening in red cine. Do you think that works well to bring out every detail there is in the raw file? right now I'm still experimenting with camera, lenses etc. My problem, to my surprise, is getting enough light. I use leica lenses only, which I assume to be good enough, but I need more light than I expected so I often end up shooting in f2 or f 2.8. great results though.

[Alberto Caprioglio]

I agree, the ones who say video looks like video because video is notoriously crisp and they don't like this "fact", should then be forced to really make films on video, and to watch reality shows with no rest, to see how crisp they are. HD is a relatively new thing, so I don't know how people is supposed to have learned to recognize video as crisp, being it almost completely SD.
Wake up cinema gurus and professional opinionists, video has never been crisp. Film is crisp (and Red). Traditional video has always been less crisp then a shit.
We continuously meet common places so stupid and strong that sometimes I wonder if filmakers are plain blind.

[Alberto Caprioglio]

video has always been muddy; and compared to film and red, HD is better but also muddy.
All right, yestarday I was sitting in the first line of armchairs in a cinema (film: Yesman, I suppose it's 35mm film) and the image was grainy even for my short sight, so please let's not directly compare n-th generation film with perfect digital copies of ordinary mud-originated video. Let's compare analog copies of film to analog copies of digital video.
I think only this way is proper for telling what is inherently muddy or crisp.
Or let's compare 4k digital scans of film, so to retain the grain and defects, of film, to digital copies of muddy video.

[Alberto Caprioglio]

(I mean better than SD, of course, not better than film and Red. Sorry for the mispeach)

[Robin Balas]

As a reference to what I discussed further up, look at the links below, but keep in mind that the sensor and electronics also matters and is baked-in in what you see so it doesn't tell you how it will look on a different camera like a Red1
Cheap super zoom : http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/sigma_18-200_3p5-6p3_os_n15/page3.asp
50/1.4 : http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/canon_50_1p4_c16/page4.asp and http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/nikon_50_1p4_n15/page4.asp and http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/sigma_50_1p4_c16/page4.asp

This one is quite good for a cheap zoom, but lacks in the aperature department: http://www.dpreview.com/lensreviews/canon_17-85_4-5p6_is_usm_c16/page3.asp

Enough pixel peeping for a year now from me.

[Zakaree Sandberg]

honestly.. the glass on specific cine vs still lenses can be equal in terms of quality.
the differences is in the mechanics, construction, and different coatings that may or may not be on the glass.

I have seen zeiss zf stills and master prime stills- side by side- and could NOT tell the difference... but that was a still image, which wont show breathing or tracking issues.

Bang for Buck - Zeiss ZF lenses kick ass

[Stephen Williams]

Hi Zakaree,

How were the ZF's focused? By eye or with a tape? I suspect if both lenses were focused using a tape the Master Primes would be spot on & the ZF's slightly off most of the time.

Stephen

[Zakaree Sandberg]

it wasnt very scientific... but the look was similar

[Robin Balas]

honestly.. the glass on specific cine vs still lenses can be equal in terms of quality.
the differences is in the mechanics, construction, and different coatings that may or may not be on the glass.

I have seen zeiss zf stills and master prime stills- side by side- and could NOT tell the difference... but that was a still image, which wont show breathing or tracking issues.

Bang for Buck - Zeiss ZF lenses kick ass

You write "can be equal in terms of quality". That's true hypothetically speaking, but in the real world it isn't very often so in reference to the specific questions and lenses relevant to this thread. Cheap still zoom glass is almost useless when fully open, with a few exceptions.

The fall off in both sharpness and light towards the edges is very prominent in modern still zoom lenses which is what this discussion was about - Zeiss glass is something else, no doubt there.

IMHO the front glass elements and also internal diameter used in the lens designs on todays inexpensive zooms are too small to provide adequate coverage for the large format of a full 35mm sensor. When a lens have visible light fall off on a cropped sensor format, how on earth should that be good enough for the full 35mm stills format? The otherwise excellent 24-105/4L IS from Canon exhibits more than 1.3 stops of light loss in the corners on 24mm. I have to correct this on almost all shots and when shooting at ISO 1600 it boost noise to an unacceptable level in the corners even when working with RAW footage from a very clean sensor. It looks peculiar to have excessive noise in the corners and not in the middle in shots including blue skies. And this lens was designed for the first incarnation of EOS 5D which have a full 35mm sensor and not a cropped sensor.

To get to the point, it will be hard to use Canon/Nikon etc. cheap zoom glass on a Scarlet/Epic/RED1 and work on anything more open than f/8 as the optical performance is WAY below Zeiss or other good still primes. If the desired "look" is to be rough and soft on the verge to being out of focus then you might be OK though.

IMHO decent (but not necessarily top) glass is more important than high resolution chips, as micro contrast which is often referred to as pixel sharpness in the dSLR forums, is dependent on very decent MTF curves for the high frequencies. I know of no cheap zoom lens and almost no still zoom lens regardless of price, which have a typically high MTF value for high frequency details which is important for utilizing high resolution chips. However my Mamiya 75-150D zoom is incredibly sharp, sharper than most any other Mamiya medium format or other brand primes or any other lens I own including the Canon 85/1.2L. So the 645 EPIC will be incredible with this one.

All this is of course based on my rather subjective opinion which is heavily based on comercial stills photography as company board portraits, food photography and pharmaceutical and cometics products shots. Not typically what you would use a Scarlet for or similar at all to most cinematic use.
MHOhttp://www.reduser.net/forum/images/redsmilies/huh.gif

[Van Din]

Any hint on Nikon (G lenses) smart mounts?
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