Sharpest wide angle lens for RED (18mm range)

[Radim Schreiber]

What is your personal experience? I would like to buy a lens with superior sharpness from corner to corner around 18mm. Speed is not critical. It will be mostly used for locked position on a tripod.

Some say that cropping into a sweet spot of the lens from 35mm system from still photography is where one can achieve great sharpens.

On CineAlta F900R I've used Digiprime Zeiss 10mm prime, which according to many people is the sharpest lens around 70 degree viewing angle. If I understand it correctly I cannot use this lens for 4k recording on RED.

Thanks for your input,
Radim

[Matt Uhry]

Is this PL or something else and is your budget $1000, $3000 or $12,000 ?

Zeiss Ultraprimes ( 16mm and 20mm ) are very strong in that range. I think they are $11,500 each.

18mm SuperSpeed not so great, mediocre corners due to curvature of field.

The new primes sets ( RED, GERMAN, ) that we know about are all missing their wides. To design a wide lens with low distortion, even field illumination and good resolution in corners and center is hard !

From the stills world the lenses in that range are quite slow. I would look towards a high performance modern zoom rather than a vintage fixed focal length. Nikon's 14-24 is pretty undeniable. Nikon mount.

If you are using PL mount Of course you can take a look at the Tokina conversion that Duclos is working on.

Matt Uhry
www.mattuhry.com

[Antoine MARTEAU]

I'm always very happy with the ultraprime 16mm...
http://www.cameraaccess.com/camera/lenses/zeiss-ultra-prime-lenses/ultra-prime-zeiss-95mm-front-16mm-distagon-t1-9-feet-scale.html

[Sanjin Jukic]

The sharpest wide angle lenses for RED1 in a range 18-15 mm in PL mount are Arri/Zeiss MPs (14mm, 16mm, 18mm).

Could be that Panavision has also something very sharp in that range.

If you use still FF35 lenses then Nikon 14-24mm f/2.8 is the most affordable.

The sharpest FF35 in that range are Zeiss 15mm T* ZM Distagon (you'll need IMS Leica-M mount for RED1)

and

Leica Super-Elmarit-R 15mm f/2.8 (recently discontinued) need Birger, Alesniak or IMS mount for RED1.

[Radim Schreiber]

Thanks for the input.

I have not purchased the RED camera system, so mount is something that I have an option to add. Budget is limited (of course :-), but because we use only one lens for our landscape shoots, I would like to get the best prime lens available.

What I hear from you and other discussions is that Zeiss Master Prime 18mm will be probably the sharpest lens out there in 18mm range.

I am curious how would sharpness/contrast/CA/edge sharpness compare to 35mm lenses from still photography. 35mm lenses are much cheaper and theoretically they do not have such a fall of in the corners due to crop factor on S35 - using sweet spot of the lens only.

thanks
Radim