Zeiss 35mm Stills Glass

[TheWickerMan]

Hi Guys, Guru's etc,

I am hopefully pulling the trigger on my RED order next month!!!, and happen to be in the lucky position of having inherited a rather spectacular collection of Contax Zeiss 35mm still lenses.

Originnally these beauties cost in exces of £10k over a period of years, and for stills work they are about as good as it comes. The big question is, are they any good for the moving image, and if so can I get them onto a RED.

Any ideas, fellow light poets?

Thanks in anticipation

Matt Wicker

[J. Bernard Vallon]

The common wisdom is the sensor on the d2x is about the same size, pixel count, and pixel density as the mysterium. Grab yourself an adapter, plug it onto a d2x (rent or borrow), and shoot some tests. Careful with focus, because remember its very shallow with your iris wide open, which is where you wanna test.

edit - oh, and dont forget to post your results, we'd all like to see.

[TheWickerMan]

Hi John,

Thanks for the swift reply, that's really interesting what you say about the D2x sensor being in the Mysterium ballpark.

I am a pro stills shooter and only have medium and large format at my disposal here right now.

Once I have time to get some of these len's in front of me (I'm in Wiltshire UK, Lens' are in London at the moment), I will see if one of my suppliers can sort me out with a D2x and a couple of charts.

Right busy at the moment, but if I can make time I will surely post a few images from any tests for you guys.

Thanks

Matt

PS: I'm not really up with DSLR's, are these adapters easy to come by are are they bespoke items?

[Stephen Williams]

Hi,

Leonetti rehoused Zeiss Contax glass for their Ultracam cameras. They are almost identical to Zeiss superspeeds, just a bigger range.

Stephen

[PaulClements]

The common wisdom is the sensor on the d2x is about the same size, pixel count, and pixel density as the mysterium. Grab yourself an adapter, plug it onto a d2x (rent or borrow), and shoot some tests. Careful with focus, because remember its very shallow with your iris wide open, which is where you wanna test.

edit - oh, and dont forget to post your results, we'd all like to see.

I just made a post with an equation to work out how to crop your images so that you see the same field of view as you will on the RedOne using slr lense on your DSLR camera. As long as the DSLR sensor is larger than Reds (Which most are) you can work out the crop factor in pixels of your image so that it matches the RedOne sensor. So any DSLR should be fine.

Check it out here (http://www.reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?p=59705#post59705)

[chuck colburn]

Hope your Contax set includes the 21mm f2.8
One of the finest wides ever made.

http://www.16-9.net/lens_tests/1740.html

Lots of nice lens tests at this site,

[Mark Crabtree]

I purchased Contax mount Zeiss T star 50mm f1.4, 85mm f1.4, 100mm f2 in 1987 and had the mount changed to Aaton mount for my Aaton LTR7 16mm camera. I am interested in changing the mount to Canon EF to use with the Birger unit in manual mode. The glass is 20 years old but is still great.

[TheWickerMan]

Hi Chuck,

I have yet to get a final list of the Ziess glass coming my way but as soon as I find out I will let you guys know.

Kind of glad my dad loved his Contax RTSIII and bought just about every bit of glass made for it.

I gotta share it all with my little bro', who is a digital matte artist for features, so we are both drooling at the prospect of all this lovery glass coming our way!

He shoots on Canon so I'm hoping we can get a widget to fit them onto Canon and RED.

Many thanks for showing an interest.

Time to power up some pixels

Matt Wicker

[TheWickerMan]

Wow Chuck,

I just checked out that lens test, the Ziess glass is scarily good!!!!!

Matt Wicker

[chuck colburn]

Matt,

If you look under Contax lenses on ebay you'll see Contax to Canon adapters.
Not my first choice if I owned a RED (I'd make a Contax mount for the camera) but if they fit nicely and you had it collimated to confirm proper infinity focus I would put one on each lens and leave it there. The other thing about the Contax lenses is they focus cinewise (most of them) and have nice expanded scales. There is also a 200mm f2 that when combined with Mutar 1.4x and 2x extenders give you a 200 f2, 280 f2.8 and a 400 f4 and the basic 200 is one of the best of the best.

Chuck

[TheWickerMan]

Thanks Chuck,

You are a gold mine of info, how do you know all this stuff?

I do know a friendly engineer, that made me some stuff for adapting light fittings, perhaps I should let him take a look when the time is right, Hmmm food for thought I think.

Many thanks for all this information it has been a real help.

Matt