Schneider cine xenar prima lenses

[Erich Roland]

I'm trying to find info on these new lenses and coming up short. Has anybody seen, used, or know anybody who has?

thanks much, ER

[Nils J. Nesse]

Here´s Mitch Gross doing a presentation: http://blog.abelcine.com/2010/04/30/first-look-at-the-new-schneider-xenar-lenses/

[Tom.Wong]

did some really rough lens tests with them a few weeks ago. so the down and dirty, totally un-scientific but just from what i felt about them.

plenty sharp, edge to edge sharpness was very good, wide open to close down, it retained an amount of sharpness that is more than acceptable than anything else competing.

18 blade iris produced a unbelievable bokeh. creamy out of focus, perfect spherical bokeh at any T stop.

contrasty, but not as much as a cooke, same with warmth, lighter than a cooke, but not sterile, it has character and very pleasing on skin. very forgiving, makes skin looks nice, people pretty, and gives you a really good sharpness but didn't feel harsh.

great mechanics, telecentric design is great, illumination is perfectly even, all lenses matched very well.




now for the bad.

fairly heavy, probably RPP heavy if you want to compare
when changing focus, the lens barrels forward, can be a deal breaker for some, can be worked around with a proper bellows with mattebox, and a nice fat gear on follow focus.


i think they are great, and i'm def, buying them. 2 minor quirks, but easy work arounds, and totally worth the quality in the lenses, and that gorgeous bokeh. it's some of the best i've ever seen. the lenses have character, a look. that's what i love and want, so that's the honest thing about them. if you want light, and don't like that it barrels forward, these are not lenses for you. but the image it gives you is really nice. gives you somewhere in the ultra prime/cooke fusion kind of combo.

[Rob Castiglione]

Hey Tom,

I have been interested in these lenses for some time so thanks for your impressions. I look forward to someone posting some images.

[Erich Roland]

Yea thanks much Tom. Very interested, but the extending front end is a concern. We may get a loaner set to check out.

[Tom.Wong]

yeh, i mean at this price point there are always some compromises. the only competing sets my business partner and I were looking at were

compact primes (but we have easy access to them, to the point we don't even need to own them but can rent/use them when we need them, and I honestly find them unpleasant on skin tones, too sterile, and didn't like that the speed was so unmatched in the set)

illumina superspeeds, but they don't cover 5k, and are hard to get a hold of a test set. and with the test footage we weren't happy with the image quality. not knocking on the lenses, just not our particular cup of tea.

RPP's, pretty much top on our list.

and the schneiders. we finally decided the schneiders because they
A. are telecentric, and have all matched diameters in the front.
B. resemble more of a cooke in contrast and warmth, so really pleasing with skin tones
C. better bokeh, with being almost as sharp as the RPP's, but not quite as sharp IMHO.


but everything has it's compromises as i said. they are about RPP heavy and fairly big, about the size of a 35 mm RPP, but every lens is the same size. they barrel forward yes, a oversight in the design, but you can easily get a mattebox accessory and get an arri gear for your follow focus to solve these problems. People have some lenses that they can even fit a mattebox on, or do a lot of other things just to make it work. I don't really find it a big deal, but that's us.

also, don't count on the 18 mm being out any time soon, probably wont' be out till earliest end of winter, into spring. Mitch was very helpful to us with these lenses, but unfortunately it was a major oversight on making the 18 mm. they were concentrating so hard on keeping the optics matched and the speed at T 1.8, the lost track of how big and heavy the lens was getting. so it kind of broke the set in that they all aren't the same size anymore. it ended up as big as the 18 mm RPP, maybe even bigger I don't know. so they are re-designing it as we speak.

My business partner and I will probably be owning these lenses in the beginning of the new year, possibly right after christmas. We'll post some test footage as soon as possible. When you see the bokeh on these things, you'll see why we love them so much :)

so some final things.
very little breathing
they are very close focus lenses the 25 mm is almost a macro! was close focusing 3-4 inches in front of the lens. it was great.
not impervious to flaring, but we went out of our way to get it to flare. a flashlight dead on won't flare it, extreme angles will. that's what a mattebox is for i guess :p but the flare is always there when you need it.
mechanically rock solid
it's a interesting set, and I really can't wait to put them through their paces.

[Larry McKee]

Thanks for the lens review. I have been very interested in these since the design was finalized. I am also looking into the Illuminas. According to their website, they do cover 5K, but they don't say exactly what the image circle is.

[Tom.Wong]

Thanks for the lens review. I have been very interested in these since the design was finalized. I am also looking into the Illuminas. According to their website, they do cover 5K, but they don't say exactly what the image circle is.

hey no problem, I'll be posting footage and stills when we can, probably not for another few weeks though. and I may be wrong about the illuminas, I read one post a week ago about them and the image circle, it stated that it was too small for 5k. but that could have been false too. Either way the "look" of the lenses weren't what we wanted. The speed was nice, but at modern sensor sensitivities, T2 is more than acceptable these days. So we really wanted something with a unique and aesthetically pleasing look. These were right on the money for us.

[Shane Betts]

Thanks for the report Tom. I've always loved the look of Schneider glass from years ago so they look interesting. We really are spoilt for choice nowadays, with options at every price point.

[Rob Castiglione]

Tom, the description you give of the image sounds like the kind of aesthetic I am looking for. Its a subtle thing of course so it will be great to see lots of images in the new year - particularly of faces.Don't worry about charts! The only real life footage posted thus far is of a music clip and it looked terrific but it looked like most of it was shot wide open so it was highly stylised.

What exactly will be the mattebox solution to the fact that the lenses barrel forward? I was thinking of buying the new O'Connor mattebox. I wonder whether that is going to work with these lenses.

[Tom.Wong]

Hey Rob, yes my sentiments exactly. To me, just about every modern lens is sharp to a certain extent, so I don't worry too much about sharpness these days. I look for it, i see it's there, that's enough for me. Most DP's I work with are always trying to fight the sharpness anyway, primarily in the skin. It gave that really great sharpness you want into the big detail of the shot, but the skin came together in really beautiful way.

chrosziel worked out a solution with schneider so they go hand in hand with each other.

http://www.chrosziel.com/data/chrosziel/produkte/documents/Chrosziel_for_Cine_Xenar_E.pdf

you can get a extended bellows to take care of the barreling problem. They make it for the O'connor too and i'm pretty sure you can find the right bellows for just about any mattebox system out there. just talk to your local dealer and they'll help find a solution for you. We are getting ours through Abel, not advertising for them, just stating that, and they were incredibly helpful with every solution we needed. Remember to look into getting an arri gear for your follow focus too. cause it barrels forward a normal follow focus gear will slip off when you barrel all the way forward. the fatter gear will solve all those problems.

[Dabling Harward]

I'm wondering how much the lens is going to affect balance on a steadicam while focusing. Hmmm.

[Hunter Snyder]

We very briefly held and mounted the 25mm to a 7D and walked around the Abel showroom. They feel weight-wise like the RPP's.

http://img714.imageshack.us/img714/3171/img0253mdw.jpg

[Rob Castiglione]

Is that the actual size of the lens? ha ha

[Tim Naylor]

About the lens barreling forward issue. In many ways, this really sucks. How is this supposed to work with filtration on rods? Will this cause vignetting issues on the 18mm since your MB will have to be further forward? Can they accommodate a clip on? Will the kind of step down it'd require on rods slow down lens changes as well as make your swing way useless? Also, how's the focus scaling? One of the complaints my AC's have about RPP's is the quick jump in the higher distances, makes long focus pulls less of a constant pull. The other issue I've had with RPP's that I hope these lenses address is being able to flare nicely and consistently between lenses. I've had to really battle to find the right T stop, focal length combo to get RPP's to flare in a way I like. Did you blast any light down the barrel during your tests.

On set practicality and good ole aesthetic magic means more to me than charts at this point. Just finished op'ing an Alexa/S4 job with alot of flare, and while they'er not the sharpest lenses, damn they're pretty.

When you get them in Tom, let's really take them through their paces. I'm not expecting them to compete with Cooke, UP's or MP's at that price but I'd love to see how the measure up against RPP's in some proper A/B testing.

[Erich Roland]

Abel sent us the demo set of Schneider’s and we did some testing, I hope to post some images soon.

Meanwhile, I’ve done some measurements concerning the telescoping issue. Also a few pics to show the size against a few Red primes, shown against a 35, and a 25 Red primes. The Schneider’s are basically all the same size but the weights differ a bit between each lens.

Here is the numbers for how far each lens telescopes as the focus is pulled closer (maximum distance barreling forward).

25mm 5/16”
35mm 5/16”
50mm 7/16”
75mm 13/16”
95mm 13/16”

The focus and iris gears are wider then normal (9/16th) to accommodate the barrel travel, so you wont need a wide drive gear for the follow focus.

Here is the better news now that were all concerned out about this traveling barrel. I wanted to see how much travel the lens telescoped for an average focus pull and here is another set of numbers, because most of the (barreling) distance is at the closest focus.

In the first example below with the 25mm lens, when you pull from infinity to 2 feet, the barrel moves 1/16th of an inch, etc. But as you can see in the numbers above, within 2 feet it will move 4/16th's further to reach its max travel.

Distance barrel travels from infinite, to (x) distance (feet).

25mm 2’ 1/16”
35mm 2’ 1/16”
50mm 2’ 3/16”
..........5’ 1/16”
75mm 2’ 1/2"
..........4’ 3/16”
95mm 2’ 13/16”
..........5’ 3/16”

So unless your going from one extreme to the other, or for more "normal" focus pulling usage the travel distance is not that bad.

[Matt Gottshalk]

That's not too bad.

[Alvise Tedesco]

Thanks Tom Wong, good information. btw, Schneider should hire you!

[Tom.Wong]

Thanks Tom Wong, good information. btw, Schneider should hire you!

LOL, right. i just know what I like, and try to talk about it as objectively as I can. they are a cool set, can't wait to put up some footage in the next few weeks. lots of options out there, lots of great glass to choose from. More affordable than ever!

[Fred Salaff]

Illumina lenses cover 5K easily. Have image circle of 33.5mm. Gorgeous bokeh and image.

Read comments here from Michel Trudel, one of the most respected rental companies in Canada:
http://reduser.net/forum/showthread.php?t=27089&page=6

[Bob Renalds]

I'd take my RPP's over either of those two sets any day. Love these lenses.

[Tom.Wong]

not my tests, but something for people to look at.

http://vimeo.com/17591990

sharp wide open (at least to my eyes, better than the cp2's at least) you can see the bokeh and how little to no breathing the set has.

should be getting delivery on the lenses end of the month to early feb, gonna shoot a real world test vid on MX when it happens.

[Rob Castiglione]

Thanks Tom. I am really looking forward to your tests.

[Sanjin Jukic]

Schneider Cine Xenar great prime lenses "Made in Germany" also with a pretty good price.

[Tom.Wong]

i honestly didn't know the cp2's breathed so much (haven't used them in the field at all) just got to see them at shows and demos. no wonder not a lot of people really buy/rent/use them.

and the overall matching of "the look" in the entire lens set was very underwhelming too. they are crazy sharp though, but i think that's all about what they have.

[Tim Naylor]

I'd take my RPP's over either of those two sets any day. Love these lenses.
I've yet to strike up a love affair with RPP's. Like them but for a variety of reasons I really wish super speeds covered 5k. So based on your comment I take it you must have used the Xenars? Please, elucidate me why on why they don't get your love. I'm in the market for lenses and any and all 1st hand set experience is valuable. Color charts don't count.

[Tim Naylor]

Schneider Cine Xenar great prime lenses "Made in Germany" also with a pretty good price.

Could you elaborate from 1st hand experience on what makes them great? I once had a Volkswagon that made good scrap metal. Unfortunately its heritage failed to make it great.

[David Kruta]

I've yet to strike up a love affair with RPP's. Like them but for a variety of reasons I really wish super speeds covered 5k. So based on your comment I take it you must have used the Xenars? Please, elucidate me why on why they don't get your love. I'm in the market for lenses and any and all 1st hand set experience is valuable. Color charts don't count.

Just used the Zeiss MKIII Super Speeds on a music video and 4-week feature. All lengths from 18 to 85 covered 5k brilliantly.

[Jason Comparetto]

I have a set of Xenars available in case anyone wants to rent them, try them out, or just buy them outright. :-)

[Illya Friedman]

I've got a set of the Schneider C-X lenses in Burbank, and also a 5D-PL so it's really easy to take very high resolution still photos with the Cine-Xenar lenses next to any other for comparative purposes.

In the interest of full disclosure my company is an authorized Schneider dealer, and we sell these lenses.

I'll extend the invitation to anyone who's interested in learning about lenses to check them on the 5D-PL. You can test our lenses or your own. You don't have to be in the market for any lenses, it can entirely be for your own personal education. To do this you'll just need to bring a CF card and make an appointment to be sure I or someone else is in the office 323.230.3589 (office).

[Pierre Alt]

We have also a set of SCHNEIDER Cine Xenars available to rent in France.:wink5: