a blog by Matthew Duclos
Venus Optics, well known for their unique, innovative lens creations, releases their latest version of their popular probe lens – the Laowa Pro2be lens, building upon the successes of its predecessors; the 24mm Probe and 24mm PeriProbe lenses. Let’s delve into what we know about the Pro2be lens so far.
Continue reading “Laowa Improves the 24mm Probe Again With New “Pro2be””
Swiss lens company Irix is set to begin offering cinema lenses starting with their 150mm T3.0 Macro 1:1 lens. The Irix line of prime lenses, while limited, seem to be ideally situated for a future in cinematography thanks to their high quality, fully manual design.
Continue reading “Irix Begins Cine Line With 150mm Macro”
Leica announced the original +1 Macro-Lux Diopter last year and it has quickly become the go-to clamp-on diopter for a wide range of productions. If you didn’t catch the announcement at NAB 2016, I’ll recap for you really quickly… The Macro-Lux +1 is essentially a super high quality clamp-on diopter. If you’re not familiar with diopters, think of them as a very quick way to achieve closer focus than what’s normally possible. A +1 is a pretty standard magnification which is why Leica released this one first. Now you can achieve even greater artistic goals with the +0.5 and +2 Macro-Lux. Continue reading “Leica Macro-Lux Line Expands with +0.5 and +2 Diopters”
Back to the weekly grind. It’s Monday. Let’s get it started right with a bit of light reading. Continue reading “Weekly News Roundup #6”
IB/E Optics, a German opto-mechanical design and manufacturing house, gave us a sneak peak at their new apochromatic macro telephoto prime lenses which will be available sometime early next year. The new prime lenses possess some rather interesting features. Not only are they true 1:1 macros, they’re original designs with 35mm Full Frame (Vista Vision) coverage, interchangeable mounts (PL, Nikon F, Canon EF, Sony E), internal focus (constant volume, non-telescoping), and Cooke’s /i data technology. Continue reading “IB/E Previews New APO Macro Primes”
Duclos Lenses has released a new Macro Extension Tube for PL mount lenses. If you’ve never used an extension tube before, head on over to Cambridge in Colour and soak up some knowledge. Continue reading “PL Macro Extension Tube from Duclos Lenses”
Leica makes some great lenses. They always have. Even their defunct Leica R series lenses are still working hard all around the world. It would almost seem that Leica is incapable of making low quality products. I just finished our Cine-Mod on a Leica APO-Macro-Elmarit-R 1:2.8/100, or as I like to call it, a Leica 100mm Macro. This lens performs like a dream for motion picture applications. It’s close focus is 2.5′ from the film plane which puts objects about 1.8′ from the front of the lens. Keep in mind, this is 100mm. It’s not THAT close considering the Zeiss ZF.2 100mm f/2.0 cranks all the way down to 18″ from the film plane which is about 8″ in front of the lens. The only draw back, which both the Leica and the Zeiss exhibit, is the massive amount of telescoping from infinity to close focus. Both lenses go from a modest 5″ length to a maximum of about 7″ at close focus. Still, Leica made some amazing glass that still does it’s job quite well.
Zeiss recently announced the addition of Nikon (official), Sony, and 4/3 mounts for their Compact Prime series. I expected this since it’s a simple mount and the interface was already interchangeable. I also expected new focal lengths which they announced just this morning. The adaptation of existing ZF/ZE 50mm f/2 macro and the 100mm f/2 macro. These are two of my favorite lenses in the series. The 50mm macro has far better image quality than the 50mm f/1,4 and focuses down to about 10 inches (1:2) but it does lose that little bit of speed over the 50mm f/1,4. Meh… And then there is the insane bokeh of the 100mm macro. With a close focus of 18 inches (1:2) the background is thrown so far out of focus, it’s gorgeous. I can’t wait to get my hands on this macro duo. Continue reading “New Zeiss CP.2 Macro Duo”