DEFINITION July 2019

FEATURE | LENS SPEC I AL

Blackwing and ARRI Rental are taking lens tuning to new levels

the focus. It doesn’t crush the background out of existence, and I was left with a detail of shape in the background, which is important because it gives you a sense of geography,” she says. Cooke’s new Anamorphic/i Full Frame Plus range has been designed to meet the growing appetite for large format production, while offering anamorphic characteristics including flare and oval bokeh. This range is also available with Cooke’s SF ‘Special Flair’ coating, which enables an exaggerated flare, giving yet more choice to cinematographers. The 18mm and 180mm lenses from the S7/i Full Frame spherical range were also featured on the Cooke stand at Cine Gear. These, together with the 27mm, are going into production over the coming months. Leitz also showed its latest development, the Leitz Primes and zooms, at Cine Gear Expo. Best known for its prime lenses, Summilux-C, Summicron-C, M 0.8, and Thalia, the company is now expanding with a new family of next-generation optics and is entering new ground with its first

set of premium zooms. The new lenses are available with PL and LPL Mount options including metadata interface Cooke /i and Arri LDS-2. To improve close focus abilities of the lenses, new achromatic diopters Macrolux 114 have also been added to the product line-up. Like Macrolux 95, the Macrolux 114 will be available with strengths +0,5, +1 and +2. They will fit lenses with a 114mm front diameter and are stackable to enhance the effect without adding any chromatic aberration to the lens. Additionally, step down rings to either 110mm or 95mm have been designed to make the diopters usable on these front diameters. WHAT ABOUT VINTAGE GLASS? With large format comes the inevitable rise of vintage glass that will cover large format or full-frame cameras. Lenses like the Caldwell Chameleon anamorphics with its full-frame series from a 48mm T3 to a 225mm T6. The Vintage Lens Co also has the Neo Super Baltars being rehoused, promising a ‘warm natural and organic

image that has a vintage depth of character’. Cooke also has its Panchro/i Classic lenses that emulate the look of old Cooke Speed Panchros. With these rehoused classics, you gain a painterly vintage look paired with the modern housing and the ability to match lenses through the Panchro/i Classic range. Recently announced is the 65mm macro lens – a 2-1 macro – which also covers the full-frame sensor. But there’s another story in the world of older glass and that’s the new tuning market. To be fair, Panavision has been offering fine tuning of its lenses for years, but Arri Rental and a new company called Blackwing are taking tuning to new levels. Apparently, Star Wars cinematographer, Bradford Young, is involved with Blackwing on some level, buoyed presumably by his Arri Rental tuning experience with the DNA lenses. But for Arri Rental themselves, DNA has become a hothouse of lens innovation. Andrew Prior, head of Camera Technology and Development, Camera & Grip Division at Arri Rental, explains what is now on offer for cinematographers. “The core announcement for us at Cine Gear was the DNA LF lenses, which is an extension of our DNA family. These are purpose-built lenses for the LF format, so 46mm image circle and they are faster. Again though, they are a collection of vintage glass from the sixties and seventies with new housings and a new multi-blade iris with a circular bokeh, which is what people seem to want. ABOVE The range of Canon Sumire LF lenses BELOW New additions to the Zeiss Supreme LF range, 21mm and 135mm T1.5 lenses

48 DEF I N I T ION | JULY 20 1 9

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