VINTAGE LENSES GEAR
conditions, it helps demystify some of the nuances and unpredictability, showing how flare, contrast, bokeh and aberrations behave, and how those traits can shift depending on context like day and night. “Yes, you could say I became quite passionate about lenses…” laughs Förderer. “It’s easy to become immersed. But in the end,” he reminds us, “it’s really all about finding the lens that works with the story you want to tell.”
you’d expect – or like the image you had in your mind – especially as they were often used in conjunction with film. It can make sense to take a broader look and go for a modern lens set that has characteristics that suit what you want. Or you might have to go even older, more vintage, to hit that sweet spot.” Förderer scouts out trade shows for new releases and often pops into his favourite rental houses to try out lenses. For something rarer (like the Zoomars), “I often go down the eBay rabbit hole”, he chuckles. “There are so many cinema lenses out there – but there are also some really interesting lenses that were made for stills that are so unique. Often I will think – this lens for 50 bucks on eBay looks more interesting to me than a $50,000 lens that was manufactured today. “I find myself asking – why is this?” he continues. “Has this push for perfection in optical design led to something that becomes big, heavy and expensive to make? Sometimes simplicity is the right thing to go for.” For Gavin Whitehurst of TLS, while the mechanics of cine lenses have undeniably got better and better (a necessity due to the equipment they’re being used with), in the world of stills lenses frequently rehoused for cinema, ‘some of the housing actually
got slightly worse’. He adds: ”They used to be more serviceable, like the old FD housing, and then they went to quite a plastic housing, which wasn’t quite as serviceable. “The glass has generally carried on getting better – as close to perfection as it can be. Which is great if ‘perfection’ is what you want,” he continues. “If you want something different artistically; maybe the fall-off towards the edges, something different with the coatings – well, they’ve lost variety. It’s very hard now to tell the difference between a lot of modern glass.” If you fancy going down an eBay rabbit hole of your own in search of something a little funkier: “You have to buy several copies of that same lens, especially if you plan to rehouse,” advises Förderer. “There are so many differences that they can have – it might just be a different serial number or letter in the name, and it might have a different coating or optical formula. Get two or three copies, test them and maybe sell the others so you find a consistent set and the look that you’re after, as just the lens name doesn’t tell the whole story.” MAKING VINTAGE VIABLE When it comes to making a vintage lens usable in a modern production setting, with standardised mechanics, mounts
DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE (AND THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS)
Unsurprisingly, Förderer is as obsessive about hunting down vintage glass as he is about testing it. For September 5 – which takes viewers inside the newsroom that broadcast the Munich Olympics terrorist attacks from inside the Olympic Village – he managed to track down the very zoom lenses (by Zoomar) used to capture that year’s Games; collectors’ items from the sixties that the team had retrofitted for their modern cameras. He warns, though, that this pursuit of authenticity through period-accurate lenses doesn’t always give the desired result. “Often I find that the lenses from a certain period don’t quite look as
OFF THE PRESS For September 5 (below), Förderer found era-appropriate Zoomars
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