[Date Prev][Date Next][Thread Prev][Thread Next][Date Index][Thread Index]

Eclair Cameras: ACL 2nd Test - LENSES ( long)



This is the second part of a two part post describing the findings of my second camera, mag and film test of my UK ACL1.

LENSES
Used fixed primes 50 and 25 Zeiss (for Rollei SL35) and Zeiss 16mm Highspeed Primes as well. Also 50 and 28mm Olympus stills lenses, an old Vivitar Series 1 90mm 2.5 macro lens (OM mount), Kilfit Macro 40 and 90mm lenses and Kilfitt 300mm lens. (I bought a lot of C mount adaptors and have a Nikon, Olympus OM, Kilfitt, Rollei SL, and soon a Contax/Yashica ). Regular cine lenses included a 9mm Kinetal, 13mm and 25-100 TV-16 Canons, and 25mm and 50mm Kern Switars, rented Zeiss highspeed primes 25, 50mm and a T3 10-100 zoom. My main zoom lens is a surprise.

Zeiss lens looked great. Surprise - my new Kinor OPF-12-1 was pretty much identical to the T3 Zeiss, BTW (thanks for the steer, Anders). Great lens if you can get it., especially with the x6 aspheron-type converter. Both were of course better than my Canon TV-16 25-100mm lens, but the difference, as one would expect, diminished markedly at around T8.

Comparative lens tests were informative: I shot a resolution chart, and the Kodak control strips, as well as a portrait and a landscape (i.e. my back garden and my family). Results are based on my only viewing (just now) at a pro lab and are my own subjective opinion only.

Zeiss 35mm stills lenses were a shade looser acutance-wise than the Highspeeds and all were, to my eye, marginally better than the T3 zooms, this all at T3 to T4 (I'm talking about the stills lenses. The made-for-16mm Zeiss Highspeeds were noticeably sharper, but of course, this from lenses that cost around 10x as much. I'd say that if you were shooting EI200 or above, the grain would soak up the difference pretty quickly.

The Switars and Cooke lenses did well as expected. The Canon TV lenses not as well, also as expected. No surprises there. The Olympus lenses balanced, for some reason, with a slightly greener case than the other lenses. The Switars were, as expected, slightly warmer than the Zeisses (you can see that just by looking at the coatings). I'm getting in some Jena lenses soon, they should be interesting to compare.

Practically speaking:
Follow-focussing the stills primes was difficult as the helices aren't built for film, but still doable. You just have to get used to which way the focus runs (or have an assistant pull focus). Take care, the Rollei mount I have is typical of the lot, there's a certain amount of give after the lens clicks into place, I guess to allow for manufacturing tolerances. I had to have that tolerance machined out because the image would jink every time I changed focus and the lens moved around in its adaptor mount. Of course, in stills, we don't care about that...

The irises are another matter. The Zeiss stills lenses have a Manual setting on them, defeating the auto iris used in 35mm SLR stills cameras. Not so the Olympus lenses, which have a pushbutton (sprung) iris closer. I had to tape this button down to get the iris to work manually. Needless to say the click stops on the irises of the stills cameras meant irregular (jarring) iris pulls. Have to remove the ball bearing/clicker mechanism if one is to use the lens full time for film.

The big surprisess for me, were the Kilfitt lenses and the Vivitar 90mm macro. All showed excellent clarity, pleasing "bokeh" , pleasing color rendition, slightly warmer than the Zeisses but not as warm, to my eye, as the Switars. These were had on ebay for very little money indeed, especially the old Series 1 Vivitar, which turned out to be quite a lens...

Okay, that's it for now. As more lenses accumulate, I'll probably post findings on my website, but it's back to work tomorrow, so without further adieu...

all the best
Chris

--^----------------------------------------------------------------
This email was sent to: elroro@propagandaindustries.org

EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84xYK.bdbHPA.ZWxyb3Jv
Or send an email to: eclairacl-unsubscribe@topica.com

TOPICA - Start your own email discussion group. FREE!
http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/create/index2.html
--^----------------------------------------------------------------