combatentropy
Veteran
Yeah, well I guess you can't just walk into the store and buy Plutonium.
Canon Cinema lenses?
- Thread starter Ryan-Guy
- Start date
Mitch Gross
Veteran
It is absolutely the volume of product. You all don't seem to realize how incredibly small our side of the industry is. Wanna know a successful volume of sales for a cine lens manufacturer? 20-30 sets a month is fantastic -- a real runaway success. Wanna know how many lenses Canon has sold in its history? Try 70 million. A consumer lens manufacturing plant is a big operation with lots of specialized equipment and tons of automation. A cine lens facility has to have the same specialized gear and build the product to a far more exacting standard, but a relative handful of very skilled technicians do it all by hand both because of the precision and because of the very small volume.
Honda can put out a really nice Civic for $20K or so because they sell hundreds of thousands of them every year. One rolls off the production line every couple of minutes. There's tons of specialized automation tooling on that huge factory floor. Now imagine a dozen guys in a large garage had to make cars with special tools but no automation and they made only a few per week because that was what the market could bear. And by the way the cars were special high performance vehicles built to higher standards than those Civics. Think about how much they'd need to charge per car. Guess what -- there are examples of micro manufacturing high performance car makers and they cost a fortune.
Simply making a lens with precise focus marks on a well-marked and detailed scale isn't easy. The scales on a stills lens are purposefully vague because they are not very accurate. On proper cine lenses they either:
(1) hand-engrave the focus ring after putting together each individual lens
(2) build to as tight a tolerance as they can and then test to see which of a dozen different series of scales the lens aligns to
(3) build the scale and then keep resetting the glass inside the mechanical mechanism, relapping the metal layers by hand until they get it to align to the scale
That's just one setting. You cannot believe how tedious this work is and it doesn't happen at all on stills lenses. Just an example.
As someone noted, there's a reason lenses cost what they do. If someone could waltz in and make a lens with the performance on professional cine gear but at a dramatically lower price, then they would and they'd sweep the market. But it just don't work that way.
Honda can put out a really nice Civic for $20K or so because they sell hundreds of thousands of them every year. One rolls off the production line every couple of minutes. There's tons of specialized automation tooling on that huge factory floor. Now imagine a dozen guys in a large garage had to make cars with special tools but no automation and they made only a few per week because that was what the market could bear. And by the way the cars were special high performance vehicles built to higher standards than those Civics. Think about how much they'd need to charge per car. Guess what -- there are examples of micro manufacturing high performance car makers and they cost a fortune.
Simply making a lens with precise focus marks on a well-marked and detailed scale isn't easy. The scales on a stills lens are purposefully vague because they are not very accurate. On proper cine lenses they either:
(1) hand-engrave the focus ring after putting together each individual lens
(2) build to as tight a tolerance as they can and then test to see which of a dozen different series of scales the lens aligns to
(3) build the scale and then keep resetting the glass inside the mechanical mechanism, relapping the metal layers by hand until they get it to align to the scale
That's just one setting. You cannot believe how tedious this work is and it doesn't happen at all on stills lenses. Just an example.
As someone noted, there's a reason lenses cost what they do. If someone could waltz in and make a lens with the performance on professional cine gear but at a dramatically lower price, then they would and they'd sweep the market. But it just don't work that way.
combatentropy
Veteran
This is true of cinema lenses in the twentieth century. Back then, about the only buyers were rental houses in Hollywood, California. Since then, with motion DSLRs and other S35 cameras, the number of people interested in buying these kinds of lenses has grown a thousand times bigger.
aguia
Active member
It likely doesn't cost as much as the car of a person who owns a set of Master Primes.
Seriously, why are the primes not priced at $2k each? I would buy a set of 3 in a heartbeat. Canon makes great lenses, but they aren't know for cine-lenses... so how can they justify selling them at a such a high price without ANY track record? I'd rather just get Ziess CP's if I'm going into that price bracket...
It's official... Canon has packed up and moved to fantasy land with the rest of this stupid elitist industry. At least they accidentally gave us the 5D. Could you imagine how much Canon would have charged for a "cinema market" FF35 camera (even with 4:2:0 8-bit) back when the 5D originally came out? It probably would have been $250,000...
These insanely priced lenses and ludicrous C300 announcement really put things into perspective for me. Seriously, we're all able to shoot VISTAVISION and S35mm footage IN THE PALM OF OUT HANDS!!! After this announcement, I looked at my DSLRs and realized... we hit the jackpot. This would have NEVER happened on it's own. NEVER. Be thankful...
It's official... Canon has packed up and moved to fantasy land with the rest of this stupid elitist industry. At least they accidentally gave us the 5D. Could you imagine how much Canon would have charged for a "cinema market" FF35 camera (even with 4:2:0 8-bit) back when the 5D originally came out? It probably would have been $250,000...
These insanely priced lenses and ludicrous C300 announcement really put things into perspective for me. Seriously, we're all able to shoot VISTAVISION and S35mm footage IN THE PALM OF OUT HANDS!!! After this announcement, I looked at my DSLRs and realized... we hit the jackpot. This would have NEVER happened on it's own. NEVER. Be thankful...
Last edited:
combatentropy
Veteran
It explains why cinema lenses are better. It does not explain why they are soooo much more expensive, especially when I can build a nice car for the same amount of money. On the other hand, this post, #22, best answers the question so far: that the cinema lenses are hand made, in small batches. However, my point is, that now a lot more people want to buy lenses with no breathing, etc., so such companies could probably benefit from setting up factory machinery to do it. In fact, I highly doubt that Canon is making their current cinema lenses by hand.
You can maybe build a car from used parts for the same price but you couldn't design, have someone else build your parts to your specs and put it together for the same price.
I'm sure the demand is greater now than it ever has been but it still might not be enough.
Matt Gottshalk
Resident Preditor
Then you never will.
ETA, go look at these factories where they actually MAKE these lenses:
Zeiss Factory Tour.
http://www.fdtimes.com/articles/zeiss/ZEIS...ens_fdtimes.pdf
Cooke Factory Tour
http://www.fdtimes.com/articles/cooke/Cook...6_Web150dpi.pdf
Angénieux Tour
http://www.fdtimes.com/articles/angenieux/...tion-200dpi.pdf
combatentropy
Veteran
Funny, most car companies can.
combatentropy
Veteran
404 Not Found on all of them.
Look, you can talk all day about tight tolerances or how much better it is than a still lens. But none of those things suggest a $40,000 mark-up. $40,000!
The only explanation that makes sense is that they were made in such low volume. If cinema-grade lenses were made in the same volume as SLR lenses, then I bet that they would only be about two to five times as much.
You didn't say car company you said YOU could build a car.
That will NEVER happen. The demand is not there.
Last edited:
combatentropy
Veteran
Come on, the question throughout the thread is, why can't Canon charge less. I meant, if I were a car company, I could make cars for $20,000 to $40,000.
Last edited:
combatentropy
Veteran
Again, it doesn't matter. The demand is not there, but now that we know what the baseline is, we can extrapolate up. The demand has been, until this century, 1/100,000th of the demand for still lenses. What is it now, considering all the DSLRs being used for movies of all budgets? A thousandth? A hundredth? There is no hard formula, but my point is, the lenses should not be as expensive as they always have been.
Another factor to consider is, who have they been selling to all those years that cinema lenses were $50,000 apiece. Multimillionaires (studios). If you have a product, I don't care what it is, and the only people who are interested in your product are multimillionaires, then you are going to be tempted to jack up the price.
So the lenses are hand-crafted. By highly skilled people. How many total man-hours of these highly skilled people went into each lens? 10 hours? 100 hours? Let's say a hundred hours, per lens. How much is a highly skilled person worth? Let's say $100,000 a year. I doubt that these lens techs make that much, but let's be extravagant. That's $50 per hour. That's $5,000 per lens. How much are materials? Let's say five pounds of really nice glass and metal. I'm sure that it ain't window glass, so let's say a $1,000 --- just for raw materials. Now we're up to $6,000 per lens. How much for all the tools? Well, from what I saw, a lot of them are hand tools, so they aren't millions of dollars. But let's say they have some machines that amortize around $10,000 a year (that means they paid $100,000 for each machine and it only lasts them 10 years). But that's spread out over all the lenses they make a year. Let's say a thousand lenses. So, let's say they have three or four machines that each amortize to about $10,000 a year, that's $40,000, divided by a thousand lenses is...$40. Hmmm. Not much more. But then you have all the administrative and marketing costs, rent, etc. I have no idea how much that is. But let's say $10 million dollars a year. Divided again by 1000 lenses. That's $10,000! So now each lens has to pull in $16,000 just to break even. Now we all can see how they climb to stratospheric levels so quickly.
But it all begins to change when you start selling more than 1,000 lenses per year. Because they were PL mount, the only device that their lenses could go on were 35mm motion-picture film cameras. So, even if they sold them at $100/each, no one would want them except owners of 35mm motion-picture cameras. They would still sell about a thousand a year (or whatever it is that they sold each year). But now they can sell 10 or 100 times as many lenses, given all the owners of various 35mm-sized video cameras and DSLRs. So, now you divide the non-per-lens costs by 10,000 or 100,000. Also, you stop making them by hand and put them in a factory, where the manhours, and cost per manhour, drop like a rock.
My point is, when the market changes like this, cinema lenses shouldn't come down by 10%. They should --- eventually at least --- be a tenth or a hundredth as much.
Last edited:
aguia
Active member
Yes. There are some very very good still lenses available (primes) that can stand shoulder-to-shoulder with cine lenses, I can think of at least 6 from Leica. Zooms are another kettle of fish altogether, but also zoom design these days has the advantage of computer design and CNC machining which has to reduce some of the R&D and manufacturing cost. The fact is though that there are people making and selling cine lenses (both stills and primes) for a lot less than this new series from Canon, why can RED do it and Canon can't? Someone is going to tell us that there is $40k dollars in performance difference between a RED 17-50 and that new Canon 14.5-60. . . I'm sure (well almost sure) the Canon is better, but $40K better? I think its great to strive for perfection on these things but I think some of the manufacturers have lost sight (if indeed they ever had it in sight) of the needs of the portion of the market that has really been at the heart of the matter.
I think you are grossly overestimating the demand for quality cinema lenses. Most of the HDSLR users you are talking about (myself included) already complain about paying over $1,000 for a high quality still lens to use for their videos.
Even if the demand for cinema lenses has doubled or even tripled over the past few years (it most certainly has not multiplied by 100 or 1000), it is still tiny compared to the demand for still lenses.
Cinema lenses just cannot be manufactured en masse the way still lenses can, because every lens requires individual tuning to ensure that things like focus marks always line-up correctly. Still lenses do not require such fine-tuning, because the user / autofocus makes those adjustments before ever shot.
You can't automate the process of manufacturing cinema lenses, and still expect the same type of quality that professionals have come to expect over the years.
Even if the demand for cinema lenses has doubled or even tripled over the past few years (it most certainly has not multiplied by 100 or 1000), it is still tiny compared to the demand for still lenses.
Cinema lenses just cannot be manufactured en masse the way still lenses can, because every lens requires individual tuning to ensure that things like focus marks always line-up correctly. Still lenses do not require such fine-tuning, because the user / autofocus makes those adjustments before ever shot.
You can't automate the process of manufacturing cinema lenses, and still expect the same type of quality that professionals have come to expect over the years.
Matt Gottshalk
Resident Preditor
Let me know when the CombatEntropy Cine Lens Manufacturing facility puts out it's first cinema grade lens for $1k.
combatentropy
Veteran
Will do
Mitch Gross
Veteran
I understand your points and how you derive them, but I must tell you that from the inside looking out there just isn't the demand or the technical capacity to scale up production in this way. There will always be hand-finishing of mechanical/optical components because this is the only way to get to a certain level of performance. That means skilled labor and time, which costs money. At a certan point it just doesn't get cheaper.
Training such staff is not easy and takes time as well. The equipment is specialized so it's not like one could just buy another to expand production. Optical firms make change at a glacial pace, because that is what is necessitated by their process.
Yes, the demand for PL glass has expanded greatly. Angenieux is by far the most popular maker of cine zooms. They have struggled for the past five years to increase production. Know what their current backorder is? Depending on the lens, one to two YEARS. If they could easily up production, believe me they would in a heartbeat.
Training such staff is not easy and takes time as well. The equipment is specialized so it's not like one could just buy another to expand production. Optical firms make change at a glacial pace, because that is what is necessitated by their process.
Yes, the demand for PL glass has expanded greatly. Angenieux is by far the most popular maker of cine zooms. They have struggled for the past five years to increase production. Know what their current backorder is? Depending on the lens, one to two YEARS. If they could easily up production, believe me they would in a heartbeat.
combatentropy
Veteran
Let's simplify the argument. Let's not talk about zooms, just primes. Let's even just look at one focal length.
Nikkor 50mm f/1.2
$725
Canon is also making a T1.3 (which is probably F1.2) 50mm, for $6,800.
So, let's go through the possible differences. As has been said:
1. Cine lenses have limited breathing
How much does it cost to take away breathing?
2. Cine zoom lenses hold focus through zoom
N/A
3. Cine lenses have small or no ramping
N/A
4. Generally modern cine lenses are sharper and have higher contrast than still picture lenses. A $30k Master Prime will outgun any still picture lens out there, no ifs or buts. I projected them and there is substantial difference.
Based on still photographs I have seen enlarged, I have a feeling I wouldn't see much difference in real scenes. Also, if you search through reduser (use google "nikon glass site:reduser.net" not reduser's own search engine. I find it easier and faster) which has a lot of cinematographers, you'll see a lot of talk about all this. Some have some nice things to say about manual SLR glass --- if you rehouse them, they're pretty comparable, at least as far as I would care to squint. Others say that the Zeiss CP2's, which are also about $7,000 each, have the same optical quality as DLSR lenses. (Which brings up that $7,000 is less than cine lenses have been. As stated above, they're $20,000 or $30,000 each, if you get the PL mounted ones from Cooke and company)
5. Generally modern cine lenses are faster. You don't find f/1.2 at 14mm or 150mm in still picture lenses.
N/A
6. Cine lenses have much more solid build and are consistent in their performance.
How much is a "more solid build" on this all-metal manual lens?
7. Cine lenses have calibrated focus marks and long throw - for me a feature that disqualifies still lenses from professional use where critical focusing at wide apertures is essential.
I don't know what a "long throw" is. More spread-apart focus markings? And are you sure that the markings on this lens are significantly inaccurate?
8. Cine lenses have industry standard PL mount that does not require adapters, which often cause back focus calibration problems or void camera warranty.
N/A. Canon EF mount cine lenses don't have a PL mount.
9. Cine lenses have fixed and non-rotationg front element allowing usage of clip-on matte boxes.
How much is that?
10. Cine lenses have focus and aperture gears, which are smooth, accurate and precise.
How much to add gears to this lens?
11. Cine lenses do not have hard stops on aperture ring.
Seems like it would be cheaper to leave those out.
12. Cine lenses from the same manufacturer are colour matched. Still lenses aren't, in fact, their colour response is vastly different even within the same series.
I have a feeling I wouldn't see the difference.
13. Modern cine lenses tend to flare much less than still lenses.
I have a feeling I wouldn't see the difference.
14. Cine lenses are optimised for wide apertures and produce high MTFs even at f/1.2. Still picture lenses are generally noticably softer open wide.
Okay, but this is one sharp lens at the next stop down, f/2.
15. Full frame still lenses cover larger sensor area and therefore do not perform as well as dedicated lenses designed for S35 size sensor.
I have a feeling I wouldn't see the difference.
(Some of) you have been very nice and patient to explain your opinion of why cinema lenses are so expensive. But I look at the manual Nikon lenses, all still for sale, brand new, under $1,000 each. These have no autofocus, are they really flying off the shelves? So the economy-of-scale argument is weaker. I do value the mechanical differences, like less breathing, gears, clickless aperture, etc., which makes me want one. I just don't see how those differences would cost 10 times as much.
Nikkor 50mm f/1.2
$725
Canon is also making a T1.3 (which is probably F1.2) 50mm, for $6,800.
So, let's go through the possible differences. As has been said:
1. Cine lenses have limited breathing
How much does it cost to take away breathing?
2. Cine zoom lenses hold focus through zoom
N/A
3. Cine lenses have small or no ramping
N/A
4. Generally modern cine lenses are sharper and have higher contrast than still picture lenses. A $30k Master Prime will outgun any still picture lens out there, no ifs or buts. I projected them and there is substantial difference.
Based on still photographs I have seen enlarged, I have a feeling I wouldn't see much difference in real scenes. Also, if you search through reduser (use google "nikon glass site:reduser.net" not reduser's own search engine. I find it easier and faster) which has a lot of cinematographers, you'll see a lot of talk about all this. Some have some nice things to say about manual SLR glass --- if you rehouse them, they're pretty comparable, at least as far as I would care to squint. Others say that the Zeiss CP2's, which are also about $7,000 each, have the same optical quality as DLSR lenses. (Which brings up that $7,000 is less than cine lenses have been. As stated above, they're $20,000 or $30,000 each, if you get the PL mounted ones from Cooke and company)
5. Generally modern cine lenses are faster. You don't find f/1.2 at 14mm or 150mm in still picture lenses.
N/A
6. Cine lenses have much more solid build and are consistent in their performance.
How much is a "more solid build" on this all-metal manual lens?
7. Cine lenses have calibrated focus marks and long throw - for me a feature that disqualifies still lenses from professional use where critical focusing at wide apertures is essential.
I don't know what a "long throw" is. More spread-apart focus markings? And are you sure that the markings on this lens are significantly inaccurate?
8. Cine lenses have industry standard PL mount that does not require adapters, which often cause back focus calibration problems or void camera warranty.
N/A. Canon EF mount cine lenses don't have a PL mount.
9. Cine lenses have fixed and non-rotationg front element allowing usage of clip-on matte boxes.
How much is that?
10. Cine lenses have focus and aperture gears, which are smooth, accurate and precise.
How much to add gears to this lens?
11. Cine lenses do not have hard stops on aperture ring.
Seems like it would be cheaper to leave those out.
12. Cine lenses from the same manufacturer are colour matched. Still lenses aren't, in fact, their colour response is vastly different even within the same series.
I have a feeling I wouldn't see the difference.
13. Modern cine lenses tend to flare much less than still lenses.
I have a feeling I wouldn't see the difference.
14. Cine lenses are optimised for wide apertures and produce high MTFs even at f/1.2. Still picture lenses are generally noticably softer open wide.
Okay, but this is one sharp lens at the next stop down, f/2.
15. Full frame still lenses cover larger sensor area and therefore do not perform as well as dedicated lenses designed for S35 size sensor.
I have a feeling I wouldn't see the difference.
(Some of) you have been very nice and patient to explain your opinion of why cinema lenses are so expensive. But I look at the manual Nikon lenses, all still for sale, brand new, under $1,000 each. These have no autofocus, are they really flying off the shelves? So the economy-of-scale argument is weaker. I do value the mechanical differences, like less breathing, gears, clickless aperture, etc., which makes me want one. I just don't see how those differences would cost 10 times as much.
Attachments
Last edited: