Cine lens vs. Still lens (image quality difference?)
- Thread starter ryvac
- Start date
William_Robinette
Shallow Member
This is going to wildly depend on what still lenses you are talking about. If you are comparing the $100 50mm Nikons off ebay to a 50mm Cooke/Zeiss/Arri then yeah, there is going to be a huge difference. I guess the biggest question is what is your application?
Remember, films are blown up to fill 70'+ screens all the time, how often is that done with prints?
Remember, films are blown up to fill 70'+ screens all the time, how often is that done with prints?
Hunter Hampton
Carbonite Member
Ryan just did a test on this with my Red over at reduser.net- click on lens tests.
thekreative
Veteran
love my contax Zeiss....oh and the price
Glen Gustafson
Active member
Well, a couple of things I can think of off the top of my head;
Cine lenses are generally made with the intent that the image is going to be blown up for projection a great deal more than still lenses, so they do try to make them pretty sharp. One of the limiting factors is how flat the film can be kept as it runs through the gate, so the whole imaging system is often tuned up using a collimator.
The lens design is optimized for the movie film format, so the best performance is within the area of what we would think of as a "half-frame" or 4-perf camera, and some cine lenses won't cover a 35mm still frame without vignetting.
Also professional cine lenses are often engraved in "T-stops" rather than F-stops. An F-stop is the mathematical representation of what the design is supposed to be delivering in terms of light transmission. A T-stop is nearly the same thing, but is determined by actual measurement, so it is more of a real world representation. I guess since you're shooting 90 feet of 35mm film a minute it's not usually an option to bracket your exposure just in case...
And the mechanics are generally better quality. My first impression of a 35mm cine camera was how "industrial" it seemed compared to most still cameras.
That said, I know lots of people who have had nikon mounts fitted to old cine cameras for effects work, where the demands are different than for shooting live action. Saves lots of money.
Cine lenses are generally made with the intent that the image is going to be blown up for projection a great deal more than still lenses, so they do try to make them pretty sharp. One of the limiting factors is how flat the film can be kept as it runs through the gate, so the whole imaging system is often tuned up using a collimator.
The lens design is optimized for the movie film format, so the best performance is within the area of what we would think of as a "half-frame" or 4-perf camera, and some cine lenses won't cover a 35mm still frame without vignetting.
Also professional cine lenses are often engraved in "T-stops" rather than F-stops. An F-stop is the mathematical representation of what the design is supposed to be delivering in terms of light transmission. A T-stop is nearly the same thing, but is determined by actual measurement, so it is more of a real world representation. I guess since you're shooting 90 feet of 35mm film a minute it's not usually an option to bracket your exposure just in case...
And the mechanics are generally better quality. My first impression of a 35mm cine camera was how "industrial" it seemed compared to most still cameras.
That said, I know lots of people who have had nikon mounts fitted to old cine cameras for effects work, where the demands are different than for shooting live action. Saves lots of money.
Ryan Patrick O'Hara
Veteran
Glan has a pretty good answer going.
Ryvac, when the newest Bourne film used Nikon lenses on the cine cameras they had the lenses focus rings reversed so that they would work like cinelenses. That is one example to go along with my same observation; which is that most photo lenses do focus opposite then cine lenses. But just recently, while having the chance to use some Panavision MKII prime sets, I noticed that some of the lenses focused opposite then others.
So yes, photo lenses tend to focus the opposite way then cinelenses, but there are certainly exceptions.
Ryvac, when the newest Bourne film used Nikon lenses on the cine cameras they had the lenses focus rings reversed so that they would work like cinelenses. That is one example to go along with my same observation; which is that most photo lenses do focus opposite then cine lenses. But just recently, while having the chance to use some Panavision MKII prime sets, I noticed that some of the lenses focused opposite then others.
So yes, photo lenses tend to focus the opposite way then cinelenses, but there are certainly exceptions.