Rokinon cine lenses arriving!

[FilmDude]

No witness mark? Huh? Enlighten me here please.

I've investigated these chinese lenses... They DO NOT have real witness marks, they are all the same, its just a generic housing that is used to fit lenses. There is no actual MAIN witness mark that the scale can even point to. It's just a bunch of lines to make it look like an expensive lens.

I uncovered this in another post. Which Is why I'm asking the user on here, how he uses the lens... judging from his 1 word reply of my long list of question "yes" he remarks, I'm assuming that means yes to my last question... There is no way for him to use the lens with a tape measure or even eye mesuring. The only way to know if you're in focus or not is looking in the view finder and seeing if its sharp or not.

This is why I dont like those lenses. Very misleading and basically a useless moded lens, considering that the housings cover up even the normal scale on the ZE lenses. There is no mechanical work done on the lenses inside the housing, its simply sized up or down with spacers in the housing and then uses small allen screws to affix to the focus ring of the lens. The only thing done to these lenses are declicking.

I tried to warn people about these "cine" lenses on here before. Those marks are fake, and so is everything else. Only thing you gain is declick and focus ring. You lose the ability to check focal distance/mark distances.

 

[FilmDude]

Also to add to that, you cannot get a wider lens housing than 50mm for these chinese "moded" lenses. They designed a single hood size then copied it and just put different names on the outside. They never designed a shorter barrel to allow for wider lenses than 50mm... so you'll never be able to have a "matching set" of these chinese mods.

A 35mm, 24mm 18mm and so on, are too wide and would sit too deep inside these housings, causing vignetting because the barrel can be "seen" by the lens. until PCHOOD actually designs another type of housing for the wider lenses (which im pretty sure becomes a major problem considering how short and wide these would have to be) its just a silly way to trick clients into thinking you have some expensive lens. The second you need to use a 35mm or wider lens the jig is up.

EDIT- Apparently their website just updated and they ARE now offering wider angle lenses... guess they caught on to that quick. I still dont like they they have no useable scale, the sleeve is nice, just wish they didn't fake the markings! or at least leave it blank with an actual point to main witness mark, that way you can mark them yourself.

 

[Alpha Beta Omega]

I did a couple of tests comparing the optical performance compared to my Canon 50L and these are my findings.

1. Sharpness is about the same in the center but the edges and especially the out-of-focus stuff is a bit rough.
2. This lens is marked as F1.7 or T1.8. In fact it's more like F2.2-2.5. But if I compare it to a Chinon 50/1.9 it is brighter. Maybe it's the Canon 50L that lets more light through?
3. Vignetting seams to be a bit more than on the 50L and the lens has a warmer rendering.
4. Chromatic aberration is less than on the 50L.

As far as the markings on the lens they are pretty useless and even if they were spot on it's almost impossible to use because the whole lens rotates when you adjust focus. Despite the shortcomings it's nice to use and footage

looks good but not up to Zeiss standard. Even the Rokinon/Samyang lenses are better.

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