Veydra Mini Prime Micro 4/3 Mount Cinema Lenses On Kickstarter

Erik Naso

Erik Naso

Veteran
Check out these bad ass cinema primes.

Veydra has a Kickstarter for these pretty sweet looking Micro Four Thirds Cinema lenses.

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Veydra Mini Prime lenses all feature


  • Resolution that exceeds 4K
  • Cinema 0.8 module focus and iris gears
  • Consistent front 80mm outside diameter & 77mm filter threading
  • Similar length for quick lens changes
  • Constant T2.2 aperture for easy lighting set ups
  • Brass plated mounts for durability.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/665053329/veydra-m4-3-cinema-lenses-for-gh4-and-bmpcc
 
The mechanics look nice (with Matthew Duclos involved they can't be anything but nice). But that's not what I care about the most... Have they released any images shot with these?
 
The promo video was shot with the Veydra. I'm hoping to to get the set after Thanksgiving to play with on my GH4.
 
It is hard supporting this venture without any image samples. Having a nice looking functional lens is one thing but considering how much we nitpick over every aspect of even Panasonic, Olympus, Canon and Nikon lenses I have a hard time believing in this project. I'm not saying they will not be great lenses. My point is I just don't know and it is hard to judge buying them without any type of samples to judge them by. Their kickstarter campaign should have been more visual and really sold the quality of the lenses.

How will these hold up to Rokinon cine lenses?
 
Thomas Smet said:
It is hard supporting this venture without any image samples. Having a nice looking functional lens is one thing but considering how much we nitpick over every aspect of even Panasonic, Olympus, Canon and Nikon lenses I have a hard time believing in this project. I'm not saying they will not be great lenses. My point is I just don't know and it is hard to judge buying them without any type of samples to judge them by. Their kickstarter campaign should have been more visual and really sold the quality of the lenses.

How will these hold up to Rokinon cine lenses?
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Rokinon Cine lenses are stills lenses with gears and declicked. These are true cinema lenses designed and built for cinema use with pulling focus in mind. The have a 300 degree range. These are not rehoused stills lenses from what I can see.

At 1:20 mark in the video they show some samples but yes it would have been better to have a stand alone video of samples and side by side comparisons. Ryan Avery say's they will have just that next week.
 
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This looks great, I will be following it closely for when I'm ready to buy some cine primes.

Looking at the photos of the lenses I just realized something that I had never noticed about cine primes before. Do most of them have non-linear iris rings (i.e. different distances between T-stop marks)? A quick look at various cine primes on google image search seems to indicate so. Is there any advantage or disadvantage to that? I'm used to manual still photo lenses that usually have the same distance between stop marks.
 
That's not an insignificant investment to put in someone who claims he's going to build the best cinema lenses. All I have now to base my investment on is a photo of nicely housed lenses. Not enough for me at all. There needs to be extremely scientific image quality analysis by his part and comparisons to other well known lenses for me to put such an investment in him. Even a few sample shots of grass with no reference isn't nearly enough at all, but that even is not provided.

I wish the compaign succeeds as they look like perfect lenses if they are as claimed to be, but my nature is not to suspect anything until proven otherwise.
 
While these look impressive I don't know if I would be willing to invest in lenses for the M43 image sensor size. While the GH series is great there is no indicator that the image size will be usable on a future professional grade cinema camera.
 
geffyb said:
While these look impressive I don't know if I would be willing to invest in lenses for the M43 image sensor size. While the GH series is great there is no indicator that the image size will be usable on a future professional grade cinema camera.
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I agree - I would be interested in full frame versions which could then be adapted to any number of mounts if I choose. Because these are fully manual any of existing cheap dumb mounts would do the trick nicely
 
If you want full frame cinema lenses you have lots of choices. Not nearly as competitively priced as these are. Seriously one Zeiss compact prime cost the same as 5 of the Veydra Mini Primes.

If you are a MFT shooter looking to keep the package light and affordable these are a great value. As of now they fill a void that only S35 and full frame fill and thats a expensive place. We still need to see how these cinema lenses perform but dang it's a good deal if they do.
 
This is not a piece of accessory that one can buy based on looks alone. It is not easy to get the optics right. Ofcourse in this age of internet, even terrible chromatic aberration of a certain brand of lens has been defended by people (based on their narrow interests ofcourse). However, I have seen a lot of people buy lenses based on hype and suffer.

Lenses are long term investments and they depreciate much less. In comparison cameras come and go. So I would prefer full frame lenses since those will go with many camera systems and will not limit me to a single system. Buying a set of full frame primes is costly. However, the approach is to buy one or two focal lengths at a time based on your usage and budget and build up the entire set at your own pace.

Even if someone thinks that this type of lenses are what he/she needs, it is better to see the results and then buy. In kickstarter projects there is no guarantee of delivery on time. A couple of projects that I have backed are yet to deliver after a year. And there is no guarantee of quality irrespective of any one being a part of design or promotion of a lens.
 
If you want FF, the best choice on a tight budget may be the samyangs. I think I read somewhere that they had a second generation of cine lenses, with the same optics and similar mechanics, but with some improvements like iris and focus rings matching across the set, and hand-picked copies on each set so they look more similar to each other. But I can't find it now so maybe it was another brand?

edit:
Ah, here. It was Samyang.
This second generation of cine lenses offers a few notable benefits for video shooters, in addition to the use of de-clicked aperture rings and gears. First, the focus and aperture gears are unified, meaning that swapping out lenses will not require adjustments to your rig. Second, for convenience to the user there are dual focusing scales, one on each side. Third, all of the Cine DS lenses are tested to be color matched, ensuring that your footage will feature the same color and contrast throughout your production
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indiawilds said:
In kickstarter projects there is no guarantee of delivery on time. A couple of projects that I have backed are yet to deliver after a year. And there is no guarantee of quality irrespective of any one being a part of design or promotion of a lens.
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Well in this situation you are not limited only to Kickstarter. I have been involved in the development of these lenses for more than a year. You can also pre-order these lenses at the same price as on Kickstarter for only a small deposit. If you are concerned at all about delivery, a small deposit would have to seem like a much safer bet.

Feel free to ask me anything, I am happy to answer any questions that I can in this thread.
 
So we have Hot Rod Cameras and Matthew Duclos working on this ---> I have no doubt that mechanically they are going to be top notch.
 
Illya Friedman said:
Well in this situation you are not limited only to Kickstarter. I have been involved in the development of these lenses for more than a year. You can also pre-order these lenses at the same price as on Kickstarter for only a small deposit. If you are concerned at all about delivery, a small deposit would have to seem like a much safer bet.

Feel free to ask me anything, I am happy to answer any questions that I can in this thread.
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Yeah how about some serious quality samples and tests to show how well the lenses hold up to other lenses out there. I'm not saying that I expect them to be bad but in this day and age I would never even buy Panasonic or Olympus for m43 without seeing some darn good samples and tests first. A lens really is all about the performance and I think it is key to selling these. If one is able to order or pre-order these lenses already, I would assume there is a version good enough to shoot some samples and lens tests with. If there is not then that to me sends up some red flags.

Again I'm not saying they may not be great but seriously to sell a lens today with the knowledgeable target audience you have you really need to sell it to people that these lens will deliver optically. I only say this because I am in the market for these type of lenses but I know nothing about your team or what they are capable of. All I know is that creating lenses is a pretty meticulous fine art that some of the best craftsmen and engineers in the world with million dollar R&D budgets don't always get right. I want to believe in this project but I need more to believe in it. The reason why I haven't pulled the trigger on Rokinon yet is partially for the same reason and I have been spending some time researching other options. I am finally starting to see some decent Rokinon tests but a lot of that has been photography based. Your project has caused me to delay purchasing a set of Rokinon lenses for now.
 
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