You might know how much I love the Helios 44-2, the cult Soviet 58mm F2.0 prime, but a very skilled lens technician, Richard Gale obviously took his love for this lens much further. His DSO FF58 modified Helios 44-2 lens is well known and used by many DOPs, who looking for that magical look you…
Fast Lenses VS Slower Equivalents
When we buy lenses, most of us generally try to get the fastest model in every focal length we go with. Like many others I generally believe that the faster lens will give me better performance! My argument is that if I stop down a faster lens by a stop, I will get nicer images…
LOMO “Lenkinap” 22mm F2.8 / T3.1 Russian Cine Lens | REVIEW
Vintage wide angle lenses are expensive; vintage wide angle CINE lenses are very expensive, and there are LOMO lenses. They are CINE lenses that cost less that many PHOTO lenses. Anyone familiar with LOMO lenses will know that they come and many variations. One of these is the “LENKINAP”. Right away, I must say, LOMO…
WIN Tokina RMC 17mm F3.5 | Winner Announced
I’m very happy to announce yet another Tokina RMC 17mm F3.5 giveaway! If you don’t know much about this lens, make sure to check out my in-depth review here and as you can probably tell, I like this lens a lot myself, so I’m sad to let it go, but I have made my decision and…
Battle of Cheap 17mm Primes | Tamron Adaptall-2 vs Tokina RMC
I’m often asked about cheap vintage wide angle primes and the two that I always recommend are the Tamron Adaptall-2 17mm F3.5 and Tokina RMC 17mm F3.5. While they do not sound very exciting when compared to lenses like Tokina 11-16mm F2.8, it’s important to remember is that these vintage prime lenses offer “full frame”…
The Russian Tank | TAIR-3 300mm F4.5 Review
I don’t use vintage telephoto lenses (over 200mm) very often; in fact this a first time I’m reviewing a 300mm telephoto prime. As you might know, due to the lack of the optical image stabilization, such lenses can be difficult use for video. A rock solid tripod is a must and the actual lens has…
FM LENS | Anamorphic Focus Module | REVIEW
As I continue my Anamorphic journey, it’s time to take closer look at one of my favorite solutions so far! We’ve already explored a few double focusing setups including Proskar-16 & Sankor 16F as well as some single focus options including Optex/Century, ISCO Wide-Screen 2000 & ISCORAMA 42, but the lens I’m reviewing this time…
Canon 13mm F1.5 Lens for Super16 / BMPCC / Digital Bolex
If you are not using any Super16 cameras, you might want to skip this review because this lens doesn’t cover bigger sensors. While testing the little Canon C-16 13mm F1.3, I wasn’t planning on making a review about it. “Just another c-mount prime lens” I thought to myself. It was only when I edited the…
Introduction to LEICA-R lenses | Budget Buyer’s Guide
This website has been in existence (at the time of writing) for well over 3 year, but until now there hasn’t been a single proper mention of any Leica lenses, which is clearly not right because Leica-R Lenses in particular are incredibly popular for video use. I can’t try them all, but thankfully a fellow…
ISCORAMA 42 MC 1.5x Anamorphic Lens Review
So far my anamorphic journey took me through a few quite different low budget solutions including Proskar-16 2x, Century/Optex 1.33x and ISCO Widescreen 2000 1.5x anamorphic lenses. Our next stop is one of the legendary ISCORAMA lenses, which outside of proper anamorphic cine lenses are the most respected anamorphic solutions for video use. I would…
