#lenstest

Quick update on the Nikon/Nikkor lens set project. I’d paused working on these as video lenses because I got a new still 35mm Nikon body to use them on as is and video projects got paused due to Omicron.

I worked on the 24mm Nikkor today. Main goal was to declick and take the protrusion / flange down so it doesn’t hit the mirror on my 5D or touch anything it shouldn’t on the EVA. A bit unrefined but I just used a hacksaw.

Unlike that bit of horror, the declicking of the aperture is reversible. I’ve saved the tab and screws.

The screwdriver set is Japanese Industrial Standard. Apparently using plain old Phillips Head is a recipe for stripping screws. These lenses also generally have loc tite glue, so heat is sometimes recommended to loosen them up. I had some other work done (ai lens conversion with John White) recently on the lens and asked them not to add more glue.

I’ll still need to add grease to dampen the iris but happy for now. Also rethinking the Ef lens adapter because now that I’m using these for photo, something more easily removed is preferred over the red rock adapter that involves the tiniest screws ever.

Adding a note here (June 2022) - I got this grease to dampen the iris and it seems to be working nicely - Nye Lubricants 795A (NG) Synthetic Damping Grease 50g Tube - on Ebay . A smaller quantity would have been ideal but maybe someone else will need it.

This is about my attempt to put together a Nikon photo lens set for cinematography. I haven't posted to the blog in a few years and I'm not guaranteeing I'll post regularly or ever again. However, I thought I might use this space to document little things like lens tests.

While I've used many lovely cinema lens sets over the years, having a set of prime lenses of my own has always been a little out of reach financially. But I've been craving some variety after doing a lot of work on the same zoom lens. For a new creative challenge, I'm going to see if I can build a really affordable prime set around a lens I've owned since 2004. It might not work! The lenses might not match at all! Let's see.

This is my Nikon Series E 50mm f1.8. The Nikon Series E lenses were designed to be more affordable and aimed at hobbyists and average consumers rather than professionals who would use the Nikkor brand lenses. They are lightweight and small due to using more plastic and fewer optical elements. When you see Nikon sets converted for cinematography, they are often AI or AI-s versions of Nikkor lenses.

I love a few things about the Nikon 50mm. After working with a somewhat clinical modern zoom lens, the visual character of the Nikon is simply refreshing. I'm not going to expand on that or give more details right now but maybe later I'll do a comparison. This lens is also very lightweight and low profile. Sometimes vintage photo lenses get rehoused into cinema housings and I totally respect the utility of that but I love having a camera build that is small, fits into tight spaces and doesn't call attention to itself. This lens also opens up to 1.8 which is quite helpful in low light or night filming.

Unlike cinema lens sets which are designed to be used together and match fairly well, photography lenses, even ones within the same brand or series can be one-off projects with different teams behind each one (Nikon has many histories of different lenses documented on their Thousand and One Nights website).

For my set, I'm going to be testing out the following Series E Nikons: the 50mm and the 100mm which are generally thought of as exceptionally good. That said, I don't even know if these two lenses will match at all. I've also thrown in a Nikkor 24mm 2.8 into the mix.

Why go Nikkor for the wide? Well the Series E only goes to 28mm and that one didn't seem to get stellar reviews. Ken Rockwell, who has generously documented countless photography lenses over the years described it as "an optically inferior 5-element 28mm f/2.8" and "crummy". Matthew Durr, who did extensive testing of Series E lenses, described the Series E 28mm as disappointing and not particularly inexpensive compared to other Series E lenses. That was enough for me to look elsewhere. I found a Nikkor 24mm 2.8 Non-AI lens for under $100 on ebay and decided to see how it looks. For reference, the 100mm series E was also just under $100 and 50mm series E lenses currently are going for $50-$80.

Test #1: What do I want to look for in these lenses? Ideally, I will set up as thorough and rigorous a lens test as Jay Holben, ASC has done and documented in American Cinematographer. For now, I want to sort out whether these lenses are even in the ballpark of each other and worth investing more time and adjustments to (like declicking the aperture ring or mounting a solid semi-permanent EF adapter and buying new rear caps). Note: I have been fond of the Red Rock micro adapters. I have one on my 50mm and for the other lenses in this test I have a Fotodiox adapter that is really sticky and makes me nervous each time I put it on a lens because it feels like it might never come off. The Red Rock adapters are around $33-35 each, and you want to buy one for each lens because mounting involves some tiny screws. Not something you'll be doing on set. Once mounted, you then need Canon EF back lens cap for each one you've adapted which are around $7 to $10 each. This semi-permanent mount change would cost about $45 for each lens but be worth it to me to speed up workflow on set and not have to bother with an anxiety-inducing removable mount.

My initial test is simple, I'm just using this color chip chart and natural, indirect window light. Confounding factors: time of day, atmospheric haze, bounce from outside of the window (foliage, buildings etc.), color of the glass in the window and screen and dust in the screen, sensor etc. A better option would be to use a full spectrum controllable light source but all I have on hand at the moment are LEDs.

First, I do a custom White balance using the 100mm lens on the Panasonic EVA1 in VLOG 150mbps / 422 UHD mode 23.98 onto the ColorChecker's whitecard.

One might expect something around 6300 for indirect light or shade.

I got 8300k -.8MG . Ok! I'm going to leave it at this setting for the all of the lenses.

I set the exposure at a 4 / 5.6 split for all of the lenses (one might also test for variations in the exposures at this point but I'm moving fast).

I'm going to bring all three clips into DaVinci Resolve and look at a few things.

1. Simple look test - I'm going to normalize the footage first by converting all of the clips from VLog to Rec 709 using tonal mapping in my project settings.

.Who knows what kinds of color transformations happened from exporting a still jpg and then uploading it here. And we also know just proximity of other colors can skew our perception which is why I cropped the 24mm for these stills.

My perception though is the 50mm looks a bit bluer just based on the wall in the background.

2. Scopes. Let's look at some scopes next using a power window to isolate the chip chart.

Looking at these charts and the footage, the 50mm certainly skews a bit bluer overall and none of the colors across lenses seem to exactly match up. One might have expected that the series E lenses would best match each other but the 100mm and 24mm look a bit closer to each other in my eye.