So NAB is all over for another year and even with a team of three covering the event it’s impossible to check out everything that you would like to. Here’s a quick rundown of a few lenses and filters we thought were interesting but either had no time to video or felt was sexy but not appropriate to the news shooter:

Redrock Micro's V.3 follow focus

First up is the new Redrock Micro follow focus v.3 which was shown last year in prototype but is now working and due to ship soon. It’s a big improvement over the popular v.2r and we’ll wait and see how much that has added to the cost.

The LCW 4x4 fader filter kit

Birns and Sawyer were showing the new 4×4 ND fader from Lightcraft Workshop. This matched pair of filters is similar in concept to the Schneider vari-ND we filmed earlier int he week – but comprises two 4×4 filters instead of just one and a screw-in. Designed to be used exclusively in a Mattebox I’d be interested to see how it compares to the Schneider.

The D-Focus lightweight mattebox

Budget follow focus makers D-Focus were showing a nice prototype budget mattebox. It is pretty lightweight and has a swing away option. Price is not set yet but I’m told it will be very competitive.

Century PL converted Canon 17mm TS-E lens

Next up is this lovely looking PL conversion by Century of Canon’s 17mm tilt shift lens. Quite how you attach a follow focus to a tilted lens I don’t know, but it looks sexy none the less.

If you have to ask the price you can forget it

Fujinon showed a cine lens that simply rocks, sadly it weighs more than my kit bag and costs more than some luxury cars. Again not one for the news shooter but oh so nice.

Tokina 11-16mm NEX mount conversion

A Japanese manufacturer was showing the popular Tokina 11-16mm lens professionally converted to NEX mount. This is easily done with an inexpensive convertor but this is a proper conversion with proper aperture markings. It would be ideal on the upcoming Sony Nex FS-100. Sadly it’s not going to be cheap.

Stripes anyone?

Lastly if you can’t afford any of the other new gear at NAB then maybe you can simply dress up your old lens with a tiger striped skin from lensskins.com.

Since Lens Doctor Eddie Houston introduced the Fluid Variable Aperture on this blog a few months ago he says his business has gone tremendously well, so much so that – after an initial trial using the FVA installed into Nikon and Leica R lenses – the BBC have commissioned him to install the aperture system on all their stills lenses.

I’ve had quite a few of my lenses converted this way now and can testify to how well they work. It has worked especially well with my older Leica and Canon FD manual focus glass. I have other de-clicked Leica R lenses but the aperture on these has a tendency to move on its own due to the springs in the aperture system. The Lens Doctor version does not – a great help. After adding a True Lens Service 80mm lens donut, a Zacuto lens gear and a Leitax Leica R to EOS hard mount I have a newly ‘cinemized’ lens.

Eddie added: “I have a further development to the Fluid Variable Aperture system that is currently going through patenting. This will be the introduction of a gearing system with SLOW-NORMAL-FAST selection and it will also include the segmentation of the aperture down to 1/32nd increments. This will allow cameramen or movie makers to maintain a constant aperture if there is a break in filming for whatever reason (such as weather or light). They will be instantly able to mark the aperture where they stopped and set the same aperture value again when filming recommences – vital to cohesive filming and precise editing. This will be available in mid summer and we will be able to retrofit it on manual lenses. We have tested the system on Canon, Zeiss, Leica, Olympus and Nikon so far.

“I have also been approached to offer the Lens Doctor service in two other countries, the USA and Sweden. Although these discussions are in early stages it looks like the service will involve vendors offering lenses fully converted with the Fluid Variable Apertures from their outlets. If any other people are interested in offering this service in their countries, please contact me at ehouston@talk21.com“

You can find more details of the conversions on www.thelensdoctor.co.uk.

The work of the lens doctor

Eddie Houston used to be a guitarist playing alongside the likes of Thin Lizzy and Status Quo. Before that he was a technical manager for Canon back in the days of the old FD cameras and lenses. He has now returned to his photographic roots and is running a small family business selling and servicing old stills lenses. Based in Scotland he has gained quite a reputation recently. Manual lenses are often better suited to video than their AF counterparts because they have a smoother, more damped manual focus action along with manual aperture control. The excellent Carl Zeiss ZF range of lenses are probably the most popular and best known examples of manual lenses that are well suited to video. There are however a great range of other older lenses that can be easily adapted to your EOS, Nikon or Micro 4/3 HDDSLR – these are what Eddie specialises in.

I had the opportunity to meet up with Eddie when I was talking at a Canon event in Glasgow. We talked old lenses and got to discussing lens de-clicking of stills lenses for video use. I left a few vintage lenses for Eddie to experiment with and he recently returned them to me after a full service and his own version of de-clicking called the ’fluid variable aperture system’ installed.

Eddie at work measuring a lens iris blade

For those who don’t know about de-clicking, most manual focus stills lenses have an aperture iris that is controlled in click stops as opposed to a continuously variable aperture like those found on Cine lenses. The problem is that these click stops don’t allow you to set a precise aperture in between the marked stops. When you vary it while shooting video the iris will not close smoothly but rather in steps with a clicking noise. This is clearly not ideal for video. A stills lens can de-clicked but care has to be taken and lubrication added to make sure the aperture runs smoothly – a job for a skilled technician.

Below is a little test video I made using an old Tamron 90mm f2.5 SP macro lens that I had lying around. It’s super sharp and now with the ‘fluid variable aperture’ fitted it makes a useful video lens. It’s easy to fit to an EOS camera using a cheap adapter from Ebay.

Tamron 90mm de-clicked by the Lens Doctor from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Eddie was dissatisfied with how slack the aperture control was on my lenses when he de-clicked them, claiming that they were disturbed by even the slightest movement. He wanted to make the aperture fully variable but still easy to set in a specific position, to do this he made the resistance on the aperture ring more positive and fluid. I am really impressed with the results and plan to have more lenses de-clicked by Eddie asap. He has since opened up this service to everybody, cost varies from lens to lens as not all lenses are the same. You can contact him directly at enquiries@thelensdoctor.co.uk to discuss your specific requirements. You can also buy pre-modified lenses from time to time on Eddie’s Ebay store.

Measuring click stops

One question I am asked a lot is whether older Canon FD lenses can be converted to work on an EOS. Generally the answer till now has been no because of the 42mm flange focal depth of FD bodies being shorter than the 44mm of an EOS body. There are some adapters with an optical element in them to compensate for this difference, but the third party examples of these are generally not high quality and I do not recommend them. Canon used to make such an adapter for their FD Super telephoto lenses but these are super rare and usually expensive secondhand. A few FD lenses have been successfully modified to EOS in the past, I remember Vincent Laforet used to have a FD 35mm Tilt and Shift lens converted for EOS use.

In early 2011 Eddie will be offering a service to permanently convert Canon FD lenses to EOS/EF fitting without the need for corrective glass, this is under development at the moment and he already has a small selection on offer but plans to increase the range over the coming months to include all FD lenses. I predict he is going to be very busy when this service starts.

Vivitar 24mm f2 converted from FD to EOS and variable aperture fitted

Another thing Eddie has on offer is his own special build FD 50mm F1.4 with a ‘chrome nose’. These are specially built, Eddie adds Super Spectra Coatings to the glass and add another iris blade to the system. The regular Canon FD 50mm F1.4 has only seven blades, this special build has eight, creating a much smoother bokeh. I have yet to see one and am very curious indeed.

50mm f1.4 FD lens with improved bokeh

For more information on Eddie and his other services you can check out his website here.

(Note – If you are based in the US then the best place to send your stills lenses to be modified is Duclos lenses. The run an excellent service where a lens can be declicked, a follow focus gear added and a 80mm standard size lens front added. I highly recommend them also.)

I wouldn’t normally highlight a Cine style lens here on dslrnewsshooter as I don’t think they necessarily the best solution for run and gun style shooting. The long focus ring rotations of often nearly 360 degrees are specifically designed for accurate pulling of focus in a film environment with a follow focus and camera assistant. For lone shooter real world environments I feel that the shorter focus ring travel of something like a Zeiss ZE, ZF or Canon Tilt Shift lens is more desirable, these usually have shorter rotations of between 1/3 and 1/2 a turn, a lot more like a broadcast lens on an ENG camera.

Duclos Nikon 70-200 f2.8 conversion from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

This latest PL conversion by lens expert Matt Duclos is a little different. The lens starts life as a regular Nikon 70-200 f2.8 VR II lens but improves it by adding a smooth manual aperture ring. He then alters the short throw focus gearing of the stock lens to a super smooth cine style one – but with only about a half turn rather than a 360 degree one, this makes it really very practical for run and gun shooting. He also reverses the focus direction to match a Canon or Cine lens and changes the Nikon mount to a special universal one that will fit Canon EOS, Cine style PL and others. Obviously with these modifications you loose any autofocus but the result is something quite spectacular. The image this lens creates is as good as the best I’ve seen from a tele zoom.

The only reason I won’t be running out to get one of these right away is the cost – estimated by Matt to be a mere $10000 US. That said I think this lens would be a worthwhile investment as its pretty future proof with the interchangable mounts and way more usable for video than the stock Nikon version.

Duclos 70-200 prototype testing. from Matthew Duclos on Vimeo.

I love Carl Zeiss lenses and own a small collection of the new Zeiss ZE primes along with some of the older Contax fitting Zeiss lenses which can be adapted to use on EOS. One of the Contax fit lenses I loved the most for videography and photojournalism is the 35mm f1.4 but until now it has not been available in the newer ZE or ZF mounts. That has just changed with Zeiss launching an updated version of the classic lens with even better mechanics than the old one and a fantastic bokeh. Check out the lens in this interview at PhotoCine Expo with Richard Schleuning of Carl Zeiss which also includes some sample footage from an early copy of the lens.

Carl Zeiss introduce the 35mm f1.4 ZE and ZF lenses from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Like many video DSLR news shooters I find getting smooth, accurate manual focus with an autofocus 35mm stills lens to be a little tricky at times. Unlike proper Cine or video camera lenses the focussing rings of autofocus lenses often do not rotate very far when going from minimum focus to infinity. In contrast a good ENG camera lens often rotate as much as 180 degrees when going from minimum to infinity focus, whilst a proper Cine lens may rotate almost a full 360 degrees for the same focus travel.

Zeiss CP.2 Cine lenses with long focus travel

To get smoother, more controllable manual focus on a Canon stills lens I’ve found the best solution be to add a follow focus unit like those from Genus, Redrockmicro, Zacuto, Cinevate Chroziel or the budget D-focus. All these follow focus units work in pretty much the same way but with varying degrees of accuracy (backlash) and smoothness. I currently shoot with a Redrockmicro V2 follow focus but I’m testing out newer ones right now so hopefully I can review more of them in the future. One thing I do like about the Redrock and the Genus follow focus is the quick release capability which I regard as essential for news where you may want to re-rig in a hurry.

The Genus Superior Follow Focus with quick release

The new D-Focus V3 budget follow focus

Follow focus units also require some kind of rig to attach them to your camera. Most of these rigs are quite big but for news shooting there are now some quite interesting lightweight options. The two that I own are the Jag35 DSLR cage and the Redrockmicro Captain Stubling rig. Both of these are designed for handheld shooting and can also be put on a tripod as well (The Captain Stubling needs you to purchase additional parts to do this).

Jag35 cage rigged for follow focus from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

One thing all these follow focus units require is a gear to be added to the lens. I find that even when used without a follow focus attached the extra circumference and grip they give to a lens aids accurate focussing a lot.

Redrockmicro follow focus and gears from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Up till recently I’ve been exclusively using the $44.50 Redrockmicro lens gears which come in different sizes and increase the diameter of the lens a fair amount to give greater focus travel. These are fine if you plan to leave one attached to each lens you own but I find them hard to move around between lenses in a hurry on a shoot, they also take up a lot of room in your camera bag when fitted to a lens. If you have a lot of lenses like me then you basically need a whole set of four in sizes A through D, luckily they do a discount on a pack of 3. Really large diameter super telephoto lenses are not catered for with this system. Cinevate has a similar system with a wider gear and a clever add on Durus focus lever option but I’ve not had a chance to test it.

Zacuto Zipgears in action from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Next I moved on to the $68 Zacuto Zipgears which are much lower profile and a nice simple design. I like these as they hardly add any bulk to the lens which is really good on news assignments when trying to pack a bag tight full of gear. They also supply long enough gear strips to fit larger telephoto lenses easily. The downside is that it’s designed to be left on a lens semi permanantly because each gear needs to be cut to size and you can’t change them in a hurry – again if you have a lot of lenses this can be pricey. British company Shoot35 has some similar concept gears but I’ve not had a chance to test these yet either.

Which brings me to the newest lens gear on the market from Genus. This one is $69 and also low profile like the Zacuto except that it is bright blue and the same gear can be moved between many different lenses quickly and attaching using a simple thumbscrew adjustable rack. It is very quick to put it on and take it off. Cut at the right length it turns out I can cover 3 or 4 different lenses with the same gear. It will also accomodate a large telephoto lenses like my big Leica 280mm f2.8 with ease. If you are on a budget or simply don’t want a follow focus gear on your lens the whole time this seems like a good choice. Genus tell me that they will also offer a permanent fixed option in the future.

Genus follow focus gear from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Finally the costliest, most professional and most robust option is to have custom made lens gear made for each lens. These are made either of Aluminium or Delrin and are custom fitted, usually they are not to be removed. They can be made to be reasonably close fitting to the lens barrel but are not as low profile as the Zacuto or Genus gears. Reputable manufacturers of these include Matt Duclos in the US and TLS Services in the UK. I have not had any of these made for myself yet but have seen some in action and was very impressed.

Even with a Follow focus and good gear added manual focussing with an autofocus lens can be tricky. In the next part we’ll look at how to use manual focus still lenses and make them more Cine like.

Zeiss demonstrate their range of manual focus prime lenses and give some tips on lens choices at NAB 2010. Video by Fstopacdemy’s Scott Karlins and Dan Chung.

NAB 2010 – Zeiss ZE, ZF an Compact Primes lineup – how to choose from Dan Chung on Vimeo.

Now I wouldn’t normally feature a follow focus so prominently on DSLRnewsshooter.com but this new Redrockmicro follow focus prototype looks amazing. NAB 2010 video by Fstopacdemy‘s Scott Karlins and Dan Chung.

NAB 2010 – Redrockmicro Remote Follow focus with Iphone demonstration from Dan Chung on Vimeo.