OBERKOCHEN, Germany—Zeiss has announced the launch of CinCraft LensCore, a novel solution for creating physically based cinematic lens looks for visual effects and animation.

Built on the Virtual Lens Technology introduced at FMX in 2025, this new Nuke plugin brings decades of Zeiss optical expertise into post-production, bridging the gap between on-set lens choices and the VFX pipeline.

With CinCraft LensCore, Zeiss offers compositing artists a toolset dedicated to achieving cinema-grade lens looks grounded in the characteristics and physics of real lenses. At its core is a unique GPU-accelerated, ray-traced rendering engine for The Foundry Nuke that simulates authentic lens behavior across every pixel and every frame, while far exceeding the capabilities of available digital lens effects.

“With CinCraft LensCore, Zeiss brings the effects of real-world optics to a 2D compositing environment,” explains Egor Nikitin, head of digital cinematography at Zeiss. “LensCore speaks the same language as the lenses on set, from the way light falls off at the edges of the frame to the nuance of out-of-focus highlights. That fidelity is made possible by Zeiss’ history and deep understanding of optical science.”

CinCraft LensCore combines accuracy with efficiency. With one click, a complete digital lens look can be applied to a shot, with realistic bokeh, defocus, distortion, vignetting, and other optical effects characteristic of a specific physical lens. Through the digital lens shelf, artists can instantly load lens profiles of a real cinema lens or of one their own custom presets and compare looks in seconds. This fluidly replaces time-consuming manual setups with repeatable, production-ready workflows to easily maintain consistency across sequences and teams.

Beyond replicating existing optics, LensCore also enables artists to generate entirely new, never-before-seen lenses that still behave with the physics of authentic glass. Artists can start from physically accurate Zeiss or custom lens profiles and manually adjust every key lens characteristic, pushing the look as far as the project vision requires, while remaining grounded in believable optical performance.

Zeiss stressed that every feature is driven by real optical parameters—focus, T-stop, focal length, and focus distance—keeping lens behavior physically coherent across the full range of adjustments. A built-in inpaint feature intelligently fills occluded areas behind defocused objects, reducing the need for complex 3D setups and speeding up compositing workflows.

“As a former VFX supervisor, I know firsthand how much time gets spent trying to match a specific lens look in post, even when it was properly documented during the shoot,” adds Joern Grosshans, product manager digital cinematography at Zeiss. “LensCore addresses that need at the source. This advance offers artists a virtual shelf of lenses with accurate, predictable behavior, accessible the same way a DoP pulls a lens from a rental house–to be implemented with just a click. That kind of workflow clarity is a gamechanger.”

CinCraft LensCore is being demonstrated at FMX 2026 in Stuttgart, Germany, by Joern Grosshans, Florian Hofmann, and Egor Nikitin from Zeiss on Tuesday, May 5, at 11:15 AM. Attendees can also experience a full demo at the Zeiss booth 2.1 in the FMX Marketplace.

Zeiss CinCraft LensCore will be available worldwide through the CinCraft webshop beginning June 1, 2026, with multiple licenses available.

For more information visit: zeiss.com/lenscore.

OKERKOCHEN, Germany—Zeiss has unveiled the Aatma set of nine high-end full-frame T1.5 cinema primes that combine the benefits of modern optical design with the nostalgic image characteristics that popular today.

Nine Aatma primes make up the set, including 18mm, 25mm, 35mm, 40mm, 50mm, 65mm, 85mm, 100mm and 135mm lenses. The lens set draws inspiration from well-regarded 20^th century Zeiss lenses, combining an emotion-driven look with the mechanical reliability, data integration and workflow compatibility required for today’s productions.

“With Aatma, we wanted to give cinematographers an expressive and characterful choice within the Zeiss offering,” said Jeanfre Fachon, senior product manager of Cinema at Zeiss. “Over the years, we have come to acknowledge how much some of our legacy lens lines are still appreciated. But instead of simply remaking them, we looked at their most appealing characteristics and drew inspiration to incorporate into a new optical design.”

The word "Aatma" is derived from Sanskrit, meaning innermost essence, self or soul. Aatma lenses’ character recalls classic Zeiss optics, offering softly painted skin texture with reduced contrast, smooth and vibrant focus transitions between planes and a rich bokeh with a subtle soap bubble effect.

This carefully created aesthetic allows cinematographers to achieve a nostalgic yet refined look that supports storytelling without compromising control and repeatability.

The lenses produce an organic, emotionally resonant image while remaining suitable for a wide range of cinematic applications. Their rendering enhances texture and atmosphere, enabling filmmakers to infuse personal style into each frame while retaining the precision required for contemporary productions.

They retain the form factor, size, weight and operability of the company’s current premium cine lenses. "Extensive positive feedback on ergonomics meant there was no need to reinvent the wheel—only to adapt what is already known and trusted to work seamlessly with Aatma’s optical design," said Fachon.

Like all modern high-end Zeiss cinema lenses, Aatma offers Zeiss eXtended Data (XD) technology and is fully integrated into the Zeiss CinCraft ecosystem, supporting efficient visual effects, camera tracking and virtual production workflows.

The lenses are available individually or as a complete set. Customers may begin placing orders for the lenses. Delivery is expected to begin in June from authorized Zeiss Cinema dealers.

Zeiss has posted a YouTube video to show the capabilities of the lenses in action.

More information is available on the company’s website.

Zeiss Group said it has made a significant update to its Zeiss CinCraft Scenario camera tracking system. With the latest software release, 2.1, the solution now allows users to manually calibrate lenses when no prefilled template is available. This opens the possibility to work with any spherical lens.

“With this software update, we are greatly increasing the flexibility in lens choice and compatibility with virtual production stages and broadcast applications,” said Christophe Casenave, head of business unit, cinematography at Zeiss.

In announcing the upgrade, Zeiss said that the CinCraft Scenario calibration process is guided and designed to be easy to conduct.

Users can now initiate a calibration by inserting lens details (e.g. engraved barrel marks like focus, iris and zoom) into the CinCraft Scenario Software and performing an initial calibration using a chart. They can then adjust and fine-tune the calibration until satisfactory results are achieved. The calibration steps for spherical lenses are designed to be straightforward and easy to deploy while still delivering excellent results.

“This update allows CinCraft Scenario users to create a lens template from scratch with ease, enabling tracking with any third-party lenses,” Casenave said.

With the latest software release, users can also manually enter measurements for the CamBar to main camera offset instead of relying on the automated Offset Assistant.

“This offers a faster method to update the offset without needing the chart method, which can sometimes be restrictive on set," Tom Evans, product manager for Zeiss CinCraft, said. Users can quickly input manual measurements without temporarily switching to a wider lens and can store commonly used offsets, making it easy to apply these values when switching between known camera setups.

Moreover, CinCraft Scenario 2.1 now automatically detects the clip name on ARRI and Sony cameras and stores this alongside the tracking data, simplifying the process of matching the correct take in Export. For cameras that don’t provide a clip name automatically, users can manually input it during recording.

The Zeiss CinCraft Scenario system also features an enhanced Export 2.0 update.

“With Export 2.0 we are increasing comfort and value in use of tracking data for post-production,” Evans said. The new Undistortion ST Maps can be used to undistort camera plates, eliminating the need for shooting lens grids during camera prep. When paired with the matching distortion maps from Export, this allows for easy reapplication of lens distortion in the final stages of compositing.

Additionally, the Export Point Cloud provides VFX artists with data detailing camera position during production. The point cloud contains all the features that were used for tracking and will help visualize the space around the camera, which makes aligning the camera in post-production much easier. The point cloud will be provided in two formats: PTS for Unreal Engine and FBX for Nuke.

The new release is available for all users starting Nov. 7. Several online live demo sessions with product specialists going through the calibration process will be held in the weeks to come.

The full release notes for CinCraft Scenario 2.1 can be found at: zeiss.ly/scenario2-1.

CinCraft Export 2.0 can be downloaded here: https://zeiss.ly/export-download.

OBERKOCHEN, Germany—Zeiss has acquired U.K.-based camera tracking specialist Ncam Technologies, expanding its technology portfolio for the cinema, broadcast and visual effects industries. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Ncam’s hybrid camera tracking technology enables spatial tracking of indoor and outdoor cameras through the use of different tracking methods. Virtual production, live compositing and many postproduction processes rely on tracking data.

The Ncam technology complements Zeiss’ cinema products, which include Supreme Prime and Supreme Prime Radiance, Cinema Zoom and CP.3 lenses in addition to lens-data-related services in the CinCraft ecosystem. The combined portfolio of the companies is aimed at delivering easy-to-use tracking and VFX solutions for professional production work, the company said.

“We are happy to be combining Ncam’s unique tracking technology with Zeiss’ longstanding expertise in cinema lenses, lens data and the cinema market,” said Christophe Casenave, who is responsible for the Zeiss cine portfolio. “This enables us to think beyond current camera tracking capabilities to offer innovative solutions, especially for visual effects, virtual production and other applications."

Zeiss plans to ensure all new features and improvements brought to the technology will also benefit existing Ncam users. The company also will offer a compelling upgrade program. The first product announcement related to the deal is expected this summer, ZEISS said.

“The team is excited to be working together with our new colleagues at Zeiss on the next step in camera tracking technology and making it available to more users than ever before,” said Bruce Michoud, head of R&D at Ncam.

Founded in 2012, Ncam has locations in Los Angeles and London. 

More information is available from Zeiss via email. 

SEATTLE—There’s a rule of thumb in video image capture that the finished picture will only be as good as the weakest part of the signal path. HDR (High Dynamic Range) is no exception.

“The great news is that the camera manufacturers have come a long ways in terms of how many stops of lights they can record,” said Stosh Durbacz, national sales manager at FUJIFILM Optical Device Division. “So we, the lens folks, have had to keep pace with that.”

Although HDR is a function of the processor inside the camera, the lens definitely plays a part, according to John Stoner, senior product specialist for Canon. “The light that passes through to the processer first passes through the lens, so if that light’s not clean, you’re never going to get a good HDR image,” he said.

Art Adams, cinema lens specialist at ARRI, said that HDR makes everything in a lens more pronounced. “That includes chromatic aberration, flare, softness at the edges, a lot of things that can be really distracting and can also impact the HDR image significantly.”

Secret Sauce
One critical component of a lens is the glass  optics within it. As light passes through each glass element, it creates reflections, which appear more pronounced in HDR. One way lensmakers deal with these reflections is with antireflective coatings.

“One of the biggest deciding factors is the antireflective coating that’s on the lenses,” said Snehal Patel, Head of Cinema Sales, Americas, Carl Zeiss SBE. “The higher quality antireflective coating, the higher performing antireflective coating you have on your lenses, the more exposure range you’re going to see in the lens, even when it’s wide open.”

FUJIFILM’s Durbacz noted: “Coatings are huge—they’re the secret sauce of any lens. They minimize the reflection of light. Every time light passes through a piece of glass, it comes in and then goes out, and there’s light that if reflected. So what we want to do is minimize that. These modern lenses can be 15-25-30 individual pieces of glass, all moving in unison.”

He also pointed out that in addition to reflections from the glass elements in a lens, there are other components that can create reflections. “The way the internal barrels are constructed, there’s baffling built in. It’s very small machining of those internal surfaces that will deaden any stray light that hits them.”

Another thing that’s improved is the black matte paint that’s used inside of the lens, according to ZEISS’ Patel. “Wherever you have glass elements inside the lens, you usually coat the edges with a matte black finish,” he said. “And any metal inside the lens that might be visible in the interior optics, you also coat that with matte black finish.“

“We have a design we call ‘flocking,’” said Canon’s Stoner, “which are mechanical ridges inside the barrel to eliminate that reflection of light before it gets to the camera sensor.”

Another lens error that becomes more pronounced when shooting in HDR is center to edge roll-off. FUJIFILM’s Durbacz pointed out: “Using the coatings and the grinding and polishing of the glass, we want to make sure that from the center of the lens—from the sweet spot out to the corners—that we’re providing flat illumination; we don’t have perceptible roll-off to the camera, from the center to the corner.”

ARRI makes both cameras and lenses for HDR. “Because we now have a camera that captures more dynamic range than anything else out there, the Alexa 35, we needed a set of lenses that would work with it,” said ARRI’s Adams. “We went back and redesigned our PL mount for this new camera. We realized that the previous design still had enough stray light issues that in HDR, with the new camera, you could start compromising your blacks, you could see them turn gray.”

To address HDR in broadcast production, Canon and Sony collaborated on ALAC (Automatic Chromatic Aberration Correction), a function that allows  automatic feedback between the lens and the camera, according to Stoner. “The lens tells the camera ‘I’m at this focal length and this iris position,’ and then the camera compensates for chromatic aberration, and removes them from the image before they get to the physical side.”

Difficult Compromise
Lensmakers pointed out that the degree of difficulty goes up when it comes to perfecting a zoom lens for HDR production.

“A zoom lens has a lot more glass in it,” said FUJIFILM’s Durbacz. “We’ve got moving groups, and we’ve got to maintain focus at all these different focal lengths. If you’re focused out to 25 feet, and you zoom the lens, there’s a lot going on. And there are additional groups of glass within the lens that the light has to transmit through.” 

ARRI’s Adams pointed to compromises that need to be taken. “Our zooms are more corrected for chromatic aberration, and we allow a little bit of distortion,” he said. “It’s a balancing act, they interact with each other. In a prime lens you can correct for both chromatic aberration and distortion because you’re only concentrating on one focal length. In a zoom, where you have a large range of focal lengths, you really have to go after one or the other or the lens gets very big and very, very expensive.

“So we opt to go toward correcting for chromatic aberration, because we think a little bit of distortion isn’t going to be as noticeable in HDR as chromatic aberration is. So our zoom lenses are very corrected for chromatic aberration, but there will be a little bit of distortion.”

While lensmakers go to great effort and expense to remove lens errors that have become noticeable in HDR, they’re aware that many cinematographers want the lenses to provide some character in addition to scientific perfection.

“What we’ve tried to do is to come up with a family of lenses, our Signature lenses, that work with HDR,” said Adams. “We try to maintain the most dynamic range possible, while eliminating the disturbing things that HDR doesn’t like, like chromatic aberration, and still make lenses that have character.”

ZEISS offers two different HDR- ready lens families: Supreme Prime and Supreme Prime Radiant. “The Supreme Primes are a cleaner set of lenses,” said Patel. “They have a wonderful cinematic look to them, they’re basically the successor to our Master Primes. They have both the 35 and full-frame coverage. And there’s a range of 14 focal lengths, from 15mm to 200mm. And then the Supreme Prime Radiant is a modified version of the Supreme Primes that add blue flare characteristics by manipulating anti-flare reflective coatings.”

“Now if we’re looking at real old lenses,” said Durbacz, “they still mount on these modern cameras, which is fantastic. But sometimes you start to see corner shading, or illumination roll-off to the corner. Those lenses were designed at a time when cameras didn’t see that kind of latitude, so you didn’t have to worry about a roll-off from the center out to the corner.”

Patel pointed out that “some of the things that they loved about the lenses, like maybe the flare, or the look of it, there are some qualities that maybe they didn’t notice before in some lenses that they notice now in HDR. That would be the only danger, that there might be something that they didn’t expect. They’re using a lens where they got a certain look before, but looking at it in HDR, they go ‘wow, the flares in there are very prominent, you can really see that.’

“Of course you can go back to color correction and maybe level out the blue tones and what not, to reduce the contrast level,” he added. “But it might just be baked into the image, and you won’t be able to change it as much as you want. That’s why I always say to test. You might like what you get; you might not. You certainly can get a more scientifically accurate image now, but it may not be the correct image for the production.”

Lensmakers also recommend monitoring in HDR during production itself, even if the first release will not be in HDR.

Adams warned: “Movies and TV shows especially, are going to have a long lifespan now, with streaming libraries, and I don’t think people are aware of what’s going to happen when those products are remastered for different levels of HDR, or just when they’re graded in HDR while the DP has been watching Rec 709 on the set. I think [HDR monitoring] is going to become desirable as people see the artifacts that creep in that they aren’t able to see. 

“It’s not exactly like shooting film, where you didn’t see what it was going to look like until the dailies were out, but there are probably 30-40% of the image that you’re not seeing when you shoot in Rec 709, and then graded in HDR.”  l

ALEXANDRIA, Va.—Television and motion picture lens makers have found themselves challenged to develop and manufacture lenses that hold up to increasing resolutions of 4K and beyond. To achieve this, they’ve invented and applied new technologies that have been years in the making.

HIGH PRECISION OPTICS

Citing Thales Angenieux’s 70 years of building prime lenses, the company’s North American Sales Manager Nick Hayes said their new Optimo Primes “are the result of decades of proven experience and know-how in high precision optics and mechanics.”

The Optimo Prime series of 12 lenses provides full-frame 46.5mm image circle coverage with a consistent 1.8 T-stop except on the extremes. They are available as PL and LPL mount, and designed as smart lenses. The Optimo Prime series is very compact and lightweight, and they offer a common gear size and position for all lenses in the 12-lens set.

“Based on cinematographer feedback, Optimo Primes will provide both Cooke-I and LDS metadata,” said Hayes. Other user features include a replaceable iris blade unit, user-configurable for bokeh including anamorphic effect, a replaceable internal glass element to customize optical properties, a 320-degree focus rotation angle and the possibility to go beyond infinity and close focus.

He noted the full-frame Optimo Prime series is a perfect match with the Optimo Ultra 12X, Angenieux’s new long-range zoom.

BREAKING FREE

“ARRI’s new Signature Prime lenses take advantage of significant recent advancements in optical design, optical materials and coatings and optical machinery,” said Art Adams, ARRI cinema lens specialist. “But the real advancement has been a willingness to break free of our own legacy lens mount.”

The 30-year-old PL lens mount was developed by ARRI for 35mm film and had to make room between the lens and the camera for a spinning mirror, part of the viewfinder system. The new, larger LPL mount “should result in better, cheaper lens designs and greater lens portability between cameras.”

“The LPL lens mount is wider to allow for the free interchange of lenses between large format and S35 sensor cameras,” said Adams. “This additional width also allows for near-telecentric optical designs, where light strikes the sensor at an angle as close to perpendicular as possible. To do this, the lens mount must be as big as the sensor. Near-telecentricity eliminates a number of artifacts related to sensor design, such as increased chromatic and spherical aberration, edge shading and color-crossover effects. ARRI Signature Primes are the only near-telecentric multiformat lenses in the world, and as such we believe they will work optimally with any foreseeable future sensor designs.”

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

Canon has just introduced a top-of-the-line portable 4K UHD lens, the very wide angle zoom UHD XF. “4K’s tough in 2/3 inch,” said Larry Thorpe, Canon USA’s national marketing executive. “You’re dealing with 200 line pairs per millimeter, it’s really pushing things.”

“We’ve been pretty good at wide angle for some years now. But with this one we wanted to extend the telephoto, and that was responding to pleas of various people. A lot of people in sports, when they’re shooting in smaller venues—like a basketball court, wrestling, boxing, even tennis—they love the wide angle. But they also want more telephoto. This lens gives them both.”

Not all customers are ready for 4K today, but can appreciate 1080 60p and HDR performance. “One of the problems with HDR and wide color gamut is that even a small amount of chromatic aberration becomes more visible. So when you make an HDR wide color gamut lens, you’ve just got to grind down those aberrations even more. And to do that, we use a multigroup for the zoom. Typically, portable lenses have two zoom groups to perform the zooming operation. In this lens we use three groups, and that way we get more degrees of freedom to control the aberrations and elevate the resolution.”

THE ‘COOKE LOOK’

Cooke Optics pioneered a number of lens developments over its more than a century of lens design and manufacturing. In its current lenses, it is replicating what it calls the Cooke Look, described as warm and natural images on the screen.

“We noticed when digital cinematography came in, not to talk bad about digital, but some people think of it as a boring format,” said Les Zellan, Cooke chairman. “Cinematographers were desperate to find a way to put character and life into the digital, and one of the ways they did that was by using the old lenses.”

One Cooke lens in particular, the Speed Panchro lenses, looked promising to fill that bill, even though Cooke hadn’t made one in 55 years. “We thought ‘why don’t we bring them up to the modern world mechanically?’ A lot of those old glasses weren’t available anymore, so we had to substitute, using that old look as a target. We’ve added things like the linear iris and the Cooke focusing scale. But the actual look that comes out of the back of the lens is a dead ringer for the Speed Panchro.”

BRAND NEW DESIGN

Over the past couple of years, Fujifilm has replicated 15 of its HD lenses to 4K Ultra High Definition with HDR capabilities. Two new focal length 46-times zooms are the wide angle UA46x9.5 and the more telephoto UA46x13.5.

“They’re all digital, all new stabilization system,” said Gordon Tubbs, vice president at Fujifilm North America Corporation, Optical Device Division. “We didn’t just build a new 4K lens and put an existing drive unit in it. Literally the whole lens is a brand new design in both cases.” There are two specialized versions of each of the zooms. One eliminates stabilization for applications such as aerial photography where stabilization is already provided. The other provides motorized remote control of the 2x extender, which is necessary for robotic operations.

Tubbs explained the 4K lenses in Fujifilm’s lineup are only marginally more expensive than the HD models they replace. “During the transition from SD to HD we learned a lot about manufacturing and tight tolerances as we went from one technology to the next. And of course there are advancements in glass and coatings.” The company has developed its HTEBC process, High Transmittance Electronic Beam Coatings.

“And now we’re making the same steps into 8K.”

CLOSER TO HUMAN EYESIGHT

A year ago, Zeiss introduced the first of its Supreme Prime line of lenses, and is continuing to add focal lengths a step wider and a step more telephoto to the first lenses released. The Supremes can handle both full frame and Super 35. “It’s being used in both sets of formats,” said Snehal Patel, Zeiss director of cinema sales for the Americas. “It works with the latest crop of digital cameras, like the Alexa LS, RED Monstro, Sony Venus and the C700 FF from Canon.”

He noted, “The Supremes are priced between the cost of a Zeiss Ultra Prime and a Master Prime. So economically it makes a lot of sense, especially in the rental environment, where the lenses will be used for a very long time.

“You’re going to see more and more demand coming because the cameras are available and the full frame format is so interesting with the wider angle of view, which is closer to human eyesight. And also the fact that you get this smaller grain structure from this sensor size, because you’re using pixels that are about the same size as the Super 35 sensors, except that when projected those pixels look smaller on screen.”

LAS VEGAS—Zeiss has found a way to combine virtual reality and people's love for drones in a single application. As part of its first visit to CES, Zeiss’ VR One headset now features a new sUAS application that provides a first person view from a compatible system.

VR ONE

The sUAS application provides a view from the cockpit of a drone inside the VR One headset. The application is compatible with the DJI lineup, Parrot Bebop drone and the Microdrone 3.0. Apps are available on iTune or Google Play, depending on the drone used.

The VR One is a smartphone driven headset that features a custome trays that make it both iOS and Android compatible.

CES 2016 attendees can check it out for themselves at booth 26819 in South Hall 2.

NEW YORK—In my opinion, the two most important elements in the capturing of a digital image are the sensor and the lens. The glass out in front allows the light rays to fall on the sensor. It seems so logical— the better your lens, the higher quality your image.

Having shot images for 35 years, I have always tried to use the best lenses available. This has been even more critical now that we are shooting in higher resolutions, 4K and beyond. When the industry moved from standard definition to HD, the most important aspect seemed to be “check your focus.” As resolutions increase, so does the need to keep things in crystal clarity. With 4K being approximately twice as sharp as HD, that need becomes even more evident.

As our industry moves into 4K technology with gear from the likes of Blackmagic Design, Canon, and RED, do our lenses need to move beyond what we have been using with HD? Our Canon, Zeiss, and Fujinon lens are fast, versatile, and sharp, but can these same lenses truly bring out all of the detail in the 4K–6K image?

Bulgarian actress Gabriela Kostadinova works against a green screen in the DeSales University TV studio. The background will be a dusty attic, added in post.ARE THEY WORTH THE EXPENSE?
To test this theory, I recently tried four Cinema Series lenses using three 4K cameras (Canon EOS C500, Blackmagic Cinema, and AJA CION). There are several manufacturers (Canon, Zeiss, Schneider, Leica, etc.) available and our cameras came with two choices of lens mounts: EF or PL. The AJA CION has a PL mount and our other cameras were all EF.

The first three Cinema Series lens were all Canon Primes: CN-E 24mm, 50mm, and 85mm T1.5 EF mount lenses. These were just the lenses I used and are indicative of what other manufacturers offer. Some of the selling points for me were that all three lenses were the same front diameter, lens cap size, optical design, and filter size. The second element was the “T” stop, which was very fast. A T-stop measures the true amount of illumination falling on the sensor. These lenses had a 1.5 T-stop that needed to be adjusted manually, giving the shooter more control over the aperture. Most lenses do not allow you to manually adjust the aperture and with cameras like the CION, manual lenses must be used unless you purchase an optional device. The 11-blade diaphragm is stepless and allows greater control of precise settings.

One of the features I truly appreciate is the 300-degree rotation of the focus. Lenses usually allow you to make adjustments on the focus ring but even when infinity is reached, the barrel keeps turning. Cinema lenses stop at infinity and focus as close as one foot (with the 24mm, the other lenses need to be slightly farther away). The distance markings on the lens also allow a focus puller the option of seeing the distance measurement for more accurate focus points.

Lastly, the old adage that prime lenses are sharper because of fewer elements is still true, but I doubt the human eye could see those nuances. Cinema lenses are not cheap, usually costing in the five thousand dollar range or above. But does it make the image any better?

BEYOND SENSOR CAPABILITIES
Shooting consistently with the three primes in 4K, I believe the image looked incredible; it seemed as if I got a slightly sharper image because of the lens. The habit of magnifying the image, opening the T-stop, focusing on the talent’s eyes, measuring the distance to ensure the lens’s accuracy, and being able to follow focus more precisely were all positive factors for the lens. With each of the three primes, the follow focus attachment did not have to be adjusted for each lens (one setting works for all three), saving time in the process.

Dianna’s Cortorreal, a freshman enrolled in TV/Film studies at DeSales University, uses the Canon EOS 300 with a Canon Cinema Series 85mm Prime T1.5 lens to shoot a 1963 Studebaker Avanti. Switching to a PL mount, I mounted the Canon CN-E 14.5mm–60mm T2.6 zoom to my camera. The zoom obviously offers greater control without changing lenses, but it comes at a price—more than $40,000. The images still looked stellar, but I had a much heavier, wider and not as telephoto lens.

So the question still stands: are Cinema Series lens better and worth the investment? From a shooter’s point of view, I would say the answer is yes. You will not notice a night and day difference in the image quality, but my middle-aged eyes do see a slight difference.

The more important factor to me is how we get that image. The user has more control of the aperture allowing him or her to open the lens to permit more light onto the sensor. Having footage markings on the lens barrel and a precise start and stop makes focusing easier for the operator and focus puller. Probably the most critical feature of a Cinema Series lens is that you want the crisp, sharp focus at all times when rolling the focus. With professionals working on the camera crew, ask any assistant camera person why he or she prefers a Cinema lens. The answer would consistently be that precise lens markings make their job that much easier.

With focus being even more critical in the 4K realm, who doesn’t want the sharpest image to pull out all the detail from the sensor? You will still get great detail because of the sensor, but getting to that end result is much easier with a Cinema lens.

Try renting one for a shoot and see if it is an improvement over your other lenses. I am sure you’ll see the light.

Chuck Gloman is an Associate Professor and Chair of the TV/Film Department at DeSales University. He may be reachedchuck.gloman@desales.edu.