IronGlass Brings Legendary Soviet Cinema Lenses to Mirrorless Cameras | Hacker News Reader

IronGlass Brings Legendary Soviet Cinema Lenses to Mirrorless Cameras

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32 pointsPaulHoule26 comments

These prices are insane. You can buy all (most?) of the lenses they’re recreating for a fraction of the price and adapt them to a mirrorless camera no problem. I bought a Helios 44-2 recently for $100 and adapted it to my camera for like $15.

There's a difference between adapting for mirrorless versus adapting for cinema. They're not just throwing on an adapter to change the distance to the focal plane, they're actually rehousing the lens. Usually that means adding a de-clicked aperture and reducing focus breathing. These are all primes, but cine lenses are usually parfocal as well.

To your point, none of those things are important if you're just a regular consumer and taking stills, but they're all really nice to have/important if you're working on a film.

> There's a difference between adapting for mirrorless versus adapting for cinema.

The article says they’re adapting to mirrorless cameras

> As reported by CineD, the new Air series of lenses is designed to cater to the growing number of filmmakers who are using compact, lightweight mirrorless bodies for high-end professional work.

> The IronGlass Air lenses move away from IronGlass’ standard PL-mount cinema design toward compact, mirrorless-friendly designs

It doesn’t matter what they’re being put on. I put cinema lenses on Red’s, DSLR’s (5DmkII/t3i back in the day), mirrorless (GH6/BMPCC4K), the works. “Cinema lens” indicates a build type, not what they can mount to. Like the declicked aperture the previous person mentioned.

For instance, Rokinon released a fantastic cinema lens line for consumer/prosumer cameras in the 2010’s, they were rehoused versions of their photo primes. They’re built entirely different.

Sure there's a difference, but when you can buy the base lens for $100 and 3D print your own cinema housing for $50, it becomes a lot more odious that IronGlass is charging what amounts to around $2100USD for a metal rehousing that is at most $50 worth of materials and a few hours work per lens.

The "Cinema" industry is notorious for gouging its customers, and this just yet another particularly egregious example of that gouging.

"The Helios 44-2 is a very popular Soviet-era lens among cinematographers" - yeah, not like there were any other Soviet lens available there. Legendary in this context means the only ones anyone there could get their hands on. I bought Zenit ET with those and can't say they were amazing compared to my Nikon or Sigma lens. Exotic factor is likely in the play here.

If it was just a simple matter of "what was available" these lenses would be an interesting footnote in Photography history. But that's not the case, people still buy them for their unique properties 50 years later and the fact a company exists to re-house them more than proves their legendary status in my mind.

The swirly effect is certainly unique, though I always considered it a bug as it's not even, some parts look oversharpened, some diffused. Like some weird algorithmic filter in Photoshop.

There is a phenomenon I observe with people being fascinated by russian/soviet things even when in reality the subject of interest is pure shit.

Being it either a low quality lenses in which people see a artistic quality of manufacturing defects or text from Dostoevsky which ruminates in extended length the inner thought process of a moronic character which some mistake for a mysterious russian soul.

I own Helios lenses with Zenit camera I inherited from my father which is of the sentimental value as it was a first significant purchase after my parents wedding, and most of my childhood photos are done with it, but even my dad will trade it for a good Nikon lenses without a second thought.

i find your dostoievski example amusing. notes from underground serves a functional purpose, not one of aesthetics.

What was so amazing about this company's soviet era camera lenses?

I googled it and all the pages were just this company saying "Yeah! We rehouse amazing soviet era lenses in modern lens bodies!" | Which is cool, but where's the "legendary" part of the story? Like, why would you want one as opposed to another lens?

Google "Helios 44-2 bokeh" and look for portraits with a blurry background. The "swirly" effect is the artsy element. Add the fact that these lenses were mass-manufactured back in the day and it means that you can get them pretty cheap.

Ahh. Now I see. That's a pretty cool lens effect.

Interesting. Those images make me a little disoriented. I am prone to visual-based motion sickness, so it's probably just me. But I do not really like the swirly effect one bit.

Some bizarre obsession with 'Soviet'. Did they invent optics, that was since forgotten ?

No, they disassembled German optics industry plants in 1945, moved them to the Soviet Union and started cranking out great cameras based on German designs. I've heard that some Soviet cameras had Leica labeled parts inside.

Stuff like that happened repeatedly: GAZ Chaika was a copy of Packard; SM-1 computer was a copy of PDP 11/34; Tu-144 looked just like Concorde, etc. etc.

Swan and b1.. which came 1st...

Chaika was not a copy of a Packard. (They certainly admired the Packard bodywork, but Soviet industry was in no way ready to clone a Packard sedan)

Tu-144 was not a copy of the Concorde. (Convergent evolution is not the same as copying a design!)

The Soviets did clone a lot of DEC gear but I don't think SM-1, specifically, was a DEC clone. (In this lastmost case, the Soviets were left cloning computer equipment because it was forbidden to export to COMECON states)

Sorry, SM-4 not SM-1, was a full emulation of 11/40, with UNIBUS, and all. There were DEC copyright strings latent in some system files. It was a pretty good copy, but quite unreliable, and the reason was quite pedestrian---the connectors! It was a good lesson on how the entire technology chain needs to be high quality for the final product to work well.

Another example I forgot: the first Soviet nuke was directly copied from the stolen Fat Man design. Of course later they did novel stuff, especially the fusion designs of Sacharov et al.

It is well known that KGB got hold of the Concorde blueprints, so yeah, not a direct copy but certainly a lot of influence in that design. Again. the details like engine performance made the difference: apparently Tu144 had to continuously use afterburners to stay supersonic. It was also quite unreliable---I've heard that towards its end of life it was just flying cargo and airmail.

The Concorde and the Tupolev both relied on afterburners, because they operated under similar design constraints -- the "western" jet engines in the Concorde were not that much better than what Soviet design bureaus could produce.

The Concorde was much smaller, and lacked one of the major innovations of the Tu-144 -- forward flap canards to improve handling on a larger jet.

Probably for the better. The Tupolev killed a lot of its passengers, and it was almost immediately withdrawn from service after the first few incidents. The Concorde, a simpler and smaller design, served for decades.

The Americans "hold my beer" and then later "you know what, fuck this". Classic example of bad choice, good choice. Overall the arguable made out the best with this. Boeing instead focus on 747 and commercial planes airlines actually wanted and damn near became a global monopoly.

Tu-144 was built because of concorde, but it wasnt' a copy. It was reimplementation of a shared idea. It's not like Tu-4 and B-29, which was a copy.

These Soviet lenses are copies and adaptations of classic optical formulas at the time, e.g. the Helios 44 is a Carl Zeiss' Biotar. But while Zeiss produced in limited numbers, these Soviet versions are abundant in the used market and therefore very cheap.

Due to this, these lenses developed a cult following, and even more now that some prominent cinematographers used in some high caliber productions (The Batman (2022), Dune (2021)).

Soviets did not have two things the West did. Concern for quality and market forces to direct development focus. This means Soviet stuff varies amazingly between specimen and can sometimes be over-engineered in particular ways. Soviet optics had a specific visual style, but everyone ditched them as soon as alternatives became available as hunting for the ones not made on a Monday was just too tedious.

Germany would be amazed to hear that they lacked concern for quality. As would the rest of the world, which continues to hold their engineering in esteem. Leica lenses >> anything the Soviets ever made.

Generally, Soviet-made = crap. Suggesting elsewise requires documentable proof.

Meyer Optik Görlitz is another company bringing back vintage lenses. They carry what in my opinion is the best of all vintage lenses, the Jena Biotar 1.5/75

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