Newsshooter at Interbee 2013: Kowa Micro 4/3 lenses cine lenses from Dan Chung on Vimeo.
Kowa announced a couple of new Micro Four Thirds Cine lenses. The optical design is based on their current industrial lenses. What changes is the lens body (focus ring, mount and so on). As far a s I could see from the video on top there will be five new lenses:
8.5mm T/3.0
12mm T/1.9
16mm T/1.6
25mm T/1.9
50mm T/2.1
No price and release info were given yet.
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51 Responses
Great news. Fills out the cine capabilities. I’m hoping somebody steps up and offers a nice 8mm tilt/shift for m43 to replace my Canon 17 T/S…
Finally some wide primes. What sort of price are these likely to go for?
Yes, excellent!
Ah, but wait for the tears to flow because they’re most likely manual focus.
…”they’re most likely manual focus.”
? No they naturally are NOT manual focus.
:-/ I ment to say the opposite. They naturally ARE manual.
Why would you need autofocus for cine applications?
He’s the Nokton guy ’round these parts, he’s probably making fun of the kids who can’t handle manual focus lenses.
Damn straight. 😉
There so many AF reliant folks around these here parts that spend SO much time polishing their knobs, you’d think that MF would be a snap for them. 😉
🙂
The 8.5mm will probably sell well at least to video users if it has good IQ and is sanely priced.
Perhaps still shooters will wait for an AF smaller prime (not even announced or rumored) or the incomming oly high quality UWA zoom (most likely 2015?).
I hope this F=2.8 8.5mm gets good reviews and sales, so at some point oly or pany will figure there’s a need for a prime wider than 12mm.
for starters, its an industrial lens so that is expected
I’ll take one for my birthday. 🙂
these are modified industrial cctv lenses. maybe 25-30 bucks a piece. after cine mod maybe $250-300 a piece
Go and do some research on Kowa C-mount lenses, I know I have and you’ll quickly find these are not cheap ebay toy lenses.
Yeah, they make lenses for precision industrial applications.
On the consumer side, they make spotting scopes and binoculars. The scopes run $1400 – $2500 on Amazon and the binoculars $100 – $600.
Which is good when you consider Rokinon branded binoculars start at $11. 🙂
If it’s the same Kowa that made MF film cameras this sounds interesting. That said how good are these if they are CCTV converts?
usually cctv division is not the same as photographic division. that is good news as it will be dirt cheap japanese lenses. they also mentioned in the interview they want to offer it for even cheaper so im looking forward to the cheap cinema set
I think that there’s a distinction between CCTV lenses, which are often of simple design and low quality, and industrial video lenses which are sometimes used for machine vision and other demanding tasks. The latter are sometimes sophisticated lenses.
I’m not a videographer but since output video resolutions are fairly small compared to what camera can truly resolve, isn’t the issue of lens quality a bit overrated in this case? I mean, as long as the lens doesn’t cause too much chromatic distortion or flaring it should still leave plenty resolution for post process and final downsampling. Or am I wrong in my assumptions?
I think you’re mostly right. In fact some videographers complain that some lenses are TOO sharp which can exacerbate antialiasing problems. Others may fancy “interesting” bokeh, which is generally viewed as bad bokeh for stills. And sometimes flare can be desirable. Personally, one thing I would stay away from is heavy vignetting.
Did any body notice those Japanese company misspell their company name at 00:38? It says Kowa Canpany, Ltd. on the front side of the lens. Impressive!
I had to check spelling constantly while I wrote this.
that same 0:38 frame shows the lens has no coating in front of the lens meaning it would flare like mad when used in an outdoor setting
Holy cow! What are they thinking in year 2013?
I like flare! 🙂
I might just buy it for the effect alone…
I highly doubt they would release the lenses without coating. I would rather assume that these are prototypes/mockups used solely for demonstration.
JJ Abrams written all over it.
Kowa bought Canon and Panasonic. Hence the name Kowa CanPany. Read more here: http://www.canon.com/news/2013/nov16b.html
The focus ring gearing looks a little odd. Wonder if that’s going to be a problem with some follow focus systems?
That’s just a rubber grip, no gears on these (yet).
the grip seems to be a reference for micro4/3, at least it made me think about the logo
same impression here 🙂
Welcome to the family, Kowa! Another venerable name added to the line-up.
Hmm, I searched for Kowa and micro four thirds to see if I could find more info. I found that in 2010 they announced they were going to be producing some higher end MFT telephoto lenses.
Let’s hope this announcement bears more fruit….
http://www.kowaproducts.com/kowa-telephoto-lens/KowaTelephotoLensSpottingscope/
Kowa does currently make industrial lenses for 4/3 and even larger sensors. They aren’t sold at the consumer level though. These appear to be those lenses modified for photography. Presumably that will mean all new housing and coating so they can be used outdoors.
If you think about SLR Cine lenses, I imagines that they are trying to position themselves in the same price range.
This is very interesting.
From Canon giving a eff for the videographers that they captivates with the 5DMKIII to Panasonic creating a niche with the GH line. Then comes Black Magic, out of nowhere, doing something that wasn’t even imaginable. RAW for 3K and now RAW for 1k! m4/3 starts to get more attention as a system.
Lomo launched 3 lenses for m4/3 and now a new company is seeing an opportunity to make lenses for m4/3.
this shows the system’s maturity I guess.
If I’m interpreting the markings on the body correctly, the 8.5mm cine has a focusing distance of 10 centimeters? I hope that’s the case as I’ve been looking for a wide-angle macro. (The 12mm SLR Magic w/ 15cm focusing distance is alright, but…)
An 8.5mm! Fantastic! Finally!
Kowa makes spotting scopes in the same class as Leica, Zeiss and Swarovski, so they are a high end optic company.
Shame on me as I’ve never heard of Kowa, but this is a great news. More quality lenses for m43.
Excellent news. I wonder what the Kowa “look” is going to be like. I fancy the SLR Magic, Voigtlander and Kowa lines will each have their own looks, so we can pick the ones to suit a project, alongside the more traditional Leica M and Zeiss ZM looks.
I think they also mentioned a 35mm in the video. The European Kowa website lists exactly these six focal lengths as industrial C-mount lenses for 4/3 sensors:
http://www.kowa.eu/lenses/en/products.php?calc_lenses=4194304#result
Although there, they are listed with an aperture of F2.2 for the 8.5mm and F2.0 for all the others.
Oh wait, the F2.2 on the website (http://www.kowa.eu/lenses/en/LM8XC.30107.php) must be a typo, the spec sheet PDF says F2.8.
The videographer for this piece should be fired.
hard to watch with everything blown out.
Interesting line of lenses, though.
Sorry for my ignorance, but what would be the main differences between a cine and a normal photo lens?, also does it means that the quality of still photography will be not suited for the lens, and only will perform at its best in Video?
Thank you guys
Stepless aperture comes to mind. Also, no need for autofocus and perhaps less stringent requirements for resolution since the output is ultimately downsampled do 1080p or whatever. But I might be wrong.
Just a few things:
Need to be build extremely sturdy and reliable to survive in harsh conditions.
Long and smooth focus throw for precision focussing.
No F-stop but T-stop measuring and markings.
Precise and readable marking for distance and aperture.
Should have the same diameters and positioning of focussing mechanics for seamless and fast change of lenses without having to re-adjust rigging (and the leading lady gets the cramps for waiting meanwhile).
Should not extend front when focussing.
Should not “breath” when focussing.
Need to have nearly same optical characteristics (glass, coating, aperture blades) in the “family” of lenses.
Meaning: A cine lens needs you to know very much what you want to do and why. It does not help you other than providing a maximum optical quality and integration into the workflow on a set.
…an before I forget…..NO AUTOFOCUS!!!
Guess it all comes down to how good is the glass, the color rendition, contrast, chromatic aberration etc.
They look nice in theory. I have had KOWA wide angle adapters in the past and they were not too wonderful
i guess we will see in a year.
Anxious to check out the Schneiders if they ever actually appear.
Another release of cheap, quote-unquote Cine lenses with no T-stop witness marks beyond full stops.
Sigh…
The 8.5mm is great news. Can’t wait. Don’t know why any of the other manufacturers hasn’t come up with a wide angle prime.
They have a great 350mm/500mm/850mm Prominar telephoto set-up, which perfectly fits the OM-D.