2010 Retrospective – Articles You Should Have Read Pt 2

If we gave out a product of the year award here at PCN, it would have probably gone to Zeiss for their CP.2 lenses so this next list is a round up of Zeiss articles and videos that you might have missed and one you probably didn’t.

Zeiss Unveils New DSLR Cine Lens
Way back in February while I was consulting for HDExpo/Creatasphere, Richard Schleuning leaked out some pre-announcement info about their new CP.2 lenses and then talked about them at the DSLR meetup breakfast I was hosting the next day here in LA.

In response to the high level of interest in using DSLR’s for filmmaking, Carl Zeiss has modified its Compact Prime lenses for use with EF-mount cameras. These new lenses feature a bayonet mount for a direct fit to the EF-mount and do not require any modification of the camera or use of intermediate optics. Since the optics are based on the awarding winning ZEISS SLR lenses, they cover a full 24×36 image format without vignetting. In addition, the lenses feature an interchangeable mount system that can be changed to a PL mount. at any point in the future

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Tilt Transformer Micro Four Thirds Adapter for Nikon Lenses

Check out this adapter from Lensbaby that turns any Nikon lens into a tilt/shit lens on a Micro Four Thirds system like the Olympus PEN cameras or the Panasonic GH2. It will also work with the Sony NEX video and still cameras. … Continue Reading

Nat Geo shooter Ben Horton compares Canon glass to Zeiss glass.

A few months back I was on the verge of selling all of my Canon equipment. I was going to switch to Nikon because I found that all my pictures were coming out soft when I saw the images at a 1/1 ratio on my 5D Mark II. There was also chromatic aberration in the high contrast areas, and as a professional photographer looking to get the best images possible this frustrated me to no end.

I did some research and found that though both companies get government contracts which enables them to spend a lot of money on research and development, Canon mostly focussed on telescopes and the internal components like the sensors that capture the image, while Nikon focussed more on microscopes and optics. I tried Nikon, and I loved the lenses. Wouldn’t you know it though, I just didn’t like the Nikon bodies. That Nikon doesn’t have a HDDSLR that can compare to the Canon 5D Mark II made switching over impossible for me.
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Canon EOS 60D Reaction Round-Up

So Canon has a new baby, as Michael reported earlier. What’s the reaction been like so far?

Charlie Sorrel at Wired News isn’t very impressed:

“Those looking to upgrade from their 50D should look elsewhere, perhaps to the 7D, as this new camera is more for consumers than enthusiastic amateurs. The magnesium body of the 50D is now plastic, and the 60D uses SD-cards instead of Compact Flash. It also gets a slew of gimmicky image processing features … and the obligatory video capabilities. In fact, video seems to be what this camera was made for … It’s almost like the Canon engineers just picked through a shelf of existing parts and snapped them together like Lego, producing what seems like a pretty sweet-looking camera.”

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Richard Schleuning Talks About Zeiss CP.2 Lenses

Check out this video of my friend Rich Schleuning being interviewed at the ProFusion Video Expo in the frozen wastelands up north Canada. Zeiss makes some great lenses and the CP.2′s are groundbreaking with interchangeable mounts. After my experience interviewing with the iPhone at NAB 2010, far be it from me to criticize the quality of an interview but what’s up with the sound levels dropping as the camera moves away? Did the interviewer forget to turn on his hand held mic and the camera mic was used as a fallback? Im’ just say’in.
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Zeiss CP.2 HDSLR Cinema Lens in the Wild

Snehal Patel got his hands on a juicy set of Zeiss CP.2 lenses and wrote up his first impressions:

The lenses worked beautifully. They covered the full frame of the 5D sensor and I could easily swap out from a 21mm wide to an 85mm for close-ups without having to adjust my rig at all.

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