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Does anyone know if there is any technical difficult in producing them in a large scale? (besides the fact that maybe the market is not so big)

devindotcom 13y ago
If you read up on the Barry Lyndon lenses, you'll find they were customized quite a bit and actually were in danger of crashing through the film plane, so I don't think they would want to make more of these. As for <F/1 lenses in general, you can manufacture them but the precision required and the quality of glass make it extremely expensive. Cinema primes of that quality can cost tens of thousands of dollars if they are for sale at all.
reeses 13y ago
Most lenses such as this are rented for a number of reasons. For example, there's little need for ownership before and after a film is shot, so it's just an expense. The other is that a lens such as this will be awkward to use on a day-to-day basis. It's specialized and you wouldn't use it for anything except staged and planned photography. You'd have to stop way down (which you would have the flexibility to do) to get a manageable depth of field, but then you'd struggle with artifacts from the iris unless it had a costly number of leaves/blades. There are 'inexpensive' (~$1k) lenses that come close. I think Voigtländer and Zeiss have a couple options for f/0.95 or /1.0 in 50mm. I don't have personal experience with them (I've only rented the Leica f/0.95 50mm noctilux) but they're amazing when you want to take photos in a dark place. I'm not sure about SLR and PL-mount lenses, though. The Canon EF mount is very popular in digital filmmaking, so you might find a really wide aperture there. Zeiss Master Series has a T-stop of 1.3, but I don't know the apertures for calculating DOF. (I'm going to guess f/0.95 or f/1.1.) If you're just after better low light performance, sensors are getting better all the time and are a much less expensive variable to tweak. I'd probably grab a decent f/1.4 or even f/1.8 and then look for the best low-noise sensor I could afford. $2k of sensor would buy you $10k of lens.

devindotcom 13y ago

If you read up on the Barry Lyndon lenses, you'll find they were customized quite a bit and actually were in danger of crashing through the film plane, so I don't think they would want to make more of these. As for <F/1 lenses in general, you can manufacture them but the precision required and the quality of glass make it extremely expensive. Cinema primes of that quality can cost tens of thousands of dollars if they are for sale at all.

reeses 13y ago

Most lenses such as this are rented for a number of reasons. For example, there's little need for ownership before and after a film is shot, so it's just an expense. The other is that a lens such as this will be awkward to use on a day-to-day basis. It's specialized and you wouldn't use it for anything except staged and planned photography. You'd have to stop way down (which you would have the flexibility to do) to get a manageable depth of field, but then you'd struggle with artifacts from the iris unless it had a costly number of leaves/blades. There are 'inexpensive' (~$1k) lenses that come close. I think Voigtländer and Zeiss have a couple options for f/0.95 or /1.0 in 50mm. I don't have personal experience with them (I've only rented the Leica f/0.95 50mm noctilux) but they're amazing when you want to take photos in a dark place. I'm not sure about SLR and PL-mount lenses, though. The Canon EF mount is very popular in digital filmmaking, so you might find a really wide aperture there. Zeiss Master Series has a T-stop of 1.3, but I don't know the apertures for calculating DOF. (I'm going to guess f/0.95 or f/1.1.) If you're just after better low light performance, sensors are getting better all the time and are a much less expensive variable to tweak. I'd probably grab a decent f/1.4 or even f/1.8 and then look for the best low-noise sensor I could afford. $2k of sensor would buy you $10k of lens.