You're probably thinking of the Carl Zeiss 'Superspeed' lenses - a range
of primes made, I understand, at the request of director Stanley Kubrick
in the late 60s/early 70s. In fact they're sometimes referred to as the
'Kubrick lenses'.
Zeiss made them for both 35mm and 16mm formats though unfortunately I
don't have any more data.
The thing to remember when comparing the view through a motion picture
camera to a stills camera is that once the motion picture camera's
running, the operator is looking through the lens stopped down to the
working aperture, not wide open as we stills types see. If you ever get
the opportunity to look through a motion picture camera lens and tweak
the iris ring you'll see what I mean.
Kubrick obviously wanted to some very low-key lighting set-ups in his
films, in conjunction of course with his director of photography, who
often (depending on the production politics) has the option of 'calling'
the T-stop of his choice for a scene. So, the DoP can say "I'll shoot
this scene at T5.6 because that's where this particular lens performs
best" and the lighting department illuminate accordingly. A superspeed
lens would probably allow good lighting effects from a single candle.
I met a cameraman from Australia's '60 Minutes' program some years ago,
he was shooting 16mm reversal and his lens 'wardrobe' was a set of
superspeeds rather than the usual 10-120mm (or similar) zoom. As a
former cameraman, I can tell you that lining up and composing a shot
without the aid of a zoom lens is a great discipline (which I never had
occasion to learn, unfortunately!)
Steve
Steve
>Hi.
>
>Just a quick impression.
>
>Was poking around in the used equipment cases at my local camera shop.
>Looked at the Zuiko offerings. I'm an OM novice, and my exposure to
Zuiko
>lenses is quite limited. My budget keeps me in the f3.5 range; fast
lenses
>are out of my league. So, just for the heck of it, I asked to see the
>28mm/f2.0. The front element was goreous; reflective and oh-so
colorful. I
>plugged it into the nearest OM body and held the viewfinder to my
eye...
>
>Whoosh! My breath disappeared!
>
>Talk about gorgeous?! I'd never seen such a beautiful image snap into
focus
>on a groundglass. It was bright; it was sharp; it was vibrantly
colorful!
>It was all I could do to take the camera away from my eye!
>
>But what happens now? How do I go back to my humble stable of f3.5
Zuikos?
>Thankfully, I know the virtues of slower lenses, so I should be able
to
>maintain my relationships with my present lenses. But for those few
>minutes, gazing onto that focus screen, I was in heaven.
>
>It's interesting to think of super-speed motion picture camera lenses
whose
>speeds hover around f1.0. And that's "T" stops, not f stops!
>
>
>
>
>
>
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