Vintage Cinematography Lenses

CinemaTechnic | Vintage Cine Lenses

Vintage Cinematography Lens Resources

P+S_Evo_Kowa_100_474w — Kowa Cine Prominar Anamorphic 100mm rehoused by P+S Technik

Updated 11 July 2020

Introduction

I’ve created this page as a central point for all the information I provide on vintage cine lenses. There is a great deal of interest in this subject but information is very hard to come by. That’s about to change.

Headings in green link to pages with information about that specific lens. Headings in black are pages that have not been completed yet. Creating this resource is a huge task. Keep checking in as content gets uploaded.

If you have information about any of the lenses that don’t have pages created yet, and you want to share that information, please get in touch via email. Photos and original documentation are of patricidal interest. Credit will be given to all contributors.

To answer the question “what is a vintage cine lens” and to draw the line for inclusion in this section, or the modern lens section of this website I shall use the following reasoning:

Vintage lenses will be any cine lens from a defunct manufacturer, or a cine lens that is no longer supported by the manufacturer due to it’s age. So the newest lenses to enter the vintage section will be the Carl Zeiss High Speed / Super Speed series.

Any lens that is currently supported with spare parts from the manufacturer can be considered a modern lens. In general, most lenses where the first examples are over 30 years old are not supported by the manufacturers. Some manufacturers have even shorter time frames for ending support.

This section of the website will now be expanded to include vintage high quality still camera lenses, which are increasingly being used as cine lenses. Coverage will be limited to pre-autofocus, pre-digital, pre-globalization lenses. With a few exceptions, this means lenses made before 1990.

If you are a rental house or owner-operator renting vintage cine lenses, and need to keep your vintage lenses calibrated, visit our Richter Cine Collimator page for information about high quality and affordable collimator systems.

CinemaTechnic Vintage Cine Lens Resources:

Canon C-mount Primes (16mm)

Canon FD Primes (FF35 SLR)

Cinema Products Ultra-T (Super 16)

Century Precision (16mm)

Contax-Zeiss Primes (FF35 SLR)

Cooke Vintage Primes (S35mm ARRI Standard)

Kilfitt Primes (S35mm ARRI Standard)

Kinoptic 5.7mm f1.9 T2.0 Prime Lens in PL Mount — Kinoptik 5.7mm f1.9 T2.0 Prime Lens in PL Mount

Kinoptik Tegea and Achromat Primes (16 and 35mm Cine)

Kowa Cine Prominar Anamorphic Primes

Leitz Leica-R Primes (FF35 SLR)

Minolta Primes (FF35 SLR)

Nikon Nikkor C-mount Primes (16mm)

Nikon Nikkor Primes (FF35 SLR)

Olympus Primes (FF35 SLR)

Pentax Primes (FF35 SLR)

Schneider Cinegon and Cine-Xenon Primes (S35 ARRI Standard)

Technovision Primes (S35 BNCR)

Zeiss Planar 2/32 Standard Prime, without T* coating

Zeiss Standard Prime f2 / T2.1 (S35 ARRI Std., Bay., and PL)

Zeiss High Speed / Super Speed Primes f1.2 / T1.3 (S35 ARRI Bay and PL)

Spherical Zoom Lenses for FF35 Format

Angenieux FF35 SLR zooms

Spherical Zoom Lenses for 35mm Format

Angenieux 10:1 25-250mm T3.9 Zoom

Angenieux 10:1 25-250mm T3.7 HP Zoom

Angenieux 10:1 25-250mm T3.5 HR Zoom

Canon K-35 25-120 T2.8 Macro Zoom

Cooke 5:1 20-100 T3 Varotol Zoom

Cooke 10:1 25-250mm T4 Varotol Zoom

Vintage Anamorphic Primes for 35mm Format

Vintage Super 16mm format prime lenses (Arriflex Mount)

Zeiss Planar T* 1.2/50mm T1.3 Mark III for Super 16 format

Vintage Super 16mm format zoom lenses

Angenieux 11.5 – 138mm T2.3 HR 12x

Vintage 16mm format zoom lenses with partial Super 16 format coverage

Angenieux 10 – 120mm T2.0 HP 12x

Angenieux 12 – 120mm T2.1 HEC 10x

Vintage regular 16mm format prime lenses (c-mount)

Elgeet

Kern-Paillard (Bolex)

Kodak

Wollensak

Lenses for VistaVision (Full Frame 35mm) Format

Lenses for 65mm and Medium Format

Block diagram of cine lens showing aspherical surface on front of element #2

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2016-02-23 Last Update 2020-07-11