HD 2/3" Lens Tests
 

Just run off some tests on some "budget" HD lenses.
I have a Fujinon ZA17x7.6 and Fujinon HAs18x7.6. I tested them against my Fujinon HA22x7.8 (basically a standard, quality HD lens).
I have extracted some stills but unless you see them as bitmaps they don't mean much and the bmps are really big, so I may get around to posting them, but for now to summarise what I saw.
Sharpness was pretty close in all 3, the ZA was slightly softer than the others, while the expensive HA22 and much cheaper HAs18 were very similar, maybe with the tiniest edge to the HAs under a microscope.
Chromatic abberation (in this case purple fringing) was pretty shocking in all of them, so seems to be the way with HD lenses. But the expensive HA lens was reassuringly less bad than the others. The ZA and HAs lenses were about equal, and certainly slightly worse than the HA22, but in real world situations I don't think you'd really pick it out, I was looking at 400% crops. But having said that it is one of the big bugbears of HD lenses and the less bad lens you can get the better.
So far the testing (unscientific) that I've done has shown that expensive HD lenses are mostly a tiny bit better than decent SD ones, cheap HD ones are about the same as SD ones but with more CA. So is it worth getting an expensive (ie £10-15,000) HD lens rather than a "cheap" (ie £5,000) one? It's marginal, but if you can afford it of course go for the expensive one. But on the whole it seems like you can save yourself a whole lot of cash and just buy a really good SD lens (ie Canon J11x4.7, J20x8 etc.) Incidentally I was informed by a lens engineer that the HJ11 and J11 are identical except for one of the small elements at the back and that buying a replacement HD element and having it fitted woul cost about £2,000, so if you can find a bargain J11 for maybe £4,000 you can get it upgraded for a fraction of the cost of an HJ11.
Steve

Thanks for your testing Steve.

The problem I found is that a really good SD lens costs about as much as a "cheap" HD lens.

I just purchased a Canon KJ20x8.5 HD lens used for $5,000.

The only Canon SD lenses that had a 20x range were the J20x8 or the J21x7.8

Well I could not find a J20x8 and the 21x7.8 was $7,500.

I had purchased a J15x9.5 from Ebay for $99 and the difference from that lens to the KJ20x8.5 is night and day.

The J15x9 softened up over f2.8

I can open the KJ20x8.5 all the way and it stays quite sharp.

What camera are you using the KJ20 on? Haven't been able to get hold of one yet, but that seem to be the cheapest one out there and I would like to know how it performs.
I tend to think that for HD work any lens opened beyond about f2.8 is unwise as they all soften up (except maybe Digiprimes etc.)
Plenty of J16x8 etc about for reasonable prices, also Fujinon 15x8 was a very good SD lens and can be found very cheap, though not tried one on HD. I tested my Fuji 8.5x5.5 and it was sharper than the very expesnive Fujinon HD22x7.8.
The Fujinons I tested are still around the £6000 I think, which is still a fair amount, and if they were a lot better than SD lenses then OK, but they're not.
Steve

I am using an HPX-500

The 20x reach is important to me, so my options are limited.

To be honest, the image from this setup wide open is quite detailed and I would not have a problem opening all the way during an inteview to blur the background.

The J15x9.5 could have been off as it was $99 and an older lens.

The KJ20 does not have a 2x does it? So the reach of a J16 would be a lot more than the KJ20, BUT if you are worried about using a 2x I don't blame you! When HD first sprang up the idea of putting a 2x on any lens was blasphemy, and even zooms at all were frowned upon!
Steve

Plus the light loss of the extender... I love HAVING one but I try not to use it when I'm shooting a lens that has one.

PS. Great insight, Steve. Thanks for sharing.

Yes, the light loss of an extender led me to want a 20x lens.

Steve.. There is a Canon KJ20 on the PDW-700 that Sony are taking on their current roadshow events. Please promise me you'll try one before buying one as from what I've seen its not pretty. Open it up past f5.6 and it softens rapidly. The one on the road show camera is very soft at the edges, much more so on one side than the other. There is also some pretty bad barrel/mustache distortion. It could be that it has been bumped or it's just a bad example, but if they are all like that I may just be persuaded to go down the good SD lens route after all.

My SD lenses always had extenders but I always tried not to use them. On HD I really don't like behind the lens extenders. They soften the image and add a ton of CA. I do have an old but rather good Fujinon 1.8x 82mm adapter that I use if I need a long zoom. It is IMHO better than a rear extender.

Thanks for the warning Alister. Anyone got any thoughts on really good HD lenses they've used? I remember the first HD lens I ever used years back was a Canon HJ18x7.8 cine style and thought it was superb.
I know of a couple of s/h lenses including HJ21x7.8, HJ21x7.5 and HJ9x5.5, anyone got any experience of these, or other favourites?
Steve

HD lens recommendations
 

Anyone got any thoughts on really good HD lenses they've used? I remember the first HD lens I ever used years back was a Canon HJ18x7.8 cine style and thought it was superb, but it was a long time ago and I didn't really have anything to compare it to.
I know of a couple of s/h lenses including HJ21x7.8, HJ21x7.5 and HJ9x5.5, anyone got any experience of these, or other favourites?
Steve

Wow, you guys are experts with those lenses from the sounds of it. I am buying the hpx500 and am getting the Fujinon XA17x7.6BERM (Fujinon | XA17x7.6BERM 17x 2/3" | XA17x7.6BERM-M58B | B&H)
thrown in, the lens retails for 8000, is there a better option for that 8k budget for a lens?

Doubt you'd see much improvement without spending a lot of money. That's the problem, these "budget" lenses all seem to be pretty mediocre (at best) and are still hardly "cheap".
Steve

Canon KJ13x6
 

Anyone tried the Canon KJ13x6 (one of their hdgc lenses), be interested to hear any views.
Cheers,
Steve

Lens testing
 

How is my testing methodology? I shoot on PDW700, send them to FCP and view 100% and 400% crops. Presumably this should give me a fair idea of the performance of a lens, every bit as much as viewing on a big HD screen, or am I missing something?
Steve

More lens tests
 

More tests, PDW700.
Comments, will fill you in on what's what later.
Steve

So, the lenses. The "21" is a Canon HJ21x7.5 super duper, very expesnive HD lens - check out that chromatic abberation! "22" is a Fujinon HA22x7.8 HD lens, and "36" is an SD Fujinon A36x14.5 monster.
The most notable thing I see is the complete absence of CA on the SD lens, it's super clean. On the paper shot I'd say he HJ21 is the sharpest, with the HA22 and the SD lens only slightly behind. On the bird shot though I think the SD 36x is the best.
Will do more tests.
Steve

Further investigations, the Fujinon HA22x7.8 (my standard lens) is actually pretty good. The Canon HJ21x7.5 is very disappointing, less sharp than the Fuji by some way. The SD Fujinon A36x14.5 is also quite a bit softer, especially the wider open the aperture gets, to be expected I suppose. It also has less contrast.
Steve

Decent fairly "budget-priced" lens
 

Tested a Canon HJ17x7.6 the other day on the PDW700 and it looked pretty decent, about the same as my Fujinon HA22x7.8 (standard, decent benchmark lens). Both have the usual chromatic abberration, about the same amount, and both about the same sharpness.
The HJ17 is a proper, top-flight HD lens rather than one of thr "budget" lines and looks the part, and at "only" £8250 is probably the Best Buy HD lens out there I reckon (after long long investigations!)
May or may not buy one myself, but just thought I'd flag my findings in case anyone else is interested. However, that said, I know that Simon Wyndham has said that he didn't think much of the HJ17 when he tried it - was it the same lens Simon?
Steve

Yep, it was the same lens. It is passable, but certainly not compared to the expense. Now if it was the same price as the J17 when that was one of the main lenses in use (£7000) it would be a different matter. Although looking at the price you mentioned perhaps it has come down now.

Ideally I would like to get my hands on a 700 again so that I can try my SD J17 on it as a comparison.

Check DS Video, they've got it listed for £8250, Visual Impact said the same, just a bit difficult to get hold of apparently. As I say I tested it against the £15k Fujinon HA22 and they looked very very similar even at big blow-ups and with 2x and at different apertures, really not a lot in it. I'd kind of expect this as the optical formula is not being stretched too much at just 17x compared to 22x.
Steve

Simon, when you said it was passable, do you mean that like pretty much all of the other HD lenses on the market it's passable (ie fair bit of resolution but quite a bit of CA), or did you find it worse than say an HJ22, HJ11 or anything else you've tried?

Steve

My recent experience is that a Fujinon HA18X7.6, ZA17X7.6 and XA17X7.6 look the same. I had an HA18X7.6 that had more CA than I liked with my HDX900. Once I put it on my HPX2700 I found it unacceptable, even after having Fujinon modifying it for CAC. I then looked at a new HA18X7.6, 2)XA17X7.6, and a ZA17X7.6. They looked identical and better than my 18X7.6 as far as CA.

I learned that the glass is the same in these models, only the QC for HA series is supposedly more intense. The XA and ZA are the exact same lens, just the price differs. The HA does not show any difference at a higher price still, at least on 720P native CCD cameras.

I actually sold my HA18X7.6 to buy an XA17X7.6BERM, the lens I feel is the best deal out there.
All three breathe big time, but equally.

I have not been impressed with the low cost Canon HD glass, but have seen CAC work wonders with an HPX500. I still use my Fujinon A8.5X5.5 wide angle SD lens on my HD cameras and found it to be sharper in the corners than a Fujinon HA10X5.2 HD lens. It does, however, have a bit more CA on the edges than my XA17X7.6, as did the HA10X5.2.

I do not believe any low cost or even many higher cost HD lenses offer advantages over the best SD lenses. Using the extender is a bad idea with any of these lenses.

Jeff Regan
Shooting Star Video

Your entire post pretty much agrees with my findings Jeff.
I too had an SD Fuji 8x5.5 and it was amazingly sharp, I included it in some of my tests. It's such a hard to navigate lens marketplace these days!
I have to say though that I didn't find the CA on the HA18x7.6 too bad (bad, yes, but they almost all are!) I tried it against the HA22x7.6 and they were about the same, the HA22 maybe a tiny bit better. And the CAC didn't seem to make any difference on either them (well, maybe 2%).
Steve

I have been watching and reading as much as I can on the net about lens choice and I really like your findings about different lenses. I use an old SD Fujinon lens on my old Sony F350 and find it goes alright both as SD and HD. I'm always looking to upgrade to the 700 or 800 cameras but the cost of getting a lens on theses cameras just blows the budget way out, what lens are you guys using on theses cameras on a typical shoot?

Cheers

Typical kit I get with Varicam and other 2/3" is Canon HJ11 and HJ18x28 or HJ40, that's pretty standard for wildlife crews.
Otherwise probably the standard all round lens would be the HJ22. All these lenses are good, but as you say, bloody expensive. This is why for owner operators on budgets there is so much interest in more reasonably-price options.
I think a "sweet spot" compromise is the HA18 type lens. You get a decent range, from 7.6mm to 200mm or so with the 2x extender (which you don't get on the XA17x7.6), they're extremely compact, and relatively cheap - £8,000!
Hard to say for certain, but I get the impression that if you're really budget conscious it might well still be better to spend £1,000 for an old Fujinon 15x8 or similar rather than a really cheap HD lens. But then if your client is paying for an HD kit and they find you've got an SD lens? Good luck explaining it to them!
Steve

Has anyone tested the HJ14x4.3 v HA14x4.5?

Slightly off topic here - sorry.

Are you the same Steve Phillips that filmed "Wild Wales" ? I thoroughly enjoyed this program and the photography was excellent - it's still available on BBC iPlayer for those who may have missed it.

BBC iPlayer - Wild Wales: The Beautiful South

Yes, that's me! Nice to know someone's watching, thanks Vincent!
All pieces to camera were HDW750, wildlife was some with the 750, some with PDW700 and some HPX2700 Varicam - bet no-one can tell which is which, even I can't remember! It's likely to be on BBC HD at some point, and I'd really like to see that on my big TV to see if you can really can see the difference between the formats.
Steve

It never fails to impress me how anyone has the patience to film wildlife, I did some myself in Africa last December and I know how much time has to be spent waiting for animals to do something that will be interesting to watch - it seems they fall asleep the minute I point a camera in their direction.

I was captivated by the program and will be in North Wales myself next week, perhaps I will keep an eye out for your tripod holes :-)

You won't see me, I'm camouflaged :-)
Steve

One old SD lens that might work pretty well on HD, is a Cooke zoom made for 2/3" video. I used it once on a commercial and it was the sharpest SD lens I've ever used. I can't recall the precise focal lengths - it was something like 7 to 45. Out of interest I tried googling but it I can't find it, at least in the first few pages (hardly surprising).

It was more a drama lens and we rented it from Optex. I suspect they didn't make that many.

Does anyone have recommendations for companies making the 2/3" to 1/2" lens adapters? I'd like to fit a SD Canon IFXS J16A x 8B4 to a F335. I saw one advertised by Sony and one by Century. The Century was about a third less in cost. I'm assuming that there is enough back focus adjustment in the lens to accodate the adapter.
Dan

I'd highly recommend MTF Services B4 2/3" to 1/2" Sony Adaptor
Steve

Shame we can not view that program in the US.

Fujinon HA13x4.5BDERD
 

Hello all this is my first post ..

I have The Fujinon HA13x4.5BDERD on the sony xdcam pdw700 ..
The camera and lens looks great and very sharp ..
I have a question about the lens which has top of the line glass .. It has some distortion on the widest focal length 4.5mm ..
Does this distortion have a relationship with f-stop .. ie .. If the iris is open wide with nd filter or closed with no filter .. Will this has effect on minimizing the lens distortion ..

I thought the glass on the fujinon HA13 is the same on the HA22..

Any answers

:)

Re: HD 2/3" Lens Tests
 

For HD acquisition: would you consider the HD Fujinon HA22x7.8 (being a HD lens) used with the 2x converter a better choice than the SD Fujinon A36x14.5 (or 10.5) without converter?

Re: Fujinon HA13x4.5BDERD
 

Hi Abdullah,

barrel distortion is typical for wide-angle lenses, and is not influenced by aperture or filters. Only very few wide-angles will produces straight lines, and certainly not the zoom-ones. Of course keeping your camera perfectly level will minimise the problem. The more tilt you have, the more distortion will be obvious.

Re: HD 2/3" Lens Tests
 

I give it a shot with my earlier question again, hope someone can help.

I want to invest in a decent 2/3" lens, but my budget forces me to look for a good second hand. Want to use it on my EX3 with an adapter, but I choose for a 2/3" because I expect to upgrade to a 2/3" camera one day. I do a lot of wildlife shooting and need a long zoom.

My question is what type of lens gives best quality. A HD lens like Fujinon HA22x7.8 with the 2x extender in use (which makes it 343mm max, which is about sufficient for most cases for me) or a good SD lens without extender like Fujinon A36x14.5 or A36x10.5 (max 522mm and 378 max resp.).

Other suggestions are also welcome.

Re: HD 2/3" Lens Tests
 

Because of the smaller pixels on the half inch sensors in the EX3 compared to a 2/3" camera I have found that SD lenses perform very poorly on the EX3. While you can often get them to work Acceptably on 2/3" it is just not the same with 1/2".

My recommendation would be a 2/3" HD lens or a decent 1/2" lens. I have had good results with some of the better 1/2" SD lenses on my EX3.

Re: HD 2/3" Lens Tests
 

Thanks for the valuable respons, Alister. It is not the answer I hoped for, but it certainly brings me further in my decision making.