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The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)

salvagedcircuitry.com

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Re: The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)

#31

Post by toast0 »

josephg wrote: post #24
makeitdouble wrote: post #3

For those who haven't followed the camera world for a while, at this point a lens for a mirrorless camera will have a USB-C port to receive firmware updates. Tamron lenses for instance will allow a wired control or a wireless dongle to communicate with an app/computer and change the lens behavior, switch what the physical buttons and rings do. Potentially you can manage stepping through settings for stop motion like…

This is only true for photography. For some reason, cinema lenses are still - for the most part - purely mechanical. For film and TV, most camera operators still focus manually - often via gears attached externally to the lens. Coming from modern photography, manual focusing is inconvenient and difficult to learn. But there's something very old-school cool about cine lenses. They feel great.

Autofocus is very nice for photos, especially when it works.

Autofocus in moving pictures isn't so great. It might be nice when you're not filming, but while filming, a focus change should really be intentional; auto focus isn't that. Might depend on what you're filming though.

Re: The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)

#32

Post by salvagedcircuit »

josephg wrote: post #24
makeitdouble wrote: post #3

For those who haven't followed the camera world for a while, at this point a lens for a mirrorless camera will have a USB-C port to receive firmware updates. Tamron lenses for instance will allow a wired control or a wireless dongle to communicate with an app/computer and change the lens behavior, switch what the physical buttons and rings do. Potentially you can manage stepping through settings for stop motion like…

This is only true for photography. For some reason, cinema lenses are still - for the most part - purely mechanical. For film and TV, most camera operators still focus manually - often via gears attached externally to the lens. Coming from modern photography, manual focusing is inconvenient and difficult to learn. But there's something very old-school cool about cine lenses. They feel great.

Indeed! I've had the privilege and honor of collimating a Cooke s4i. It's a thing of beauty, joy forever.

Re: The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)

#33

Post by salvagedcircuit »

pastel8739 wrote: post #28
josephg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true for photography. For some reason, cinema lenses are still - for the most part - purely mechanical. For film and TV, most camera operators still focus manually - often via gears attached externally to the lens. Coming from modern photography, manual focusing is inconvenient and difficult to learn. But there's something very old-school cool about cine lenses. They feel great.

I think in cine it’s a lot more important to have smooth focus and to be able to control the focus speed, hence the MF lenses

A large focus throw and more importantly, focus consistency, is paramount for cinema lenses. When you rack focus, the lens needs to show the same field of view every time, no questions asked. The early red pro cinema lenses had a design flaw where the focus rings would come loose over time and ruin shots. Someone clearly forgot the threadlocker.

Re: The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)

#34

Post by josephg »

aeturnum wrote: post #30
pastel8739 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think in cine it’s a lot more important to have smooth focus and to be able to control the focus speed, hence the MF lenses

I also think cine lenses have the budget to continue making high quality mechanical interfaces. Consumer lenses must have AF and so are incentivized to reuse that functionality if it would reduce the BoM.

Hm, I'm not sure about that. I suspect autofocus motors are much more expensive to manufacture than mechanical lens throws. They're almost certainly more expensive to design. I don't know about other manufacturers, but recent sony lenses contain 4 autofocus motors, and they can snap autofocus in tens-to-hundreds of milliseconds depending on the distance. Where do they even put those motors in the lens housing?

Its probably a scale thing. Photography lenses make up for the design, engineering and manufacturing costs with scale. Everyone who takes photos needs lenses. But far fewer films are made, and cine lenses are often rented. So they really can't be manufacturing that many units in total. I suspect they don't manufacture cine lenses in high enough volume to justify the engineering costs of fitting complex microcontrollers and motors into the lens housing. And if the production can afford to hire a focus puller anyway, autofocus just isn't that valuable.

Re: The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)

#35

Post by jazzyjackson »

omoikane wrote: post #20

Placing disassembled screws on double sided tape is such a great idea, I am going to try that next time I disassemble my electronics (as opposed dropping everything in a container and spend time finding the original size screws during reassembly).

There’s a very useful putty for watchmakers called Rodico, it can serve this purpose well and can also be stuck to a screwdriver to hold onto the screw while placing it, instead of relying on magnetism (no good in watchmaking to magnetize your screws, I figure cameras are similar, you can increase resistance to movement if magnetism pulls things together…)

I’ve also seen a clever technique of drawing a diagram of whatever you’re working on on cardboard, and stabbing the screw into the cardboard to keep track of where everything lives

Re: The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)

#36

Post by josephg »

toast0 wrote: post #31
josephg wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is only true for photography. For some reason, cinema lenses are still - for the most part - purely mechanical. For film and TV, most camera operators still focus manually - often via gears attached externally to the lens. Coming from modern photography, manual focusing is inconvenient and difficult to learn. But there's something very old-school cool about cine lenses. They feel great.

Autofocus is very nice for photos, especially when it works. Autofocus in moving pictures isn't so great. It might be nice when you're not filming, but while filming, a focus change should really be intentional; auto focus isn't that. Might depend on what you're filming though.

> a focus change should really be intentional; auto focus isn't that. Might depend on what you're filming though.

As a solo operator, autofocus is great. Maybe the right metric is the number of crew per camera. 2-3 crew per camera? Manual focus is fine. 2-3 cameras per crew member, like solo filming a podcast or a theatre show? I'd choose autofocus every time.

Re: The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)

#37

Post by salvagedcircuit »

jazzyjackson wrote: post #35
omoikane wrote: post #20

Placing disassembled screws on double sided tape is such a great idea, I am going to try that next time I disassemble my electronics (as opposed dropping everything in a container and spend time finding the original size screws during reassembly).

There’s a very useful putty for watchmakers called Rodico, it can serve this purpose well and can also be stuck to a screwdriver to hold onto the screw while placing it, instead of relying on magnetism (no good in watchmaking to magnetize your screws, I figure cameras are similar, you can increase resistance to movement if magnetism pulls things together…) I’ve also seen a clever technique of drawing a diagram of wha…

Thanks for the input about Rodico! It sounds pretty useful. I've used mounting putty / blue-tack when assembling PCBs, but not much more than that. I've seen the card board trick used many times to ease in painting engine valve cover bolts.

Re: The intracies of modern camera lens repair (2024)

#38

Post by jazzyjackson »

salvagedcircuit wrote: post #37
jazzyjackson wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There’s a very useful putty for watchmakers called Rodico, it can serve this purpose well and can also be stuck to a screwdriver to hold onto the screw while placing it, instead of relying on magnetism (no good in watchmaking to magnetize your screws, I figure cameras are similar, you can increase resistance to movement if magnetism pulls things together…) I’ve also seen a clever technique of drawing a diagram of wha…

Thanks for the input about Rodico! It sounds pretty useful. I've used mounting putty / blue-tack when assembling PCBs, but not much more than that. I've seen the card board trick used many times to ease in painting engine valve cover bolts.

It also has an interesting capability to absorb smudges and oils, I use it to clean watch dials, just dragging the putty over the surface.
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