The V35 Project retunes modern lenses to emulate vintage lens aesthetics. You may well remember on the site an article about the Canon V35 project where Northwest Camera Co & Duclos Lenses were doing a Canon CN-E Primes K35 Conversion, well they have now expanded on that by releasing 10 new Special Edition lens emulation retuning options. They are no longer collaborating with Duclos Lenses, and instead all of the tunings are being down with The Keep.
After extensive research and development, the team has come up with vintage emulations for popular modern lenses such as the Tokina Vista-P, Zeiss CP3, Viltrox Epic, Nisi Athena, Canon RF 24-105, Sigma Cine, DZO Arles and more. Each retuning is a unique recipe designed to emulate a specific, highly sought-after vintage lens with characteristics like more interesting flares, edge performance, focus falloff, bokeh texture, color, sharpness, contrast, and more.
Instead of rehousing old vintage lenses that have issues with availability, parts, color matching, breathing, uneven t-stops etc, their approach is to go the opposite direction. They start out with current production lenses where the housings and mechanics are great and through many modifications, change some defining looks of the lens like flares, edge performance, focus falloff, bokeh texture, color, sharpness, contrast and more. V35 Project analyze and breakdown the aesthetic looks of their favorite vintage lenses and emulate that look onto newer modern lens sets.
The V35 Project base all of its optics on full frame cine lenses, and to see most of the added character, you will want to shoot on full frame/vista vision sensors to be able to see 100 percent of the benefits of the tunings.
While manufactures compete for best specs and best technical performance, that doesn’t always translate to what cinematographers want from lenses. Yes, it depends on what you want from a lens, but with a lot of modern digital cinema cameras, cinematographers are choosing to use lenses that aren’t as sharp and have more character or imperfections. Modern lenses are a perfect place to start when it comes to aftermarket tuning and this is where V35 Project comes in.
The V35 Project came out of recognizing the need to provide cinematographers and rental houses with an alternative to expensive vintage lenses. The V35 Project has worked with some of the most talented lens designers and technicians in the world to develop unique vintage emulation recipes. They are claimed to be obtainable at an affordable price compared to vintage lenses and rehousing options available in the marketplace.
How It Works
You can either buy new lenses for V35 Project to modify or send in your old sets (Available on most of the lineup) to have these modifications done. All work is performed between the front and rear element to provide the least amount of downtime should something happen to them on set. From there, all of their modifications are completely reversible. Say you want to shoot a TV show with a set of modified Tokinas that you own, but after the show, you want to go back to your normal corporate work, well for a very small fee, you can have the best of both worlds. You pay a deposit per lens and ship it to them for the tuning, when done they collect payment and ship it back to you.
Not only do they offer the tuning, but full servicing and maintenance needs as well should anything happen to your sets in the future.
The V35 Project will officially launch their new lineup at Cinegear 2024 (booth 931), where they will be doing demos and showing test footage.
More information, including lens tests available at www.v35project.com.
