Frame & Reference Podcast - Lens Month: Chief Engineer of Duclos Lenses Matthew Duclos

Episode Date: July 1, 2021

Welcome to Lens Month! On the first episode of this month long series, Kenny talks with Matthew Duclos from Duclos Lenses. Matthew is the "Chief Lens Geek" and Chief Engineer at Duclos Lenses and has spent his life servicing, refining, selling, manufacturing, and collecting cinema lenses from around the world. In this podcast, Kenny and Matthew go deep into lens tech so if you are into nerdy cinema talk this is the podcast for you! Check out Duclos Lenses website and give them a follow on social @ducloslenses Frame & Reference is supported by Filmtools and ProVideo Coalition. Filmtools is the West Coasts leading supplier of film equipment. From cameras and lights to grip and expendables, Filmtools has you covered for all your film gear needs. Check out Filmtools.com for more. ProVideo Coalition is a top news and reviews site focusing on all things production and post. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for the latest news coming out of the industry. Check out ProVideoCoalition.com for more!

Hello, and welcome to this, another episode of Frame and Reference. I'm your host, Kenny McMillan, and today we're talking with Matthew Duclos, the resident lens technician and lens geek over at Duclos Lenses, to kick off Lens Month. Um, this is something I had an idea for, uh, actually three months ago and recorded all these interviews. So the information or what I say might be a little out of date. Certainly, um, you know, it always ends up happening where you, you learn something and then you wish you could go back and ask more informed questions. But, um, you know, I figured, uh, why not have, I'm friends with a few lens guys, uh, you know, Matthew Duclos, uh, today's episode of good friends.

acquaintances with him. Alex Nelson of Zero Optics coming up. We got Jay Holben, great, get for me. You know, just plenty of people who could lend their expertise and talk to me about lenses, which, you know, I know how to use the lenses. I know what they are, but I don't really know anything specific about them. You know, I just know I like the look. I know how to make sure it's sharp or not sharp.

I know how to expose an image, but I don't really know the internal mechanics or anything about it. So I tried to dig as deep as I could with all of these guests for the month of July. So hopefully you find that enjoyable. It'll definitely be a nerdier series of podcasts. But, you know, if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a bit of a nerd anyway. So, you know, as Matthew is a friend of mine, the conversation did go long. So I just kind of had to pick a point to cut it off. Again, privilege of being the host.

I get to talk to these people for as long. as I can. But yeah, so I think you'll really enjoy this one. Matthew is an absolute, I almost said fucking wealth of knowledge again. Gotta stop saying that, but it's true. Yeah, so here's my conversation with Matthew Duclos. Let me ask you that real quick. Why do you say it's Ari instead of Airy or vice versa?

So I just, that's just because phonetically, that's how it looks to me. But I know the Germans call it Airy. but then I guess it's my saying I need to say it a certain way is only it's that weird thing we're like you you want to be taken seriously so and if you don't use the vernacular of the serious people you'll be judged oh look at this pedestrian says Ari well so here's my logic my entire life I've said airy that's how I've always known it since I was a child um But the company, you know what ARI stands for? No. Okay, so A.R is the first part, and then RI is the second part, Arnold and Richter. So A.R. is Arnold. And if you say R, it's R-R-R-R-E. So by that logic, it should be R-E, because it's short for Arnold, not Ahrnold.

But if the Germans say Aerie, then that's what I'm going to say. I mean a fair but now I'm back on on Ari train if that's the if that's a move your plan there but yeah that's no that's good to know because I you know I would

it's just like it's the same thing as Laika everyone assumes that Laika is like the original company do you know the the mash up there Lights camera exactly yeah the same concept Arnold and Richter became Ari or Harry

and Lights is or LICA is lights camera. And now they've just gone back to lights. Well, the camera company is still like a camera AG. But lights as far as their Cini lenses go. Yeah, it's a separate,

it's like a sister company. It's lights, Wetzler. Hmm. Because that is one thing. Like, this will just kind of kick us off in the lens talk. What is the,

uh, there's like a lenses and then there's like a cinema lenses. Are they, are they doing the thing that Zeiss does where they sometimes will just take groupings from their photo lenses and put them in in their cinema lenses or are they not different? The only case that that happens is specifically with the M. 0.8 lenses, those little tiny, like a sini lenses where they just took their M lenses and put a different shell on the front or on the body. But other than that, all of their, I take that back. some of the Talia primes are re-housed medium-format lenses from their S-line. So they're in-format S, whatever, camera.

They repurposed some of those lenses. But they're proper sinny stuff, like the lights primes, the lights zooms, summax-sum, summalexi, those are completely different. Well, so actually, that's a better starting point. So I think there can be, you know, I like the podcast to be as much for, professionals as it is for people trying to learn because I'm somewhere in the middle

personally I think there's a lot of sort of maybe not misinformation but misunderstanding about the difference between a stills lens a rehoused lens a Cine mod and what those means because you know there's these new for instance there's a lot of new Cine zooms coming out or stuff like that and people go oh it's a proper cinema lens therefore I'm doing proper cinema yeah and it's like my my Sigma 18 to 35 might look better than your like are you the only one using that lens because that's probably gonna be more annoying than less can you walk me through kind of the difference between those sort of three photo lens

cinema odd cinema lenses and why they're different not necessarily with the glass although I'm sure that's part of it sure in some cases Um, I think it would, I think it's best to break it into four categories. You have a plain Jane photo lens. And then at the opposite end of that spectrum, you have a full blown from the ground up, Cini lens. And then in between those two, you have, say, a Cine mod lens, which is a photo lens that has some add-ons, mostly superficial, maybe a couple modifications.

And then you have a rehoused lens where they take the original glass and maybe some of the original components, but you put it in a whole new housing. I think it's important to separate those two because they're dramatically different results in the end. So what, in your mind, what are the primary differences between a photo lens and a Cini lens and how much of that is quality that you'll see on screen and how much of that is usability? Well, that's, you put it perfectly, it really breaks down to those.

two categories the optics and then the usability you nailed it perfectly the optics being the actual optical design and there is some difference between a photo lens and a sine lens as far as the actual glass goes or at least I should say more specifically the optomechanical design which is how the glass is designed to function sort of in a marriage with the mechanical components and then the usability is yeah the purely the mechanical how the lens rotates what moves what sort of physical features it has so the optomechanical portion lens engineers will take into consideration something like focus breathing or the parfocal design to keep your focus the same

throughout the zoom most still lenses don't really need those features So lens engineers will just sort of forget it or not bother dealing with it because it keeps the cost down. It makes it easier to manufacture. It makes them lighter. It makes them smaller. But if you want to design those functions into the lens, you have to change how that glass operates with the mechanical design. Those sorts of things cannot be upgraded or changed after the fact. I should say they could, but you're really redesigning the whole lens at that point.

it's kind of like it's like transplanting an engine into a car you can't just pull it out and put it in another one you'd have to do a lot of middle ground work and getting stuff to work with each other huge mess not worth it for certain aspects like focus breathing like parofocal design

the other bits the mechanical bits that's usually pretty easy that's where that rehousing comes in where you can change things like the focus gears the iris gears you can change the the front diameter of the lens that stuff's relatively easy uh those are those are the big differences between the two designs well and uh you you rehoused um the a couple lenses right the to kina i remember was a big one um yeah that was our that's kind of the one that put us on the map most people know us from that because it was right around the time of the red one uh actually

There's more, we started doing it when the red one came out and then when the dragon bodies, the epic and all that, it became really popular. We don't do so many these days because it became so popular that other people caught on, foreign countries caught on, and they started producing them way cheaper than we could do here in the U.S. So we just said, never mind, we'll stick to service and sales, and it became very difficult to justify the price difference for us. but yeah the 11 to 16 was our first major rehousing as do close lenses my father had been doing rehousing many many years prior um doing it for clamor on camera doing it for kish optics a bunch of different stuff yeah so i was going to say like the the to kina's like a good um case study but i am actually interested because you and i uh off camera have never actually talked about this Tell me about, like, the lineage from your dad to you.

He's my father. There you go. No, no. So my father started in this industry back in the 70s at Anjunu. They used to have a branch here in the U.S. on the East Coast in New Hampshire, which is where I was born. They were a small office. They did a lot of service. And he, once he got to a certain point there,

His reputation became more well-known, and Denny Claremont at Claremont Camera offered him a job, and we all moved out here to California, and he had been there for years. Once he would sort of run that course, he ended up joining a very small company called Kish Optics, who most people would know for their director's finder. If you've ever used a Kish Director's Finder, that's what my father built. That's what he helped design and build. That was their sort of their main product. They did a lot of other little things.

They had anamorphic products. They had a smaller director's finder. They had lots of obscure things at the time. So he worked there for a while, and that was kind of where I got my introduction. I would come in on summer breaks or on days off and tinker with stuff, and he would give me little assignments, you know, sort these screws, or, hey, clean these parts. Stuff that to me at the time wasn't interesting at all. I didn't know what I was doing.

I didn't know why I was doing it, but that was my foundation. Once that had kind of run its course, he wanted to sort of go out on his own and start his own lens service business, which he had been doing. You can always do side work at a rental house. He had been doing it at Claremont. He did it at Kish Optics and decided he had enough business to just start his own company. So we started do close lenses. For a while, I was sort of part-time, but then we got more and more business.

It just never stopped from there. Yeah, because like it's always, you know, definitely around the sort of, and I will include myself in this group, that like nerd camp when it comes to cinematography, like do close lenses always pops up because I think, you know, you've, I don't know how to put this, but like it's cool. It's cool to see, like, I think of you as a tinker. Like, I think of you as like Willy Wonka in the chocolate factory with lenses, you know, like, and that's, and that's cool. You've got two, what is that, is that a curing machine or is that two resin printers behind you? There is two resin printers and a FDM and curing and all that stuff.

Yeah, I've only got the, I've got a, I've got a just bombed out, what's it called? The, I don't know, I said, do clothes, goodness. The I3 Mark two. Who makes that? I-3. I don't know. Goodness, he's like the guy, Prusa. Oh.

I've got the Prusa FDM from 10 years ago, and now they're way better. Yeah. I got to replace the, I just bought the magnetic bed that you can, like, peel off and just twist and all the parts come flying off, but like, it's going to take me 12 hours to install. So I've got to find a day to do it. No, this one, I keep pointing the wrong direction. This one, our FDM one, is just one of the ender pros. and it just cranks stuff out.

Anytime we need tooling jigs or a holder to a laser engraved something, just crank it out on there and it's great. Yeah, so what actually is... The space that I'm in normally is our engineering space. It's the office that I use specifically for engineering work. My normal office, I share with someone else that we couldn't, during COVID, we had to separate away to distance everyone.

So I just sort of took up shots. in here in the engineering space and I've been here for over a year now just stuck never left they bring you I like it because it is kind of like the nerd lab section of our office but there's no windows I can't see or hear anyone it's a little closed off sure what so what are you primarily using those printers for I can't assume they're going into the lenses no never we never ship any 3D printed parts actually I take that back we've done there's two parts that we've ever two types of parts we've shipped.

There's little finger notches that are very ergonomic that we print for a reduction ring and to machine them would cost a fortune. So we ship those 3D printed. And then we've started doing some, what we call a split ring for focus gear upgrades. So on certain lenses that have a non-uniform focus ring, we print a subring that has like a gap

just to sort of take up that space and then put our normal seamless CNC machine gear over that. But primarily, there's for prototype parts. Anything that we make, anything we design and manufacture, we always 3D print first. We've been 3D printing before it was a consumer option, all the stuff back when it was rapid prototyping. Yeah, exactly.

And we paid a fortune for it, but it was still cheaper than making an actual part out of aluminum or steel. so we started doing that with like our carry handle products the stuff that's it's a large piece of metal and to machine that not only to buy you know one piece of stock and then have all the tooling set up and the machining for one piece it just wasn't economical so we we were 3D printing with companies around town you know they had massive massive machines and they would use the fused or or the SLA, the laser centering technique. And the stuff was beautiful.

But when these sort of machines came out, we thought, well, we don't really do anything bigger than that. So might as well do our own. Yeah. The, going back to the idea of the, we're gonna jump around because that's how I think, but going back to the idea of the tokina. So you took the 11,

11 to 16. Why did you pick that lens specifically to put a bunch of work in to put into a new housing as opposed to whatever else was available at the time? So the original, I guess you could say the origin story of the 11 to 16. This was probably, oh man, I should really know better dates. Well, like I said, it was right in that in-between period between Red One and the Epic Bodies. Like 2009, 10, maybe. That sounds like probably.

Probably in 2009-ish, yeah. And we had a client that did a lot of sort of hybrid work. He was a photographer and a cinematographer, and he did a lot of stills work with the 11 to 16, and he really wanted to use it more for cinema work. But it had the electronic aperture, so you couldn't control it on a red one. And it was relatively simple,

so he sort of hacked together a really, really simple prototype. type, basically just enough to get it onto the camera. And he brought it to us and said, hey, can you guys do this proper? And we said, okay, we could probably do it. Maybe we could sell like 10 of them or something like that. So we designed up some parts. We did a proper rehousing, basically pulled the sleeves off of it. Most of the internal mechanics stayed the same with a few upgrades that we did later on to sort of stabilize the internal.

so there was no image shift. And we even left that original band around the center that said Tokina, because at that time, it was sort of the onslaught of people rehousing stuff, but not admitting what they had used. And we wanted to be super clear that we weren't trying to hide anything. Like the badge says right there, this is a Tokina. We're not pretending that we came up with our own optical design. um so we did like 10 or 15 of them something like that um and we even on the inside we gave each of

them names that corresponded to letters in the alphabet because we never thought even at best case scenario we'd never go beyond like 20 something units so we gave them clever names um and they sold like hot cakes and we we ended up making thousands of them i'd guess um maybe not that many Technically, because we had a break-in at one point with one of our biggest batches, and they took tons of unfinished 11 to 16 rehoused lenses. Jesus. So that set us back a little bit. I don't remember how many that was or exactly when it was.

But that was sort of that whole evolution. It just started as this idea that one guy wanted. We kind of gauged interest and went from there. And then after that, like I said, those other companies started doing very, very similar work, but for much, much cheaper. And the quality showed, I mean, you really did get what you paid for. And then after that, you know, with the quantity of lenses that we were buying, Tokina kind of took notice and thought, well, geez, if they're making this many of them,

why don't we just do it? So Tokina introduced their version, the official Cini version of the 11 to 16, which it was kind a kick in the face that they were going to sort of torpedo our business, but when they first released it, we had sort of a gentleman's agreement that they would only sell it in EF mount, EF and E mount. So if you still wanted the Duclos PL model, you had to go to Duclos or one of the other copycats. That sort of let us get all of our stock out and, you know, wrap up that whole project, and then they released the PL version. Because at the end of the day, I remember you said this when we did that 50 verse 50 video, which you can see on the Duclos YouTube.

Thank you again for that. That was fun. Yeah, it was fun. You said something that's always stuck with me, which is there's no such thing as a bad lens. There's only the right lens for the right job. Yep. And I think people can get hung up in, is it a good lens or a bad lens thinking about image quality. But at the same time, there has to be lenses that just do not resolve well and like actually look bad. But out there somewhere. Yeah, of course there is. There's junk lenses out there. But there's also a project that is just waiting to be shot with that lens. There is a project that calls for that look, which means it's not a bad lens. It's the perfect lens for that project.

Yeah, like something like the Lomo lenses, like the Petsval. Petsval, yeah. Terrible design, but people love it. Yeah. How has camera design changing affected the way lenses are either perceived or now manufactured. Is there any correlation there? Yes, to some degree, this is a bit of a soapbox, a rabbit hole topic.

I think lens manufacturers, sort of with the advent of the internet and keyboard warriors and everybody's a critic, you know, you pick your lens, any lens in the last 100 years that was made, and you can Google it and some forum will come up with someone saying it's the worst lens ever, and then two posts later, it's the best lens ever. So everyone's a critic these days. Every new lens that comes out gets put through the ringer, and everybody wants to know, is it the best? Is it the sharpest lens ever made? So lens manufacturers over the last 20-some-odd years have really sort of pushed that envelope of making the best lens they can. And the art of photography and cinematography

has kind of taken a backseat as far as. as that engineering goes. And these engineers, they're designing the lenses, are focusing more on sheer image quality, sheer performance, and kind of forgetting about the fact that these are being used to create art. And because of that, you have lenses that are beautifully made, really well designed, really high resolution, but they're kind of boring or they lack character. At a certain point, they end up all looking the same because they're all striving to be as perfect as possible. And when you're saying image quality, you mean like sharpness, not necessarily like goodness.

Exactly. And that's the difference. Goodness is very subjective. Sharpness and resolution and contrast are very objective. We give those numbers on an MTF machine or we refer to the line pairs per millimeter for the resolution. But the other, everything else that you would want to know about a lens, the goodness part of it is completely up to the user, the person looking at that image. Well, and if, I feel like there's actually two analogous things. The first one being, you know, people, like I know Sigma likes to make a very neutral lens, they say.

Very sharp, very beautiful. Like I've said, I love the 18 to 35. Used it all the time because it's for me very flexible. I can go and make something for a client that just wants something very, very clear. or I can chuck filters on it and kind of make it a little dirtier, I guess. But I'm noticing way more people over, again, like you were saying, over the past, maybe like 10 years, leaning on black pro mist specifically because someone somewhere at some point said the black pro mist was the thing.

And then everyone got one to the point where some lens manufacturer should just install that right in the front of the group. But that race towards sharpness is then immediately pushed back. by the race towards making things fudgy? Yes and no. That has become very challenging for lens manufacturers. Because the whole vintage lens craze has hit hard and everyone's vintage lenses prices are going through the roof,

whether it's a proper Cine lens, a set of super speeds going for almost $100,000 these days, or a, you know, Canon FDs, because people found out that that was sort of the basis of K-35s. FD prices are through the roof. The manufacturers kind of caught on to that, and now they're trying to figure out, instead of making the best lens possible,

should we try to back it up and make a more pleasing lens? So you've seen that with manufacturers like Cook doing their Pankrow Classics or Canon doing the C&E Sumerese. A handful of others, You've got Caldwell doing the Neo Super Ball Tars. It's definitely leaning that direction. But like I said, all these armchair enthusiasts, you know, keyboard warriors talking about the best lens and the overall quality and this and that. Canon, I'll use Canon as an example.

If they put out a lens tomorrow for a still photo, you know, something that they mass produce. and it's got loads of spherical aberration and the focus tapers off to the corners really quickly and maybe a little bit of geometrics distortion, all these qualities that make a lens vintage and have character, they would be destroyed online. The reviews would be terrible and nobody would buy it. So to convince these product planners and these salespeople

to move ahead with a vintage-inspired lens or a less-than-perfect lens is near impossible. Right. And then furthermore, convincing the engineers not to do what they've been trained to do and make a lens less than perfect is challenging.

It's very difficult. I think a lot of people assume that these lens designers, these engineers that are actually coming up with the optical design, they assume that they're their lens geeks or their photography enthusiasts, and more often they're not, they're just a Ph.D. They're just a guy with a masters that knows physics and how light works through mediums, such as glass, and they don't understand what it's being used for, the art of cinematography. So it's a challenge for them to understand why or where or how much to put a bit of character into an optical design. Right. And I assume it's kind of hard to be like, because I don't know, when I think about it, I'm like, oh, I like the look of,

you know, X film. And, uh, for instance, I like, I really like the look of a son of monarchs. We interviewed, um, Alejandro Mejia about him shooting that. It was a Sundance film. And he shot Ari Minis and the Lomo roundfronts. So do I just decide everything I shoot is going to be on the Lomo round fronts? You know, that, that takes away the artistic integrity, so to speak, that you're talking about. Or does Lomo look at that and sudden, you know,

maybe everyone starts saying, oh, the low more round funds. And they're like, well, we should really remake those completely. Go find the lens designs and go make those again. Because we don't want them buying them used or renting them used. We want them to buy a whole new set. Is that kind, you don't feel like that kind of discussion is happening. It's a much more engineering based and like, you know, price to performance ratio type stuff. That discussion happens often, I'm sure.

A lot of those vintage designs. So another good example, most of the engineers that made those older lenses, they're not around anymore. I can almost guarantee if you go to, let's say, I'm going to use Canon, for example, again, just because they're the 800-pound gorilla, you go to Canon and you talk to one of their lens engineers and you say, oh, I love the look of those, of these 1960, 1970 loamos. And they would say, oh, okay. But they have no idea what lens you're talking about. They're not those kind of people. They don't understand that sort of heritage.

They know what lenses they designed. They know the examples they were taught and engineering principles and the concept of physics. They're applying to these designs. But you can't reference, you know, I want to, can you guys make something looks like a super speech? Okay, well, what is the super speed? They don't know.

That's not the kind of work they do. So, referencing these vintage designs, maybe they can tap into their own company's history. So let's say, for example, you say, hey, Canon, can you make those K-35s? Nobody at Canon was, nobody at Canon right now was around when the K-35s were produced. Everyone that was involved in that is gone. I can nearly guarantee that. so for them to dig back through their records they don't even know where to start it's probably not going to happen because they can't sell hundreds of thousands of them and then the one of the biggest reasons is they they legally cannot use some of the materials that were required to make those lenses they've been banned because they had like lead and shit in them right what's that they had like lead and shit in them like lead arsenic all sorts of stuff that is not allowed any more and cook so cook is the the exception to all of this because it's been the same company a lot of

the guys that work there have been there for a very long time and cook did just that everyone wanted the pancreas everyone loves classic pancreas and cook said all right well we've got those original designs we've hell they've even got some of the tooling from back then um If you ever, I'm sure there's videos online, but their factory, actually they just moved the factory, but the original factory, they've got some of the machines and some of the tooling jigs and polishing jigs from decades ago. It's very, very cool. But they were able to take those designs, give them to their current optical designers, and say, hey, find the elements where we can't use those materials anymore. find a replacement material that we can use that keeps the image as similar as possible, and let's go from there.

And that's exactly what they did. They re-released the Pankro's as the Pankro Classic with modern materials, modern build quality, but the same basic optical design. So you get those similar results. But it took a small company like Cook, who is small time compared to someone like Canon or Sigma or Food. on to do just that you know when when we look at lights we've got the uh not the lens company the lights uh eliminate um you you've got the uh little i just got finally after years of um needing one especially for reviews and stuff i got a color color meter you know and so on it

i saw that the new i saw that post that video yeah i i i'm very excited about it because that it's that one, it's just that one area of lighting that I had absolutely no ability to access. Like I never knew. I'm like, these look similar, are they? Like, what? Close enough? Why does, yeah, and I hate it. I hate close enough when you can just have, when you can know, um, or like sun, like sunlight's the wild one. You know, like I measured in here, the sun was really pretty. I got a northern facing window. And it's like, if I want to replicate that, what do I have to do mechanically to do that? And I check into the sunlight coming in was like 4,300. Like, if you just chucked an LED up there, put it at 5600, first of all,

is 5,600 coming out of there? No one knows. And then secondly, display. Yeah. And then secondly, it wouldn't have been right. It would have been too cool. Yeah. This is all a roundabout way to, to the Academy made the SSI, the spectral similarity index. I don't know if you're aware of that or they just heard it in it. Basically, it's like it compares the color spectrum of one light against another and then gives you a score saying how close they are. So if you have like a tungsten light and you measure it and then you measure your LED, it'll tell you how close it is if that's what you want to the reference light. Is there something like that in lenses where you can say like, oh, you like the look of a master prime? Well,

the lens similarity index says that a whatever, sigma, 5,000. art is nearly the same look. That's a fantastic question. Yes and no. I feel like that's sort of my response to everything you've asked. That's fine. Hey, man, everything's in the nuance. So I'll start by sort of clarifying what you were referring to with the lights.

You can check that temperature, right? And it gives you, let's say you have a super close number. Very minimal difference. And from a practical perspective, let's say one of them is, I don't know, like a quasar, like a tube light, you know, and then the other one's like a light panel with bare LEDs. Sure, maybe those colors are similar, but you can't use those interchangeably because they're going to give you completely different results. There are a different shape, source, there are different, you know, one is diffused, one is bare LEDs, completely different results. Just because those numbers are the same doesn't mean they're interchangeable, right? We agree with that?

Yes. So the same applies for checking lenses. You can put a lens on an MTF bench and it will spit out your modular transfer function number. And lens A and lens B can be nearly identical across that graph. But then you put them on a camera in an actual scene and you could still get very different results. So from that one perspective, looking at your microcontrast from an MTF bench, yes, you can get close to the same. You can get that one aspect nearly identical. But there's so many other things to consider with how a lens is perceived in the final image.

There's no all-encompassing. way to measure the look of a lens. As far as I'm concerned, the look of a lens will always be subjective. Yeah, well, and I suppose, like, the only way that two lenses can truly look similar in a way that I think people talk about this is if that war towards ultimate image quality kind of came to a pin and all lenses kind of just looked the same by the fact that they had no character, no, nothing. They were all optically, quote unquote, perfect. Yeah. And then it's boring.

You could, in theory, sort of pick all of those different fields. So chromatic aberration, spherical aberration, contrast, resolution, all of these different factors that go into the quality and character of a lens. And you could give them all a value, but you'd really just be looking at a giant graph of what's where and trying to find what's closest. There's no, there's no, there's no one all-encompassing factor to consider with lenses. Sure. Which is really, I mean, that's the magic of them.

They're not, they're not an A-B, they're not an on-off digital medium. They're analog. They're organic in a way. They'll never be digital. Like, you know, cameras went from film to digital and lights went from incandescent to LED, and it's all kind of become very, very firm, very defined, but lenses will always be subjective. Well, and that too, that's how you build a look, right?

Like, that's how you build a personal look, whatever you want, like a brand is no one's going to like the lens camera color light package that you like in the same way. Whereas, you know, especially if we're all going to use Ari's. that takes a huge chunk of your creativity kind of out of the picture from that standpoint. Yeah. Whereas lenses, I think, are still a place where you can play around and shape a look and have fun. Yeah. No, I think that summarizes it perfectly.

The lenses have become the paintbrush of an artist. You know, the cameras, you're kind of defined, I don't know, more power to Netflix, love them, or hate them, but they've sort of become this standard of, is that camera Netflix compliant? Because that's going to determine what your options are for a production. You're kind of stuck in these grooves as far as camera choices go from time to time. But with lenses, that's the artist. choice unless the production says you can only rent what this rental house has but even then rental houses will just subrent stuff so the lenses i think have really become that tool of

expression almost as much as filters i think filters are equally important for cinematography totally is that looking back on um let's say the past five years even five 10 years of of lenses and filmmaking or whatever what are some of the sort of things that have excited you about the the technology moving forward and what are some of the more frustrating things oh the technology or just lenses i don't know how to phrase that exact question but just lenses as you're in your career path yeah because the technology itself hasn't changed much they were all like i said before because there's still a um an analog component of this whole puzzle were still bound by the laws of physics and that hasn't

changed in the past hundred years of lens, you know, photography lens manufacturing. So I not much has really, I guess what's said what has excited me most is seeing the resurgence of vintage lenses, even though it's kind of an opportunity for me to kick myself and not snatch up all the super speeds 20 years ago and I'd be rich now. But seeing all these lenses get a second or third life has been pretty awesome. Not only because it's interesting to see it progress, but if I'm being completely honest, it's also afforded me and our entire company a very nice place in this business

because these lenses need maintenance. They need to be cared for. And with that care, they can work forever, you know, two or three more careers. The downside to it, I think, has been the, well, it's a double-edged sword, I'd say, the downside. The downside has been how much people have seen the opportunity and just sort of jumped in to this business, not really knowing what they're doing. So maybe some of the rehousing's that are very dishonest.

You see people that see the price of a Sini lens, and they want to take advantage of that. So they'll rehouse something and market up a ton and say, look what I've built. It's made in Germany. That part has been pretty sad. But at the same time, you have other companies like some of these Chinese brands that have come in and really lowered the bar as far as the price to get into a Sini lens. and seeing people be able to make that transition from a purpose-built photo lens to a purpose-built sine lens has been really satisfying because for the longest time, that debate that we sort of touched on earlier about what's the difference between a still lens and a

sine lens, a lot of people have said, it's the same. You don't need a photo lens. You don't need a, sorry, you don't need a Cini lens. Use your Canon L series. Use the cheapest lens, your kit lens, whatever. You could find all those videos on YouTube comparing a $400 lens to a Master Prime. We did that video and I showed it. We made that exact video.

But there's a ton of them that just show some still images or some videos saying, look, you don't need to spend $20 grand on a lens. And I think the manufacturers that are getting into the game now and producing really, really affordable lenses have sort of. sort of open that door for people to try a Sini lens and realize, oh, there is a difference here. I can get better results from a proper Sini lens, depending on the setup, obviously. But that has been that other side of that sword. So you have the people that are jumping in to capitalize on margins and the fad,

but at the same time, you have the people that are really just trying to get a product out that is really affordable. I think especially like the videos, I can think of one specifically, but I won't name them where they have a handful of, we might be talking about the same one, where it's just like some dude dancing around and they're like, look, it's the same thing.

Right, right. And it's like, I suppose, yes, if your work involves shooting in the midday sun for YouTube and you're alone, then yes, you're right. They are relatively similar. But if you're going to be working on set with an AC, no one's using a photo lens.

Exactly. And that goes back to my argument that I've had for years now, that there is no bad lens. If I'm a one-man band and I'm vlogging and I need to set up my little gorilla pod and points in it needs to focus, I'm not going to put a sine lens on there. I'm going to grab a, you know, a Sony

Master, whatever, Gmaster, or a Canon L series, whatever, that lens will work for that scenario. But like you just said, if you're shooting with a crew and you've got a focus puller and you know, half a dozen or a dozen or more people's jobs are relying on you as a focus puller or a DP and this production's costing thousands of dollars every minute, no, I'm not going to bring a Canon kit lens. have the lens that I know is repeatable and accurate and it's going to get the job done no matter what. So it just reinforces that there is no bad lens. There's just different lenses for different jobs. There may not be a bad lens, but do you have a favorite? Oh, man, I get that

question every, every, I figured you would. I could. It's like asking me to pick a favorite child. So as far as photography goes, prior to being, like I was explaining before with the rise of do close lenses, I had a small period in my career where I was a still photographer. I did a lot of editorial work that was all, you know, clean and accurate. Nobody wanted funky and different, but I've always been there. What's that? F8 and B there? Yeah, basically. yeah um but i've kept up my photography as a hobbyist through my entire life and as far as photo

lenses go um the one that i've had on my camera so primarily i shoot and i have many cameras currently though i switch primarily between a fuji x pro two and a sigma fp uh that fuji x pro two is like my go-to travel camera It's just because I've had it for so long. And that camera, even though I own most of the Fuji lenses that are available in X-mount, it has had a piece of junk, Midicon, 35-millimeter. It's actually not even Midikon. It's the Chinese version, Zongyi, 35-millimeter.95.

It's practically been glued to that camera for like four years now. I would say that's probably my favorite lens for that setup. On the FP, which I'm kind of transitioning to because I like it more. It's full frame. It's faster. Everything about it's better. I'm just waiting for the right lens to come out for that system. So I don't have a favorite there yet.

As far as cinematography lenses go, I don't know. I think that's a better metric though because favorite is super subjective but most used like for me the the 18 to 35 was stuck on the C100 still is literally has never come off on my C500 using a lot more than NICOR primes because full frame you know yeah can't really switch it over I'm going to use it if I've got it on my XT3 nine times out of 10 I've got the it's not a great quote unquote not a great lens, the internet told me not to buy it, but the, uh, the, 35, the 27 pancake. Okay. Yeah. Because I can just chuck that thing in my pocket. Exactly. 27 is, it's a great sort of all around, um, um, travel, uh, focal length. You know, it's a two eight focus is quick. Yep. Um, super light. And I just super light and, uh, really, really compact, you know, mad thin. So like that's, that thing is nine times out of 10. I remember you suggesting the Midacom and it's been on a list online that I've been meaning to like keep buying.

But for, yeah, for photo, I've just got that 27 pancake. When I do video, I'll actually, I actually put the, uh, the Nikors back on it. Yeah. With a little adapter. That's another, uh, you nailed what I was trying to explain, you know, for the photo stuff, that's my favorite because it's, it gives me the images, the way it's, it's become an extension. It's fully manual, so I can just snap my focus, and I know where my hand is supposed to be. I've just gotten so used to it. It works perfectly for that, and 90% of those photos are just my daughter is running around.

So that's why it's my favorite, just the way I use it and the images that come out of it. For cinematography, if I was going to pick a favorite, it would be my favorite to tear apart and clean and relube and put back together. not my favorite for an image because I'm not a cinematographer. I tinker a lot with motion picture work, but my job does not rely on getting an image every time. So if I was to pick a favorite lens for cinematography, it's going to be the one that I like tearing apart. Well, that's a good segue into,

because I did want to pimp this at some point, you've been doing the weekly lens tear down live stream. Yeah. Talk to the people about that. So that started. So everybody knows we're in this pandemic thing. And here in L.A., we had a mandatory shutdown back in, I don't even remember now, like May, I think, something like that. And we didn't consider ourselves an essential business at due close lenses, so we shut down. but we still wanted to keep the business running so I would still come in random days you know try to get some of the work that was still here out the door and we it was just me and my father

were basically opposite into the building so we might as well have been at different buildings and if I'm being completely honest it just got kind of lonely because normally there's 10 technicians, you know, within earshot, and we all talk all day and chat and, oh, hey, look at this lens. Hey, look at this. Someone messed up this part. And, you know, we'd go back and forth all day. And it got kind of boring, kind of lonely.

Just sitting here working on lenses myself, and I'd run into a really obscure part. Like, oh, hey, look at, oh, no one's here. Bummer. And so I thought, hey, I'll just start live streaming because everyone else was doing it for other types of content and honestly it was just maybe a couple of my friends would watch or something but it kind of took off from there and people were more interested than I thought and they'd tune in every Saturday and it'd be really interesting I'd have people to talk to and I could share you know anecdotal stories on the lenses that I was working on or experiences and whatnot but it was

really just, it started as a way for me just to share stuff with people. And I couldn't do it with the lenses that we service because we have contracts with most manufacturers and we can't show that stuff. We can't broadcast the insides of a 24 to 290 Optimo. So I just started doing it with the cinemods because it's all vintage lenses and nobody cares about that anymore as far as proprietary information goes and it's just worked really well it's it's it gave me an opportunity to share all that with people and apparently people enjoy the geekery of it well yeah I mean I'm I'm in there whenever I can be when do you when do you start normally Saturdays at what time Saturday at 10 a.m. 10 a.m. It's not every Saturday. If there's you know for a couple weeks it was

pretty regular and then when things started getting a little bit less restricted you know my daughters had uh you know zoom play dates or they had a virtual girl scout meeting or something we'd have to do that instead but most saturdays i do it well one one thing that i you know it's hard to uh fit all of your knowledge into a one hour podcast but i can say um if you go to any of these live streams that you've done because i've done this you click any point and and you're like in the middle of saying something fascinating like whether it be a story or something specific about the like just it's a three hour stream and it's just like and there and you're already you know you're learning well that's so great about it is that the people are watching have questions and

right if i have an answer i'll share it um and it's gone both ways you know people have shared some clever stuff with me you know some sources for used lenses to buy or um you know different websites for movie enthusiasts and it's been pretty fun and i and i did for the longest time i wasn't you know i watched the whole DIY crowd um i've always been a very DIY guy myself i've always been a supporter of like the right to repair sort of um absolutely movements and i thought you know legally when i started doing this i had to run it by the you know the rest of the people here and we were very nervous about, you know, we didn't want to give tutorials, like, here's how you do this lens, because that puts us in a liability position legally.

So it was very challenging not to say, okay, now here's how you do this, but still give people knowledge, still encourage them to do stuff on their own. And I think I found a nice balance, but I have to be careful not to put my company at risk. sure as far as you know someone watched my video and then they took apart their lens and it broke it and now all of a sudden it's my fault because you told them yeah quote unquote to do that uh that's that actually brings up a good question what are what are some of the things that get asked a lot and what what is something that uh you've learned from the people who've been in the chat uh what gets asked a lot is what's my favorite lens uh okay sure no i hate being that guy I think the most common is people seeing the setup that I have and the tools that I have, which, again, this is not my proper bench. You know, where I'm sitting right now, what you're seeing is the same place I do the mod stream from. And this was meant to just be an engineering office.

So it didn't have, like our service area, the actual technician area is heavily filtered, and it's got airlines run everywhere with heavily filtered airlines. and a bunch of other stuff. I don't have any of that here because this is just an engineering space. So people will ask what kind of tools I'm using, you know, where can I get those screwdrivers? Where can I get that?

What is that chemical on your bench? I did buy that slip mat. Oh, did you? That's like one of the number one thing. I see people reposting on Instagram. Like, hey, I got my setup. I'm like, oh, yeah, that's the mat that I recommended. Which is, again, part of that whole DIY thing.

Yeah, you can go out and buy a, technician service pad or whatever, but this $5 dog football mat works better. So I share that, those little things, those little tips, the stuff that we've learned from doing this for, I mean, me personally, almost 20 years, and then my father and some of our other technicians are older technicians, I should say more experienced technicians, not older. Some of them have been doing this for 40 years. So we've all got these little tricks and stuff.

I'm usually happy to pass those on. But yeah, that's the most common question is, you know, what is that? What did you do there? Why did you do that? And then I think sprinkled in or the, hey, I heard this is what to do with this. Or I heard this. And I say, no, that's not right. Or yeah, that's a good idea, depending on what it is.

And then people sharing stuff with me, like I mentioned a minute ago, I think I've been turned on to a couple websites, just like fan stuff. There was one called Letterboxed. Because I literally just joined that last night. I just set up my account when that guy, one of the people watching the modstream told me about it. Because we were talking about all these different movies and what was shot with what. And I got onto the topic of, you know, I've got a mental list of movies that I need to watch. And he's like, oh, you've got to put it on Letterbox so you can keep track of it.

um so i've been trying to do that but just it's a rabbit hole man i'll tell you so dude i'm not i'm not even kidding i'm not sponsored this is not a plug or anything no but it's basically just a mental repository of what movies you've watched or what movies you want to watch and you can review them and you can rate them and stuff

um i don't i'm not going to do that because i'm not a film critic uh but it's been super handy to like keep track of those movies that I want to watch regardless of the platform that it's on because I still do that on Netflix and Amazon all the platforms I'll add things to my list but you can't see those lists in one place so I've started using letterbox and it's been really cool I'm not even kidding I signed up for that last night because I've been during the pandemic sharing up my Blu-ray collection and there's been a couple instances where I've bought the same Blu-ray twice because I forgot I had it.

So I was like, man, go ahead. I was like, I just got to get this app. So I got the app and then I spent a good two hours last night going through like just other list, big list that people had made or people that I had like followed because I connected it to my Twitter and just like going through and going like, yep, watch that, yep, watch that. Because like I think you're probably the same as me where like collecting things is fun. Yeah.

Or like having things organized is fun. And you're right. The app does have that thing where it's like, if you want to. to watch this here are the services that it's on that you have you know or don't have if you select them i'm trying now uh to find how i can add people i'm still new i've only been using it for like three weeks or something yeah i don't actually i would use my phone but it's in the teleprompter what i think because mine is just what's your hat or like albot oh we'll see if that comes up oh all i found is this Kenny McMillan guy yeah no sounds like a jerk

Wow, you said you just did last night, but you were to 576 films. Dude, I was, I was just hammering down on it. I told you, it's a rabbit hole. All right, I followed you. Sick, yeah, I'll add you when I, uh, but this is what I mean. Like, you can go to any page. Like, oh, yeah, the Matrix. I've seen that.

You know, add it. You just keep clicking them, and it's, it's awesome. I had a separate app a long time ago. I stopped updating it, but I ran into the exact same problem you just said, where I'd buy duplicate Blu-rays or DVDs. and it was a it was like a personal property organizing app and I used to keep track of from there so when I was at Best Buy and I saw that bin of you know 399 movies like oh man do I have this or not so I'd go through the app like oh yeah I already have it but now I'm using this because I kind of stopped

buying discs I do almost all digital now unless it's like a special edition you know 4k I'll get those but for everything else digital all the way. Yeah, I'm mostly by movies that like either I like or, um, because I mean, I'm,

I'm a child of the, uh, the special features era. Like that's where a lot of my film education came from. And that's actually what got me into making films. Honestly, was like watching special features and going like, oh,

I want to do that. Like I would have been happy being a set photographer. You know, like I was just, I just wanted to be in that zone. Um, but there. something you know like the i loved the phantom you couldn't find that anywhere and then two years

ago it comes out on blu-ray that's on your that's on your favorite films page right where i know because no one no one's ever heard of it i know i've heard of it i've never seen it so it's it's like a prior to my lens technician careers like i said earlier when i was you know my father started my father and i started duclos lines 2002 prior to that i worked at it was this this this fascinating concept where you'd go into a movie store and you'd rent movies for a predetermined amount of time as a place like physically yeah yeah Hollywood video that's wild it's very wild I worked at Hollywood video for years so I've seen all of these movies just not like you know maybe I haven't watched them properly but yeah at the longest time you know it was every day

I'd leave work and I have a stack of movies because they were free for employees And I just watched so much crap for years. I can't even remember half of it. See, that's my problem is I grew up on crap. And so recently I've started, so I have like those IKEA cube shelves. Yep. Oh, yeah. And so we've all got those.

And so I've started doing a thing where A, I've started a criterion collection because I've pretty much seen no criterion movies. Oh, you've got to subscribe to their streaming service. It's fantastic. yeah so like that's something i got i started buying the actual blu-rays because again i'm a special features guy i want to watch like documentaries about the films and all that you know we all take for granted you have these classic film critics you know cisco and iber and and what's i forget who we got replaced by roger or something i don't remember roger yeah roger whatever and eber when i

was a kid it was cisco heber i remember him and uh you know their jobs seemed so easy They watch a movie and they give it a rating. But their job is to give it an objective rating. And we've come to this point in time where, thanks to the internet, again, everybody's rating is their rating. And people forget that. Just because you liked movie A doesn't mean I'm going to like it and vice versa. And I think that people really need to remember that

because you see it with lenses every day when someone posts on a movie. a forum or a Facebook group or you know read user anything oh I bought this lens and it's terrible don't buy it and a it's a vintage lens you probably got a dud or it hasn't been cared for over the past 50 years and B that's your opinion it's not a blanket statement for every copy of that lens ever made and what someone else might think is perfectly usable so it really People need to cool it, and I can't preach enough the right, you know, there's no bad lens, the right lens for the right job. It's the same as critiquing films. There's no bad films.

There's just different films for different people. Frame and Reference is an Owlbot production. It's produced and edited by me, Kenny McMillan, and distributed by Pro Video Coalition. Our theme song is written and performed by Mark Pelly, and the Ethadar Mat Box logo was designed by Nate Truax of Trax Branding Company. You can read or watch the podcast you've just heard by going to provideocoolition.com or YouTube.com slash Owobot, respectively. And as always, thanks for listening.