Tiny 100 Year-old Lens Makes Beautiful Images on a Canon DSLR

Ryan Koo

10.5.10 @ 10:29AM Tags : 5dmarkii, cinematography, dslr, lenses, timurcivan

A couple of weeks ago, DP Timur Civan posted some stills on Cinema5D taken with an ancient 1908 Wollensak 35mm F5.0 Cine-Velostigmat hand cranked cinema camera lens. This diminutive lens produced some wonderfully atmospheric images (sans color correction, even). As someone who shot The West Side through the oldest Nikon lenses I could find, in order to give it the appearance of another time and another place (and by “oldest” I mean “cheapest”), I really appreciated these images. Now Timur has shot a video using the antique lens on his 5D Mark II, and it’s one of the most analog-looking videos I’ve ever seen from a DSLR:

More images from Timur’s lens over at Planet5D.

I used some of my parents’ old Olympus OM lenses on this video, they’re the shots that look hazy. Have you guys shot anything on your DSLR using older or less-than-pristine glass? Have any images or videos you’d like to share?

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9 COMMENTS

Cinoom on 10.5.10 @ 10:51AM

Liked your African First video. Right sound with mellow colores.

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stevep on 10.5.10 @ 12:23PM

this video looks fantastic. great stuff.

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Alexander Miller on 10.5.10 @ 1:58PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyusyID6nzQ

Shot with an old Pentax k1000 lens, my favorite lens to shoot with.. I should have better sample footage soon

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yitux on 10.5.10 @ 3:59PM

hi, nice picture! But i have one question: what do you mean by “the most analog-looking video”?? How do you determine the diference between analog an digital in video, and why is that a good thing??

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Howard Phillips on 10.7.10 @ 11:52PM

Wonderful stuff, beautiful assembled too! I used to have a Kinoptic 8mm that was shocking;ly sharp, though with no lens coating…now is the time to resurrect it, clearly. Oh, sort-of-clearly, anyway! : )

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steve ramser on 04.14.11 @ 5:29PM

Beautiful imagery, please tell me about how you mount these old lenses to these new cameras

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Zachary Halberd on 03.25.12 @ 2:31PM

Nice cow footage

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