Angenieux Lenses FAQ 1.0 Bo-Ming Tong Dec 22, 95 1. Introduction The French company Angenieux is a respected manufacturer of motion picture lenses. They entered the 35mm SLR business, but quitted in 1994 when Thomson acquired them. Special thanks to Rui Pedro Mendes Salgueiro for his help in preparing this manuscript. 2. What lenses did Angenieux make ? Angenieux 28-70/2.6 AF This is their last lens before they stopped making 35mm lenses. 77mm filter size, mock IF (the lens changes length and rotates, but an outer barrel provides non-rotating filter threads and make the length of the lens looks constant). The outer barrel also houses a square-shaped baffle for flare reduction. Also the outer barrel is designed to act like a lens hood at longer focal lengths (quite a standard design these days). Probably because of these the lens doesn't come with a lens hood. The very wide focusing ring itself will rotate, which is very annoying on an AF camera. Manual focusing is underdamped. Mock constant aperture design - aperture blades stop down as you zoom towards 28mm. Very few constant aperture zooms are really constant aperture. Rather, the aperture blades close down as you zoom to the wide end. The aperture ring of the Nikon AF version has full stop detents but no non-AI prong. 16 elements in 4 groups. Close focus 0.65m. 8 aperture blades. available mounts: Nikon AF, Canon AF, Minolta AF. Angenieux 35-70/2.5-3.3 available mounts: Canon FD, Leica R, Minolta X, Nikon AI-S, Pentax K, Contax/Yashica?. Angenieux 70-210/3.5 62mm filter threads, long but lightweight. Macro. 6 aperture blades. The Leica R 70-210/3.5 is supposed to be this very same lens. available mounts: Canon FD, Leica R, Minolta X, Nikon AI-S, Pentax K, Contax/Yashica?. Angenieux 135/3.5 available mounts: Leica screw. Angenieux 180/2.3 APO DEM 82mm filter threads, 995 grams in weight. Built in lens hood with nice matte lining. Very good overall balance despite its gigantic front element. 8 elements in 6 groups, DEM (differential element movement) design, can be thought of as floating elements or CRC. Close focus at 1.8m. 9 aperture blades. Use of a fluorophosphate element. available mounts: Nikon F, Canon FD, Contax/Yashica?, Leica R?, Leica M? Angenieux 200/2.8 APO 3. Where do I find Angenieux lenses ? Since they have already closed down their 35mm business, it's difficult if possible at all to find any of them new. They are rare on the used market. Angenieux lenses tend to be keepers. People won't sell them easily unless there are some hidden problems so be careful. Prices vary greatly and for such rare items blue books tend to be not very helpful. 4. What do Angenieux lenses come with ? You will find the following items packed with a new Angenieux 180/2.3 APO DEM lens. Other Angenieux lenses might vary but by not too much. Most used lenses aren't complete, but that does not necessarily stop you from buying - just bargain accordingly on prices. 1. hard case 2. soft case 3. manual 4. filter (not sure about this, the 28-70/2.6 definitely comes with an Angenieux filter) 5. 30 year international warranty 6. MTF test chart for the lens (they MTF-test *each* lens) 5. Focusing rings, zoom rings and aperture rings Angenieux lenses follow the German convention. You turn the zoom ring to the left to zoom to the long end and you turn the focusing ring to the right to focus closer. This is referred to as clockwise zooming and anticlockwise focusing. zooming focusing Angenieux clockwise anticlockwise Canon clockwise anticlockwise Contax clockwise anticlockwise Leica clockwise anticlockwise Minolta clockwise clockwise Nikon anticlockwise clockwise Pentax anticlockwise clockwise However, the 28-70/2.6 AF is an exception: it will turn the same way as the manufacturers' lenses. Hence in Nikon mount zooming is anticlockwise and focusing clockwise. Of course, aperture rings, if any, will turn in the same direction as the manufacturer's lenses, or else it will not be possible (or very difficult) to meter-couple to the camera. Again, Nikon and Pentax do not follow the crowd but turn in opposite directions. 6. Are Angenieux lenses any good ? Many people find the colour rendition and the general look to be similar to Leica and have a special "European taste" which might not be all that appealing to those who are used to Japanese lenses. Unfortunately, Angenieux lenses definitely lack the robust construction of Leicas. Many parts like focusing rings and zoom rings are made of polycarbonate. Like Leica, Angenieux lenses do not seem to be able to beat much cheaper Japanese lenses on the test bench, but still, they have a small but loyal following. From rps@mat.uc.pt Fri Dec 22 05:47 MST 1995 Subject: Re: Angenieux ? To: bmtong@cs.arizona.edu (Bo-Ming Tong) Date: Fri, 22 Dec 95 13:46:04 MET Looking at the Index published by CdI, they have tested the following lenses: f/2.8 DEM 200 ED 96 f/2.6 28-70 (Nikon) 123, Nikon tests f/2.6 28-70 (Minolta AF) 139, Minolta tests f/2.6 28-70 (Canon EF) 150, Canon tests f/2.5-3.3 35-70 111 f/3.5 70-210 62, 111 f/3.5 70-210 "New" 108, 111 Unfortunately I don't have any of these and none of them is on the list of magazines that I will be ordering shortly. /- Cote d'Amour | /- Global Performance | | /- Distorsion | | | /- Vignetting | | | | /- Real life | | | | | (sur le terrain) 35-70/2.5-3.3 **** 12 9 12 12 28-70/2.6 **** 12 8 8 12 70-210/3.5 *** 12 13 14 14 70-210/3.5 "New"**** 13 13 14 14 From bmtong Fri Dec 22 17:47:47 MST 1995 Newsgroups: rec.photo.equipment.35mm Subject: Lens Test: Angenieux vs Pentax I test shoot the Pentax FA* 28-70/2.8 on a Pentax Z-1P and the Angenieux 28-70/2.6 AF on a Nikon F3. Mirror lockup is used. F3 has straight mirror lockup and Pentax Z-1P has mirror prefire linked to the 2 second timer mode. The shutter speeds aren't those which induces mirror vibration; mirror lockup is used "just to be safe". Metering is performed by a Sekonic spot meter. According to the Leica literature, they deliberately leave some of the abberations uncorrected because they do not aim for very high resolution at a test target. Rather, they want to create lenses for real photographic situations where subjects are 3 dimensional objects. Also, they optimize for edge accutance rather than sheer resolution. Since it has been said that Angenieux has "Leica taste", I took pictures of 3 dimensional objects rather than using test targets. After all, I want to test resolution, not field curvature. Notice that the Pentax FA* 28-70/2.8 is not a particular outstanding optic in its class. It's about the same as similar offerings from Canon and Minolta I guess. Therefore, it is more like a Japanese vs French test than anything else. I took pictures of a street at about 10:00am with Fujichrome Sensia 100 and the slides are inspected with a 5x loupe (actually, a Nikkor 50/1.4) on a light table. No difference. I moved onto 7x (Nikkor 35/1.4). Again, no difference. These two optics are of such excellent quality that up to 7x you can't find any flaw at any focal length. I moved onto 10x (Pentax FA* 24/2.0). At this size, it becomes obvious that the Angenieux has much inferior resolving power than the Pentax at all tested focal lengths (28, 50, 70). The tele end of the Angenieux is also a bit shorter. These tests are taken at f/8. I did another test in my kitchen, of detergents and stuff. The back of such bottles have a lot of fine prints and the target is about 1:12. At 70mm, I couldn't detect any differences at 10x (both f/8 and f/16). At 28mm, since Angenieux cannot do 1:12 but Pentax can, no confirmative conclusion can be drawn. The Angenieux, however, has slightly better edge acutance and thus look very sharp. It also has slightly better color separation. The Pentax, on the other hand, render out of focus areas crisply and more beautifully.