Vintage and rehoused lenses
Older lenses, designed for stills or for cinema and often remounted in a modern barrel: a softer, more distinctive image with the handling of a cinema lens.
What is a rehoused lens?
The original optical block is remounted in a new barrel: focus and iris rings with cinema-pitch gears, the same front diameter across the set for the matte box, and usually a PL or LPL mount. Lens changes no longer require adjusting the follow focus or the matte box.
Several of our sets were rehoused by GL Optics, such as the Ø 110 mm Nikkor AI-S and the Petzval lenses, or by Iron Glass, such as the Soviet MKII set.
Nikon Nikkor AI-S GL Optics · IronGlass MKII
Our sets
Older stills lenses: Canon FD (ten focal lengths from 15 to 300 mm in Ø 80 mm, or a Ø 110 mm PL set to build from 3, 6 or 9 lenses), Nikkor AI-S (9 lenses in Ø 80 mm or 8 rehoused lenses in Ø 110 mm), Olympus OM Zuiko, Leica R in EF mount.
Cinema lenses: LOMO 70 (28 to 100 mm, Ø 114 mm) and LOMO Super Speed T/1.3 in PL mount, first-generation Zeiss B-Speed, Zeiss Standard MKII. For large sensors, the Mamiya Sekor 645 in LPL mount, from medium format; and for an older look on recent lenses, the Cooke Panchros FF.
Spherical sets · lomo · Canon
Why choose vintage
An older lens generally gives lower contrast, lighter blacks, stronger out-of-focus rendering and more flares. It softens skin and the digital image, which is sometimes enough to replace a diffusion filter.
This character varies more from one focal length to another than in a modern set: colour, sharpness and flares can change noticeably between two lenses of the same set.
Preparing your tests
Check the mount (PL, LPL, EF or FD) and any adapter ring, the front diameter for the matte box and the unit of the focus scale, metres or feet, given in the name of the set.
The safest approach is to test the set on the production camera, in the project's lighting: camera tests take place at the Saint-Denis depot by appointment.