Sat Sep 23, 2017 3:59 pm
I own the Zeiss CP2s.
I have the 28, 35, 50, 85, 100 and 135 along with the 50 Macro. (I have the Superspeed versions)
They are a very versatile lens and they have worked with me on almost every job I've done in the last 4 years, alongside Primos, Masterprimes, Superspeeds (the originals) Ultraspeeds and Ultraprimes and Leica summicrons.
They do have CA in certain situations, especially the superspeed versions.
So what ? Most lenses have some CA to *some* degree. I saw some on some Zeiss Master Primes while the sigma ZOOM shooting at the same time HAD LESS in the same situation.
CA is one of those things that is variable. It can be more or less depending on the contrast situation. If you look at the Leica shots from the very first Ursa Mini 4.6K footage that was released you'll notice the Leica Primes have some CA and that was at a decent stop.
I think the best way to evaluate is to test them for yourself in the shooting conditions you're planning to use them in.
The CP's are a budget cine lens though the price for many is still a lot compared to other budget lenses.
The main advantages of them is that they're light (good for Gimbal users) and that they're cheap for the cine features they offer, namely 300 degree focus throw, consistent front size and large sensor coverage and interchangeable mounts.
If you want better optical performance then the SLR Magic APO's are hard to go past for the price for me and very under-rated. They're just much heavier and there's only three lenses in the lineup at the moment with the fourth lens just announced at IBC. They're also designed to be EF / PL mount interchanegable.
There are also Canons, Sigma's, Cinealtas, and Rokinons, but most of those other lenses are considered better or sub par for other reasons too subjective to go into here.
To the original question, I don't believe you get much of a major lift optically from the CP3s. I doubt they're any worse than a CP2. The main thing is the option of lens encoding for metadata and I think they've improved the scaling of the way the focus rings work. A lot of focus pullers HATE the CP2 focus scale because it feels very different to other lenses like the S4s and Primos. This is another reason the SLR Magic's are nice, they pretty much replicated the scaling in a more focus puller friendly way.
These are all kind of tiny operational differences that may, or may not make a difference to you.
One other thing to think about, though no one is yet doing it...
Lens metadata means you can start doing lens corrections in post, which is already very standard in the stills world. That is, once you know what lens is on front, you can start to design post corrections that remove or eliminate common optical flaws and faults automatically. I don't think we're too far away from that say in Resolve. I'm sure you could ALSO do these corrections manually like you can in stills, but most users don't know how to build a lens correction map / profile now so I'm not sure that we'd see many bothering with the manual approach.
jb
John Brawley ACS
Cinematographer
Currently - Los Angeles
