5.7mm lens

Today's episode is sponsored by Squarespace. So I wanted to talk about this new lens that I got because it's quite an oddity. My old Angenieux lens is somewhere along I-40 in New Mexico. May it rest in pieces probably. It's all documented here in this horror short film that I made. After I went through the 600 stages of grief, I chose to begin this bolex lens rebuild with a wide angle as it's sort of my personal preference when it comes to moving pictures. Anything wider than a 24 millimeter full frame equivalent will do. So we're looking for something in the ultra wide angle category. Unfortunately, finding a wide angle for the bolex is a very difficult task. Not many lenses exist wider than 10 millimeters. But wouldn't you believe it, a couple days after I lost my Angenieux lens, which, ow, yeah, that still hurts, a wild eBay listing appeared for a less common super wide angle. A Century 5.7 millimeter f2.5 that I got for a steal because hitting buy now on good deals for camera equipment is the only way I feel anything anymore. It was listed by an online pawn shop that maybe didn't really know what they had because there's not a lot of information online about it, much less any listings for a C-mount version. A 5.7 millimeter lens is about a 20 millimeter full frame equivalent. And yeah, I did put this thing on a full frame camera just for fun once. Obviously, it doesn't cover full frame as the 16 millimeter format is much, much smaller. But it's kind of a cool look. And the lens flares aren't too bad either. Anyway, that's enough fun. There are some caveats with this lens, which we'll get into. But first, let's load some Kodak Vision 3 250D for the road. A road that leads its way out in Texas to generate some images the old fashioned way. The hard way. All right, gang, we're doing it. We're loading some 16 millimeter, some 250D. Powerful. Come on. I hate C-mount. Yeah, looks like s*** inside. Perfect for filming. We are going to be at around... Oh, there's just a flood upstairs. I don't love that. When I got this lens in the mail, I immediately threw up. I mean, I threw the lens on the Bolex. And then I threw up. Everything was out of focus. And this lens doesn't exactly have a focusing helicoid. More on that later. Disappointed, I started thinking outside of the box. Maybe it's just a lens flange issue and there's actually nothing wrong with it. I have heard in the past that some lenses for reflex versions of the Bolex do need to be collimated. Either way, I spent the next four hours trying to spell collimation and eventually fell asleep at my desk. But when I woke up two days later, I just decided to take the lens apart. I do have some experience with lens disassembly. More in a f***ed up way, like Sid from Toy Story. But whatever, let's try it anyway. So I disassembled the damn thing, which was quite difficult. By the way, it seems that lens techs, like lube techs, like to torque everything down to 700 foot pounds. Anyway, after some digging, I found the lost treasure of the Sierra Madre. Something like eight gold shims in a strategic location within the lens. So I took one out and reassembled it and voila. Infinity focus. That's the short of it. Get it? Because we're shortening the flange. So clearly not enough light in here for this lens. It's a f2.5 at its fastest. Paired with a 250 ISO, it just wasn't sucking enough. Sucking enough photons in, I should, I should specify. But otherwise, I did find the wide angle quite incredible for interiors. So this shot is cool because it's not only, I guess, technically a home invasion, but I did a super smooth rack of the aperture upon entering the house. So this lens is quite unique because there's no focusing helicoid on the barrel. With such a wide angle lens, why would you need one? At 5.7 millimeters combined with a standard 16 millimeter format that is quite small, your depth of field will be quite large, even wide open. Everything from infinity to probably around three or four feet is in focus. Greater still when you close the lens down. It's more or less the same concept at work in the lenses of disposable cameras, though every camera is truly disposable if you think about it. I guess the downside is that if you want some artsy wide angle close-ups, you can either close the lens down or, you know, unscrew the lens from the mount a little bit to bring the focus closer. But legally, I didn't tell you that. If you ever end up doing this dumb sh**, leave me out of it. I'll deny everything in court. I think Whataburger is known for their burgers more. So let's pound some quick Whataburger. Famously the only fast food chain to start with the letter W. And then switch over to some Kodak Vision 3 500T before I trauma dump some more knowledge on you. If you look closely at the footage, there is a little bit of fisheye distortion here. Well, truthfully, with this lens, there is a decent amount of fisheye distortion. I just went ahead and corrected it to rectilinear in post the best I could without, I guess, going too overboard. I don't mind correcting that fisheye effect personally. We still get a pretty wide-angle field of view out of it. And yeah, I feel like it isn't as distracting anymore. It's a small price that I'm very happy to pay for a wide-angle rectilinear rendering on 16mm. Because at the end of the day, I think all I want from a wide-angle lens is, you know, straight lines and a camera that shoots global shutter. I want the Fallen Angels look. Of course, that was shot on Super 35mm. But the cinematographer Christopher Doyle actually used another Century lens for it. A Century 9.8mm supposedly. And then chopped it down even further with an auxiliary wide-angle attachment, making the lens combo a 6.8mm at the end of the day. Which is somewhere in the ballpark of a 10mm lens on full frame. The closest wide-angle true rectilinear lens that I could think of that would fit on my Bolex is probably the Angenieux 5.9mm. Probably quite a capable lens itself. But it's gone for a startling pile of cash these days. And, you know, good luck finding it in C-mount. It is also fixed focus and it has a wide front element. So it probably wouldn't really play that well with other lenses on the Bolex turret. Hence this Century 5.7mm might just be the jewel that I needed. One of my biggest inspirations ever for motion picture is, of course, Emmanuel Lubezki. The award-winning cinematographer of Y Tu Mama Tambien, Children of Men, Birdman. The list is extensively impressive. All it's missing is the nut job 2. Lubezki designs a lot of his camera work to be fluid. Sort of floating and sometimes handheld. Almost a semi-documentary feel with his use of natural light. And that's a style that's inspired me quite a bit. Not that that's really an excuse to walk around with shaky handheld footage. But my only excuse for now. Anyway, hundreds of miles on the floor of the car eventually took its toll on the old Century 5.7mm lens. The vibrations and rattling of the car must have, I guess, wiggled some things loose over time. And the internal lens elements slowly drifted away from the film plane. Meaning infinity focus was lost. Obviously, I didn't bring my tools with me on that trip because I didn't want to give TSA any other reason to aggressively cavity search me. A man can only take so much. So I basically just had to rely on the fast 500 speed of the film stock and close down to make sure everything was in focus. And it worked for the most part. This shot of Caleb is wide open and you can kind of start to see the defocus creeping in. I've since disassembled the lens and remedied the issue. But I felt like it was worth mentioning anyway. But before I issue my closing statements and the golden path forward for this lens, I'd like to first thank today's sponsor, Squarespace, for their ongoing support of this channel. It's 2026. Don't be the last person on the planet without a website. Chances are you've heard of the industry-leading website builder Squarespace before. But did you know the team behind the online powerhouse recently implemented a bunch of tools that utilize groundbreaking AI to custom build the website of your dreams? Tools like Design Intelligence which utilize artificial intelligence to not only perfect but personalize your new website down to every last cutting edge detail. Are you a photographer like me looking to show off your work? Get started doing so with hundreds of professionally designed templates. Time to take your work a step further? 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Anyway, there isn't enough therapy in the world to get me over losing that ingenue lens, but this is a solid start. The only lens that I know of nowadays that's wider and would work on this system is the Optix 4mm, but you can't exactly commandeer that lens anymore. It's a specialty cinema lens nowadays. They used it on poor things quite a bit actually. Maybe someday I'll rent one and make a cool video. Or just a video. Otherwise, there are two more turret spots on the Bolex, and I've been doing a bunch of research as to how to fill them holes. There's a little joke in there somewhere. I'll be sure to update you in the future. Unless of course, no one actually gives a crap about this and it's just me. Which is, yeah, it's pretty likely.