Angenieux madness

[mpo]

Hi,

I had an Angenieux lens laying around so I thought I would put it on Ebay. The Chinese buyers seem to be crazy for these things. What is the deal?

Mike

[Dan Fromm]

Depends on the lens. What do you have?

[Gene McCluney]

Forgive my ignorance, but I thought Angenieux just made lenses for movie camera applications and for smaller format still cameras. Are there Angenieux lenses in shutters for LF cameras?

[C. D. Keth]

I thought they only made zooms for movie cameras. News to me.

[mpo]

Yes, sorry, it is for 35mm Exakta camera so probably not for this forum. It is a 24mm from 50 years ago.
Mike

[Robert A. Zeichner]

Angenieux has had a long history of manufacturing zoom lenses for the motion picture and television industry. They were among the first to produce a high quality zoom and were regarded as makers of the best and longest range zooms for quite some time. Panavision even re-packaged Angenieux zooms for their Panaflex cameras. I'll never forget my surprise when repairing one back in the late seventies and seeing the Angenieux focus barrel machined down to fit Panavision's outer shell. Beaulieu's and Bolexes were both seen with 12-120mm and 17-68mm zooms for 16mm models and smaller ones for the 8mm and super 8's. They even made side-finder style zooms for the Auricons, CP-16's and other 16mm news cameras of that era.

That said, Angenieux also produced fixed focal length lenses for both motion picture and still cameras. Bell & Howell Eyemo's were reglularly outfitted with Angenieux C-mount lenses, among them, the 25mm f.095, which was a staple of the newsman's shooting outfit. Alpa was one of the still camera manufacturers for whom Angenieux built some retro-focus wide angle lenses. Later on, Angenieux built some short range zoom lenses in a variety of mounts for other makes of still cameras. They were kind of pricey and after awhile, disappeared from the market.

Today, they continue to build very fine film camera zooms, among them the HR and the Optimo. They also make zooms for video cameras in both the field and studio style packages. Back when I was shooting motion pictures in the 70's, Angenieux zooms were the ones to have.

Probably more than you wanted to know, but I hope it helps give you some more perspective.

[Martin Courtenay-Blake]

After the Kern Macro Switar for the Alpa the Angenieux 35mm zooms are probably a pair of the best lenses ever made... I'm still looking out for some, just don't turn up to often on ebay.

Martin

[David A. Goldfarb]

A few of those Angenieux lenses for Alpa also were made in Canon FD and Nikon F and maybe Leica R mount, and they still fetch good prices. I think there was something like a 35-105 and an 80-200 or maybe it was 70-210 or something like that, and a 180 prime lens.

[Anthony Lewis]

I still have an Angenieux 12-120 mounted on an Eclair NPR and a Bell and Howell 70DR with Angenieux lenses. Nothing to do with large format and I won't sell them to the Chinese - they look just great on the shelf. I've heard people argue you can't get a lens faster than f1. I then produce the Angenieux 25mm f0.95.

[David A. Goldfarb]

I have the 15/1.3 and 75/2.5 C-mount lenses that I use for Super-8. They're very sharp, well made lenses with a nice look overall.

[Helen Bach]

I still have an Angenieux 12-120 mounted on an Eclair NPR and a Bell and Howell 70DR with Angenieux lenses. Nothing to do with large format and I won't sell them to the Chinese - they look just great on the shelf. I've heard people argue you can't get a lens faster than f1. I then produce the Angenieux 25mm f0.95.

Now and then I still use my old bombproof NPR kit with Angenieux 9.5-57 f/1.7, 16-44 f/1.1, 10-150 f/2 and 25 f/0.95 lenses as well as others like the good old Kinoptic Tegea 5.7 mm f/1.6. It has the Angenieux correcting eyepiece as well.

The theoretical limit is f/0.5 rather than f/1 - there's no reason for f/1 to be a limit. An f/0.7 lens was famously used by Stanley Kubrick and John Alcott for Barry Lyndon.

David mentioned the Nikon-mount lenses. I have the 28-70 f/2.6 and 180 f/2.3 Apo. They are a bit low contrast, but very sharp.

Best,
Helen

[C. D. Keth]

The theoretical limit is f/0.5 rather than f/1 - there's no reason for f/1 to be a limit. An f/0.7 lens was famously used by Stanley Kubrick and John Alcott for Barry Lyndon.


And, perhaps as importantly, by Doug Milsome. He was the poor focus puller that had to deal with shooting scenes at f0.7 ;)

I believe there was also a Switar prime for the reflex bolexes that was a 10mm f0.7