My first of two, maybe three Hope prime lenses arrived today.
Early tests look to prove out what I hoped, that it is a very well corrected cinema lenses at a very nice price.
How good are they and what does it mean?
I fully expect to start to see some comparisons to the DZO, Nisi Athena and IRIX lenses and for these to be surprisingly close. A $400au lens vs a $2000au lens?
How else would you do it? They are already showing a better pedigree as well corrected cine lenses than their cost aligned competition, even their own stable mates the Spectrum and Vision series, so they need to be compared with better glass.
The Hope lenses are not perfect, but cinema lenses tend to shun absolute perfection. Sharpness and contrast deliberately controlled, even some flaws like distortion are rarely deal breakers, sometimes these are even pursued.
They are however often well corrected in all the ways you would want them to be for a solid “pure” enough base to work from, unless the maker is after a truly slanted look at the world.
Most budget cine glass suffers from inconsistencies between lenses in the same set in colour, tone or look and even T-stops and mechanics (the last two of which are unforgivable). This can be problematic as rigs, post processing and handling speed all benefit from these and time as they say, is money.
Usually they also have a specific weakness in poor chromatic aberration control, obvious focus breathing, a lack of sharpness, vignetting, poor build or sometimes a little of all of these, but not always across the range, sometimes different lenses have different flaws.
These can still make for excellent lenses, but often the user needs to be aware of these inconsistencies or they may even avoid certain lenses in a set if they are too weak or too different. The 7Artisan Vision lenses for example have a 25 T1.05, that is liked or loathed for it’s soft and dreamy character, something that the 35mm in the same range does not share.
These lenses are budget, beginner or curiosity lenses, especially the re-purposed legacy glass. Their character is less meant, but is more a result of price compromise and acceptance of that for cine use, than engineering intent. but if used well, few can tell which took what (in cinematography, most flaws and quirks are assumed to be intended).
The heaviest of this group by feel alone is the Spectrum 50mm, which just feels like a stumpy little lump of metal and glass. The Spectrum is a good lens, decently sharp and corrected. The Hope is next upgrading looks and adding balance across the board it is just solid and reliable. The Sirui feels lighter in all ways by comparison, making it the best run-n-gun option. The Sirui has more mood, more speed and a little funk.
The next tier, the semi-pro glass, the likes of IRIX, DZO or Nisi, as well as the cine-hybrid versions of Canon, Sony, Panasonic and Sigma glass, are usually where the true movie maker and serious commercial shooter meet.
They are very good, usually consistent enough to buy and use in sets and still manage some personal creative space of their own. The IRIX are clinical, the DZO and Nisi have some character and the re-housed stills lenses are often super (over) sharp, but nothing a filter cannot fix.
Cost is their biggest strength and weakness. Out of the range of the hobbyist, they are also seen as a budget option by top tier shooters, so often they are considered “transitional” lenses, a commercial shooters creative option, a video school’s best choice or for the well heeled studios as muck-arounds. I would guess most are in the rental sphere.
The Hope lenses are important here because they are the closest budget set made so far that share these second tier lenses traits. Almost invisible chromatic aberration, distortion, flare, focus breathing and decent, although not perfect colour matching (4 match, one is slightly warmer, one slightly cooler), as well as exceptional close focus all at the low end of the budget range. These are very similar traits to the dearer glass in the next category up. Very close.
This is achieved by keeping the T-stop in the more realistic range (T2.1), only covering crop frame (S35) formats, applying all the lessons learned in the several series before and I feel a genuine attempt to lift the class to heart breaker level.
A lift from some video tests on an old G9. Very nice to use and the results are as good as stills lenses.
It may well be evident in the future to users of these compared to other glass that they lack character (i.e. beautiful flaws) , but character is available all around, stability is elusive for less than three or more times the price.
$75 buys you character. Thankfully “character” is not holding my veranda up!.
The widest aperture of T2.1 is perfect for me. An adherent of the T4 (full frame) as perfect the cinematic depth aperture, I will use T2.8 on an APS-c lens, T2 on M43, which is where these lenses are employed and they are fully functional there. If I need faster, I have options, but in their space, the “no excuses” space, they are just perfect.
Sharp wide open and just the right amount of depth of field.
It will be interesting to see what the competition do in response, even the higher end makers when the inevitable comparison video start to come out.