Schneider have today announced a new set of cine lenses with a unique characteristic – they allow you to tilt the focus plane. The Xenon FF-Prime Cine-Tilt lenses have a similar form-factor to Schneider’s regular full-frame cine primes, but add the ability to tilt by plus or minus 4 degrees. Don’t get confused, these are tilt only, not the more common Tilt/Shift stills lenses. They are designed just to tilt the plane of focus and do not shifting to alter parallax (See diagram below). The degree of tilt is also less than you typically find on a Tilt-Shift lens – Schneider’s own Tilt-Shift stills lenses have 8 degrees of tilt. This means that the new lenses will probably be better suited to subtler focus effects, more than the ‘miniature world’ look that has become so fashionable.
There will be a 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 75mm and 100mm, all with a common T2.1 maximum T-stop. The tilt of the lens is controlled with a large geared ring that has 120 degree rotation. In theory this should allow for some interesting shots as the tilt can be precisely controlled with a follow, or remote focus during filming. There is also a lock on the tilt mechanism.
Focus and iris also have standard 0.8 mod gears and the lenses can also be used like a regular cine lens if the tilt is not engaged. The image will look the same as the standard full frame primes.
Initially the Cine-Tilt FF-Primes will only be available in Sony E-Mount. It isn’t clear if the lenses will be offered in other mounts in the future.
For more info keep an eye on the Schneider website.
