I've often wondered when I do lens reviews
if I'm being too picky about certain things.
And recently, topics like focus breathing
and chromatic aberration are becoming more
and more contentious.
So I thought what if I get the best lens,
and use it to set sort of a realistic benchmark
of expectations for future reviews?
So here we go, the 35-millimeter Signature Prime from ARRI.
Maybe the best 35-millimeter lens on the planet.
Let's get undone.
(catchy music)
♪ Gerald Undone ♪
♪ He's crazy ♪
What's happening, everybody?
I'm Gerald Undone, and technically pickles are a fruit.
All right, for disclosure, ARRI did not sponsor this video.
And obviously, they're not gonna let me keep a $30,000 lens.
I did visit the ARRI Rental in Toronto though
and I got to do some lens tests
with the wonderful staff there, more on that later.
This video does have an actual sponsor though,
and that's Storyblocks.
Now I've tested a lot of 35-millimeter lenses.
The best for my Sony mirrorless is probably
the 35-millimeter G Master.
It's optically-stunning, not perfect,
and it does have notoriously bad focus breathing,
but I think it's probably
the best overall 35-millimeter lens available
for that system.
Now I thought when it comes to doing this comparison,
I might as well offer up the best lens
to compare against the Signature Prime
because I've shown some comparisons between the G Master
and you know, cheaper older 35s and it stomps all over them.
So it's not really a fair test to take a lens
that's getting stomped over by this one and compare it
to the best 35-millimeter lens ever.
So let's see how much better the best is
over a best photography 35-millimeter lens
for Sony mirrorless.
And to keep things even and interesting,
I am doing it on the Sony a1
because this is the same camera
that I've used for probably the last two years
to do most of my lens reviews for Sony anyway,
and to achieve that on the a1 here,
we have the LPL to E-mount adapter from Wooden Camera.
And I'm actually gonna mount this lens on this camera now
so you can see just how absurd this combination was,
but it was the only way I could guarantee
that the camera wasn't playing a role
and everything else was the same.
This lens is actually surprisingly light.
For the size of it, you might think,
"Wow, that's a monster," and it definitely is.
You know, like look a little size comparison
to the G Master.
(laughs) It does look like a giant.
It's 1.7 kilos or 3.7 pounds.
If I told you this was only a 1.7-kilo lens,
you'd be surprised, and in the hand, it's surprising.
And it comes with a massive case.
And if you pick up the case,
it doesn't feel like the lens is in there.
It's kind of trippy. Anyway, let's mount it.
Now this is not a review of what it's like
to wield this thing on a Sony mirrorless camera
because that's a ridiculous proposition,
but what I can say is it was very difficult
to capture even some of the test images with this
because one of the levers for the lock is right
where the grip goes.
It's really hard to kind of control this and focus.
The focus gear on this thing is definitely set up for,
you know, using it for a motor.
It's got like a 300-degree throw.
So when you're trying to like focus on something
with your hand while supporting it
and then realize you gotta travel it quite a ways
to get all the way around.
I tried tracking my little one-year-old
who was running around, impossible.
The build quality is stellar on this,
but given the size and the scope of it,
you would think that the focus ring
and the iris ring actually move lighter
than you would think.
They require less resistance.
Very consistent and smooth, but yeah,
it's sort of a lighter touch than I was expecting.
And same for the iris ring,
but both are are incredibly smooth.
It is light but it's still large,
and the exit of the lens is quite large as well.
And this is all part of a telecentric design
that ARRI's working on here,
basically to keep your light rays as straight
as possible traveling through the lens instead of,
you know, needing to bend at extreme angles
to work your way down,
such a compact lens like this with a smaller exit.
And this means that there are still curved pieces of glass,
but they're thinner.
That's the trick to stellar lens quality,
is large but it doesn't have to be heavy.
Focus on the things that matter,
an optical formula that keeps telecentricity
without bulking up and causing other problems.
And the Signature Prime is probably
the perfect balance of that.
Now while talking about manual focus,
we should talk about focus breathing
because if I'm comparing it to the 35-millimeter G Master,
the biggest problem with the G Master
is its terrible focus breathing,
so much so that sometimes it feels
like you're using a 40-millimeter lens.
But the Signature Prime obviously
has imperceivable focus breathing.
I didn't see any at all.
It goes incredibly out of focus because the close focus
on this thing is way better than I expected too.
So that change from minimum focus
to infinity is rather drastic.
But there's very little,
if any at all, movement of the frame.
I do have some comparison shots that I wanna show you
in Lightroom now between these two lenses.
So let's do that.
All right, so the first thing I wanna compare here
is chromatic aberration.
So the image on the right is the G Master,
the image on the left is the Signature Prime.
Now what we wanna look for is as these lines go
out of focus to the front and the back,
is it gonna add magenta and green
to those out of focus areas?
And the answer is yes, which I was surprised by,
because ARRI's stance is pretty much
that they solve chromatic aberration,
and I think that they did in a realistic position
but not if you wanna be pixel-peeping at,
you know, 400% or whatever.
So if we do zoom right in here,
we can see just a minor amount of magenta fringing
around the white lines.
Now I don't know which one wins because if we zoom in,
there's certain areas where like this one,
like I can see it there on the G Master
and I can see it here.
But now up here, is it worse than the G Master?
I don't know. You know, like they trade off blows.
I would maybe give it a wash
and this would be an instance
where I would say we should not be critical
of this small amount of chromatic aberration on the G Master
because it still seems to be present even
on the Signature Prime.
Now of course, if you move across in the Signature Prime,
it is impressive how it looks out
to the edge compared to the G Master.
Now there are lenses I've tested that have crazy purple
and green everything all over the place,
and I think those ones are still worth pointing
out saying, you know,
there is noticeable longitudinal chromatic aberration.
But maybe what we should be doing is that
if you're operating at a zoom like this
and you can't see anything,
it looks white to you then anything
beyond that is not worth considering part of the review,
and that's basically what this whole video was about,
are these elements that are worth talking about anymore?
And I think if you have an image like this, then no.
That might as well get a 10 outta 10
for chromatic aberration 'cause I haven't seen any better.
Now let's talk a little bit about distortion.
This is the frame here,
you can see your lines and all the squares and stuff.
It's excellent for like,
there might be the smallest amount of barrel distortion.
I don't know, like I can't really see it.
So maybe, maybe not.
But if you have to debate that much about it,
I would say that it's not a factor.
And keep in mind, these are not corrected.
This is not something where you can,
there's no lens corrections for this lens
when shooting on this camera.
Now you can get them with your photography lenses.
If you turn all the corrections off,
usually those photo lenses look a lot worse.
Now vignetting and sort of a color tonal consistency
is a different thing altogether.
The one on the right is the G Master
with corrections turned off,
and you can see there's significant vignetting.
All these tests by the way so far have been wide open,
which is T1.8 on the Signature Prime
and f/1.4 on the G Master,
which is probably usually about the equivalent.
If you see a 1.4,
those are usually only transmit at about a T1.8.
Look at how even it is across the frame
on the Signature Prime, and also the white remains.
It has a certain neutrality across the frame
and this sort of classic ARRI slight warmness
without being inaccurate, if that makes sense.
But essentially, this might be the best test result
for vignetting and consistency
of the whiteness throughout the frame.
You can see actually shadows of me taking the image,
but there's no vignetting in that image at all.
Okay, now let's talk about the bokeh,
which was an interesting comparison here.
Now the G Masters are all about their bokeh.
They're like the best that Sony offers.
That's one of the things that makes them the G Master,
and they don't beat the Signature Prime.
But if we punch in a little bit here,
we can, on the G Master,
see some texture in the little fairy lights in their bokeh.
This sort of ringing that's going on here.
Now they've done really well
to minimize the outer membrane look.
But if we compare that to the Signature Prime,
the texture inside of this is so much smoother,
and that's incredible.
Now this is not what I was expecting,
but it gives us another one of those updates
to how to review lenses.
There's a noticeable amount of cat's eye in the corner
on the bokeh here and there also is on the G Master.
But whenever we talked about the G Master, we would say,
"Well, it's pretty good, you know.
Like it doesn't get too cat's eye,
just a little bit over the corner."
But if the Signature Prime is gonna do that too,
maybe we should stop worrying about it.
And when I asked ARRI about it, they're like,
"Yeah, that's what we do. All lenses do that.
We wanted to maintain that.
People like that, that's the way that it works."
- On some lens, like anamorphic,
we see that cat's eyes that's happening
as we're moving left and right.
They said, "We like that."
- I guess as reviewers, we should stop being like,
"A cat's eyes a little bit in the corner."
It's like, yeah, so does the $30,000 Signature Prime.
So who cares?
And then I did one stop down to 5.6
so we could look at the actual iris blades.
And as you can see here,
it's an 11-bladed iris in both cases.
And maybe at 5.6 is a bit more of the great equalizer
between these two lenses.
I would still argue
that maybe the Signature Prime is a little bit smoother
than the G Master, but they're pretty similar at 5.6 now.
And what's more interesting is when I was at ARRI Rental,
they showed this case called Impression Filters.
Now I was relatively new to Impression Filters.
I know some people know about these already.
- [Presenter] Four strength are positive,
they have different characteristic.
We have four strength that are negative.
And as we put them on the lens,
we're gonna see the background
and the foreground changing
and also that glimmer effect.
- So on the back of the lens here,
there's this little magnetic clip that you can take off,
and you can use this to put your own net
or whatever material you wanna put on there
to control the look of your shot.
But you can also get the Impression Filters
that replace this.
- All kinds of things happening in here.
- Okay. - It's special sauce.
- They're almost like a way to detune the lens
to a specific look.
What I love about the Signature Primes,
you know when people talk about cine lenses are always like,
"Oh, I wanna get this lens or that lens
because it has a certain character,"
and often, that character is a flaw.
So maybe the bokeh is really weird
or it's so bubbly or it's swirly, or it does this or that.
And I'm always put off by the idea.
Well, what if I don't want that character
and I don't want to have multiple different sets of lenses?
I'd rather just have a set of lenses that is neutral
and pristine, and then I guess I can do stuff afterwards.
And the Signature Prime, ARRI basically agreed.
They were like, "Let's make the Signature Primes flawless
and neutral, and then we'll use our Impression Filters
to add that character that you might want
for a particular project."
- [Presenter] On the negative, my background comes back
because of that halo effect.
My foreground disappear, sorry,
because of the donut effect.
My foreground disappear because of the halo.
And on the positive, it's the opposite.
My background disappear because of the halo.
My foreground comes back because of the donut effect.
My foreground disappeared, my background reappeared.
Halo, donut, my center stays the same.
- Now what I can say is ARRI has done a tremendous job
of matching all the lenses through the lineup.
And there are quite a few other lenses,
but if you look at them,
the color intention and consistency is amazing
across all of their lenses.
Where on the photography lens side,
it's basically the Wild West.
You might get this lens
and really like the way that it looks,
but then you shoot with another Sony lens of a similar age
and class and maybe it doesn't quite look the same.
Heck, the three lenses I'm using
in here right now don't look the same.
I got two that match and one that doesn't,
so I have to change it.
That's something you wouldn't have to worry about,
and ARRI's done a really good job with that.
But in terms of whether it's superior color,
the color you like, again,
there's a lot of subjectivity in that.
But I'll tell you what,
I'm gonna mount this monstrosity on that camera there.
(production beeps) Okay, here we go.
I've got the lens mounted on my a7 IV over there.
The field of view isn't the same obviously
because I was using,
I think it was shooting at like 50-mil on the previous shot.
Now this is a little bit wider
and I didn't wanna switch to APS-C mode
because I thought that might change the image more
than just showing you a slightly wider field of view.
And I've got my color chart here
so that we can look at the neutral grays
and also I can show you the vectorscope
to see what the color accuracy is like.
And then I've got my script for Storyblocks over here,
the sponsor of today's video,
because I didn't wanna put it on a teleprompter
because I didn't wanna put a teleprompter on the end
of that lens and corrupt the whole test.
Although I don't think I could even fit (laughs) my tiny,
little, compact teleprompters.
Can you imagine seeing a little Parrot Padcaster
on the end of Signature Prime?
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All right, I got a couple more test images
to show you in Lightroom here.
This one is about close focusing.
Now I don't have the Sony shot in here,
but it's on my computer so I'll put it up in post.
They were very, very similar
in terms of how close they can focus.
And like I said, the G Master was my favorite for that.
I like a 35-mil lens that I can get really close
and create sort of these sort of weird abstract worlds.
And what's crazy is how close you get
because the lens is so long and it's based on the sensor.
You actually get like crazy close to the lens
when doing it on the Signature Prime.
Now I know there's people that care about sunstars
and like to talk about sunstars in reviews.
I usually include them to satisfy those people.
And in this instance,
I would say the G Master has more symmetrical sunstars.
The Signature Prime has sort
of some interesting character here.
But if you wanted a more perfect round,
the G Master does that and then if we talk
about flare in the same instance,
the G Masters are supposed to be really good for flare.
And now neither one of these had anything on them.
No hoods, no anything,
just letting the sun get rayed in there.
The G Master has less pronounced artifacts.
We can see here on the Signature Prime
that we have some colors and they're sharper
and they kind of stand out there.
But the G Master has larger
and more significant effects across the frame.
By the way, this is an example of the mount adapter coming
in to the shot there, those little black edges.
If we look at the next frame for both of these,
you can see what I'm talking about.
So again, yeah,
more pronounced artifacts in the Signature Prime,
but look what's happening over here.
On the Sony image,
the effect of the sun is darkening this whole area here
to where we don't get as many details or as much color.
But then if we look at an area that's supposed
to be black around the sun,
I don't know how this is gonna show up on YouTube.
On this one, it's a neutral black on the Signature Prime.
But on the G Master,
it actually has sort of like a faded brown weirdness
in the contrast there.
Now I was gonna do my own gamut of sharpness comparisons,
but there was no need to because when I was at ARRI Rental,
they had this great setup where they had this projector
in the other room that I so wish that I had,
but it's probably some special, crazy expensive projector,
and it's mounted for like PL mount and stuff like that.
And then rather than light coming through the lens
and being projected onto the sensor,
it instead is reversing it and it's putting light
through the lens and shooting it onto a wall.
And they have this reticle
that they can insert into the projector
that puts onto the wall and through the lens,
basically like a focus chart, which is so cool to see.
And I don't think
that capturing it is gonna show the same thing
that you see in person, but basically even in the corners,
you can see these line pairs, you know,
like 80, 100, 140-line pairs to see if you can make
out the individual lines and how they're separated.
And then it has these markers
for the different sensor sizes.
ARRI Rental was really gracious with their time.
They went through and put some vintage lenses on,
put different ARRI lenses on like their Master Primes
and so on.
And when you look at some of those old lenses,
you're looking at like also some older photography lenses
in the same sense where you're like, "Oh yeah,
you know, it's soft in the center.
Like, oh, there's chromatic aberration,
it's distorting out to the side or whatever."
And then they put in the Signature Prime,
and not only is the image circle incredible,
this is the cool thing is you don't always get
to see the image circle, right?
We always take pictures with the camera,
so we're only seeing what the sensor is already sort
of punching out of the lens.
What was so cool about this projector is we get
to see the entire image circle.
So even the parts of the image
that are never gonna be captured by anything
because they're outside of the largest sensors
that we even have.
Anyway, what's crazy
about the Signature Prime is unlike all the other lenses
that we went through, when they switched over to it,
it is just sharp everywhere.
Wow, wow. - 'Cause if we close it,
it would've had something much nicer.
But now if we look
at the first thing I'm gonna check is resolution,
and I can see by 140 no problem.
- I'm looking over here at the corner
and I could count all the bars
and like even the smallest line pairs.
It was incredible. Like I said, I want that projector.
But the genius ability over here
for the Impression Filters is really
what sets this lens apart I think is being able
to add that character to your lens for the project
without destructively changing the brilliance
of the Signature Prime.
Just don't try to mount it on your Sony mirrorless camera
and run around because that's absurd.
Alright... I'm done.
(energetic music)