I woke up to a peculiar email blast this past weekend:
My career of digital cinematographer started long time ago (1983) and my first ambition was to have serious and creative optics on my analog video cameras.
I convert so many lens to work with Betacam’s SP in tha way I was working before with my Bolexs and Arriflexs.
My experience in mechanical and optical rehousing has thirty years of experiments and creative shooting.
With the arrival of the Canon 5D for me was a real dream to go Full-Frame and enjoy the magic bokeh of the wideangles in the 24X36mm motion-frames,
and this is why I decided to go ahead with this complicated and enthusiastic project.I arrange an agreement with Carl Zeiss AG (was envolved with them in the past with the project of the DigiPrimes) and started the production of a great optical tool
for filmmakers looking to purchase and own a set of Carl Zeiss babyPrimes in a real interesting price range.For any question don’t hesitate to contact me-
best regards
Dante Cecchin
kelvinkamera+
The main claim is that these lenses would be 35-40% less expensive than a set of CP.2 lenses.
Of course I was curious and since I happened to be at Cine Gear I walked over to the Zeiss booth and spoke to Richard Schleuning, national sales manager in America for Zeiss. I showed him the email and asked if he knew anything about it. He said he hadn’t heard anything about them and that they may be fakes.
But…over at Cinema5D, they posted pictures of prototype babyPrimes.
So are these licensed products from Zeiss, third party hacks of existing Zeiss glass or complete fakes?
there was an update on the article at cinema 5d. Here is a quote from Zeiss
“- Carl Zeiss is in no way involved in the babyPrimes project or product of and does not maintain a relationship to the manufacturer.- Carl Zeiss cannot confirm that the optics used in the advertised product line are from Carl Zeiss, nor can we confirm that these optics meet the typically high standards of a Carl Zeiss lens- We would like to emphasize that Carl Zeiss cannot accept any liability for products that have been altered through unauthorized modifications. Therefore these products cannot be covered under the international warranty of Carl Zeiss.”