NEW K35 Primes by Servicevision.

Those Full Frame Fanatics from Barcelona are at it again. The same Servicevision team who designed and built the FFA Scorpiolens Anamorphic 2x primes have developed a completely new series of lenses with matching characteristics, flares and bokeh to augment the original, venerable, vintage Canon K35 sets. These new lenses are called NEW K35 by Servicevision.

The set includes a 15mm T1.5 that covers Full Frame (43.27mm diagnonal), an 18mm T1.5 that covers Full Frame and RED 8K VV (46.31mm diagonal) and a 100mm T1.4 that covers these and larger formats.

The original Canon K-35 primes were introduced by Canon in 1976 in collaboration with Ed diGiulio’s Cinema Products Corp. In the beginning, they came in BNCR mounts (61.47mm FFD) and competed with Zeiss Super Speeds which had Arri Bayonet Mounts. (Neither Arri nor Zeiss capitalized the company name at that time:) Both sets were fast and small. The K-35s had less contrast and sharpness. The K-35 design was among the first to use aspherical elements to avoid spherical aberrations. They had good mechanics for focusing and an iris with more blades than usual.

In 1976, A Sci-Tech Award was presented to “Hiroshi Suzukawa of Canon and Wilton R. Holm of the AMPTP Motion Picture and Television Research Center for the design and development of super-speed lenses for motion picture photography.” (Note: Zeiss Super Speeds, introduced in 1975, were also awarded a Sci-Tech in 1976.

Rehoused Canon K-35 primes are popular today. They cover Full Format, have a pleasingly smooth softness and controlled contrast that are not as extreme as some other vintage lenses.

K-35s were used on on Aliens, American Hustle, Manchester by the Sea, and Barry Lyndon. The original set of Canon K-35 primes consisted of 18, 24, 35, 55, 85 mm—all T1.5 (although an earlier 18mm was T2.8). The 18mm had a front diameter 110mm. The rest were 80mm. They all covered Full Frame except the 18mm.

However, there are a few things missing when you want to use original Canon K-35 lenses  on a contemporary production. As mentioned, the 18mm doesn’t cover Full Frame; the 24mm doesn’t cover RED 8K VV, the 18mm is the widest angle and the 85mm is the longest.

Seeing this market need, Servicevision has developed 3 new lenses based on Canon’s original design and look to augment the existing sets of original (often rehoused) Canon K-35s. The NEW K35 lenses by Servicevision including front aspheres like the originals. The new design still uses some optical elements from Canon to maintain consistency with the original set.

With these 3 new focal lengths, Servicevision offers the possibility of expanding and completing  an original set of K-35 Full Frame lenses. With iconic image quality and speed, a combined set of original Canon K-35 and NEW K35 by Servicevision primes should become a welcome addition  for the cine market.

At IBC 2019, Servicevision will show a 15mm and a 18mm NEW K35 in their booth C43 Hall 12.

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