Arri unveils versatile Ensō Prime lenses

Arri has introduced its Ensō Prime lens series, reaching beyond the company’s traditional market to embrace corporate and commercial content creators and owner-operators at earlier stages of their careers.

Small, portable and versatile, Ensō lenses are said to deliver exceptional images in almost any condition. The smooth and balanced native look can be tuned with Ensō Vintage Elements, which attach to the back of the lenses, allowing many different looks to be achieved with a single, cost-effective lens set.

Whether on a conventionally lit set or on fast-moving, lower-tier productions shot by small crews with minimal lighting, Ensō lenses can be relied upon to produce engaging, well-controlled images.

Close focus is a stand-out feature of the lenses, with a magnification ratio of 1:4 on most focal lengths, equivalent to 10in close focus on the 32mm, which is only 3.7in from the front element. This facilitates beautiful close-up work and the minimised breathing means focus racks have no discernible impact on framing.

According to Arri, great care has been taken to balance the many optical parameters defining the native Ensō look, which is sharp and true, yet gentle and natural. But for projects that require a different look, the company provides Ensō Vintage Elements –interchangeable optics that attach magnetically to the back of Ensō lenses. Far exceeding the scope of conventional filters, they offer quick and easy external lens tuning that incrementally shifts the look and feel of images.

Building on what Arri has learned from feedback about its Impression Filters for Signature lenses, Ensō Vintage Elements incorporate significant advantages. They come in more powerful strengths, producing images that are sharper in the centre and therefore easier to focus, but with a stronger detuned effect at the edges of frame. They have encoded chips that convey metadata about shifts of focal length, T-stop, and focus to the camera, and from there to on-set monitors and postproduction. Focus scale changes caused by the Elements can even be compensated for automatically with the Arri Hi-5 hand unit, whether crews decide to use the included lens shims or not.

The full kit of six Vintage Elements comes as standard with Arri’s core set of six Ensō lenses. It includes three positive Elements of different strengths, producing smeary, soft-edged bokeh in the background and Petzval-like image swirl at the corners of frame. The three negative Elements have the opposite effect; out-of-focus background highlights have diffuse centres and bright outlines that overlap to create an edgier, more intrusive feel. The kit also includes an Ensō Creative Adapter, which lets users invent their own unique Elements for personalised external lens tuning. It comes with three retaining rings that allow different thicknesses of glass or other material to be used and held securely.

Ensō lenses are compact, lightweight and portable, making them fast and easy to work with. Gear rings are in the same position on all 14 of the Ensō focal lengths, most of which are T2.1 and have a front diameter of 95mm, so they can be swapped on the camera without disruption. The focal lengths in the core set will be the most frequently used, but the wide-angle 10.5 and 14 mm, as well as the telephoto 250 mm (350/500 mm with its included 1.4x/2x Extenders) allow Ensō shooters to meet even the most extreme visual demands.

The core set of ARRI Ensō Prime lenses (18, 24, 32, 47, 75, and 105mm with Ensō Vintage Elements Kit) is available to order now and will begin shipping in November.