These are the original, ‘Lightweight’ Angenieux Optimo zooms (released 2006, 2007, 2011 respectively), which are high performance cinema zooms with better build quality and manufacturing standards than the Optimo DP/Rouge/Style lines. The designers won technical achievement and Academy awards for these, using multi-aspheres in the design to keep the lenses compact and lightweight, eliminate focus breathing and ramping, and minimize aberrations. Optimo zooms have been ubiquitous in features and TV series and appear everywhere from the early 2000s to now– you’ve seen them if you’ve seen anything between The Lord of The Rings, Skyfall, House MD, Breaking Bad, Game of Thrones, Westworld, and so on.
The 28-76 is based on the 28-70 stills zoom designed in 1982 by Pierre Angenieux.
While we don’t think of the Angenieux EZ series as clinical, the Optimos are a great option if you’re looking for something still on the modern side but with more classical character and more unique rendering. Edges have a pleasing luminance falloff. According to Angenieux, they have higher resolution than the EZs, and at the same time according to some DP’s we work with, they are also somehow softer-feeling overall than the EZs. All we can say for certain is that they are different lenses, and feel free to ask about scheduling a lens test!
They are lighter weight than the EZs, slightly better corrected for chromatic aberration, more mechanically robust, a bit slower T-stop, and S35 only.