DZOFilm Completes Its 11-Lens Arles Cine Prime Series With 18mm T1.4

Nov 04, 2025

Kate Garibaldi

A close-up view of a black camera lens labeled “18 T1.4” with yellow markings for focus distances and a gear ring for follow focus, set against a plain white background.

DZOFilm unveiled the Arles 18mm T1.4 FF/VV Prime Cine Lens, marking the 11th and final addition to the company’s full-frame Arles cine series. With its ultra-wide focal length and refined optical design, the 18mm T1.4 offers a unique balance between technical precision and cinematic character.

Completing the Arles Lineup

As initially reported by CineD, the Arles series is designed for large-format cameras and compatible with PL and EF mounts, with the new 18mm lens completing a lineup that has steadily grown since its debut in mid-2024.

PetaPixel covered the Arles lens series when it first launched in June 2024 with five focal lengths, 25mm, 35mm, 50mm, 75mm, and 100mm, before expanding to include the 14mm, 21mm, 40mm, 135mm, and 180mm lenses later that year. The addition of the 18mm T1.4 fills a key gap between the 14mm and 21mm models, creating a comprehensive eleven-lens set that covers a broad range of cinematic needs.

A row of eleven professional camera lenses with different focal lengths, labeled from 18mm to 180mm, arranged in order on a dark surface against a dark background.

DZOFilm has positioned the Arles range as a professional alternative to its earlier Vespid lineup, favoring a cleaner, more neutral optical style. Each lens maintains a consistent mechanical design, including 0.8 MOD focus and iris gears aligned across the range for seamless lens swaps on set. The 18mm T1.4 continues this tradition, offering a unified user experience for cinematographers who demand both visual consistency and operational efficiency.

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Cinematic Optics and Large-Format Coverage

The Arles 18mm T1.4 FF/VV Prime Cine Lens covers a 46.5mm image circle, making it compatible with full-frame and Vista Vision cinema cameras. This ensures the lens is well-suited to large-format workflows, offering future-ready flexibility as production standards evolve.

Its optical construction, with 15 elements in 13 groups, includes two large-diameter aspherical elements, five extra-low dispersion fluorite-grade elements, and three high-refractive-index elements. Together, these components promise to deliver high resolution, minimal chromatic aberration, and precise correction of wide-angle distortion and astigmatism.

With its fast T1.4 aperture, the lens should perform well in low light, producing images with natural depth and rich tonal transitions. The 16-blade iris contributes to smooth, circular bokeh and the soft, painterly aesthetic for which the Arles series is known. Even wide open, the 18mm delivers a subtle, cinematic rendering with controlled flare and minimal ghosting, thanks to its multilayer nano coating.

Minimal Breathing, Maximum Expression

DZOFilm’s engineers designed the Arles 18mm with floating optical groups to maintain image consistency and minimize focus breathing during rack focus. The lens’s 270° focus rotation allows precise, repeatable adjustments critical for professional cinematography.

The resulting image character combines technical accuracy with a touch of visual softness, a look often described as “painterly.” This aesthetic makes the Arles series a popular choice for narrative filmmaking, commercials, and any project seeking to blend realism with expressive visual texture.

A man with a bandaged head intently paints on a canvas in a sunlit, rustic studio. He wears a dark coat with a flower on the lapel, and light streams through windows behind him.

A person with a focused expression looks closely through a blurred yellowish frame, reaching towards the camera as if inspecting or adjusting something up close.

A sunlit artist's studio with paintbrushes in a cup on a table, a vase of yellow flowers, an easel, and chairs. The room is rustic, with soft light streaming through the open door in the background.

A person in old-fashioned clothing and a straw hat sits on a large tree branch in a park at dusk, looking down pensively. The trees are bare, and the background shows a grassy field and distant autumn foliage.

Design and Build Consistency

Like the rest of the series, the Arles 18mm T1.4 features a robust aluminum alloy body with a 95mm front outer diameter. While most lenses in the series offer an 86mm front filter thread, the 18mm and 14mm models omit the thread to prevent vignetting and preserve optical performance.

Physically, the lens maintains the same dimensions as other Arles primes, 4.76 inches (121 millimeters) in length for the PL version and 5.08 inches (129 millimeters) for EF/LPL mounts, streamlining use in multi-lens productions. Dual focus scales in both feet and meters ensure ease of operation across global markets.

The mount system is also interchangeable, allowing users to switch between PL and EF configurations without tools, broadening compatibility across cinema and mirrorless ecosystems. With this release, DZOFilm’s Arles series now forms one of the most complete families of fast, full-frame cine primes on the market, promising to offer filmmakers a unified optical system that balances technical refinement with expressive character.

Two black camera lenses are shown side by side. The left lens displays "18 T1.4" in white and yellow markings, while the right lens reads "Arles Prime Vista Vision" and "DZOFILM" in white and yellow text.