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An Examination of: Lomo Foton 37-140 2x Anamorphic Square Front

Timur Civan

Timur Civan

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Full Review Coming soon, but initial impressions.

This lens is a beautiful disaster. I really like it for its the most flawed of the "anamophic look". Almost a charachature of what we think of when we say anamorphic lens characteristics.

So in honor of 100,000 different "Anamorphic tests" here is another. Allllll the juicy cliches you know you wanna see. Im currently working on the review of the Cooke 25-250 Cinevarotal, and i have 3 weeks packed solid with work, so i may be a bit slow to update this one....

but in any case:
anamorphic.jpg

20110423133731108.jpg



Proper info coming soon....
 
I love the look of these old Soviet anamorphic lenses. Looking forward to your review.
 
Dreamy and creamy. Could you post some actual "zooms". I'm thinking of some Barry Lyndon type sloooooww shots.

Thanks for this.
 
Well, tell me what you guys wanna see. I'll incorporate it into what I shoot.

@haskell. Welcome home!
 
I think it's fair to say that's a distinctive look. Interested to see this; wondered what kind of images that thing would produce when I saw it.

And yes, very much looking forward to seeing the Cooke writeup!

Mike
 
albert rudnicki said:
the nights shots look great (noiseless)What f-stop did you use ?
was it all shot with F3?
thanks
Click to expand...

I shot a lot of it wide open. F3.5. Its soft wide open, as it seems on the longer end of the lens, (and I believe this true of all anamorphics) if the dof is too shallow, it becomes tough to get the horizontal, and vertical rays of light to focus on the same point, as the anamorphic distorts the horizontal so much. When you stop down, the whole thing gets significantly sharper and more pleasing. This weekend, I will be doing this stuff properly.
 
it gives a really organic gritty softness too it. sort of like how soft s16 looks. very low contrast wide open, but it kind of works for it. can't wait to see some footy with it stopped down properly to see how sharp it can really get.
 
Timur Civan said:
I wouldnt hold my breath on sharpness.... Hah....
Click to expand...

Yeah - the Foton is well known for being the softest of the Lomos - but it still has a 'look' all of it's own.
 
Timur Civan said:
I don't think they are within my budget.....

I was thinking more a set of lomo square front primes....
Click to expand...

OK - just wondered how high quality you meant :001_smile:

Lomo Squares are great and the 35mm doesn't distort anywhere near as badly as the 35mm Roundfront (that's a beast of a unit!) and the 35mm Sqaure is nice for hand-held and steadicam shots. Avoid OCT-18 Squarefronts - they are a dual focusing system that required a special mount of the Kinor/Konvas... (probably similar to the Foton you're using) the sealed all in one OCT-19's (or ones that have PL are much better).
 
Yea! Mine is like dual focusing.... its so weird. But its perfectly calibrated and goes to infinity like butter. I'm actually really surprised it was so easy to install.
 
Cool! Looks like you've picked up a bargain - a great number of these two part units have been hacked around & don't work well. You going to put focus/zoom gears on it - suppose that's the next step in taming your Lomo Beast :)
 
Andy White said:
the 35mm Roundfront (that's a beast of a unit!)
Click to expand...

Nooo kidding. Love hand held shots with that bad boy :)

The distortion usually makes me sad when I have to shoot it wide open. Always struggling to put more photons on things at night so I can stop down to at least a 4.

Be cool to see a full report on that lens Timur.
 
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