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Anamorphic lenses and 16:9

Dylan Macleod CSC

Dylan Macleod CSC

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I have a shoot next week and we are using Panavision's Primo Anamorphic glass. We are finishing 16:9 and using the lenses for the inherent artifacts (mainly flaring).

What is the best mode to shoot in to maximize resolution?

I am assuming the only option that shows unsqueezed monitoring are the "anamorphic" settings - but is it possible to shoot in another mode and not have to crop all those pixels left and right?

Thanks in advance.
 
I went thru this already. One client shot a complete movie with 2.0ANA lenses and set the camera to 16:9.

Eventually you WILL have to crop the pixels or pan & scan. The worst part is that you will end up with a 3.5/32:9 frame/image and if u frame based on this frame you will have 3 choices:

1) crop side
2) usesuper aggresive bars on top and bottom.
3) unzqueeze artisticly per shot, some more, some less.

Or maybe tons of roto work to fix element that fall out of frame, we did a bit of that, NOT.FUN.AT.ALL.

Just my .02 dollars worth.
 
As Frank says, you will have to crop at some point. You can shoot 4K ANA mode on the RED and end up with 3072x2304 before you de-squeeze. But you will still need to crop the sides for 16:9 delivery. That is probably the best mode to shoot in as you can preserve the full vertical resolution of the camera. You can set 16:9 frame guides on the camera and even use more aggressive safe area guides if you can.
 
The 2X optical squeeze forces you to crop the sides at some point to get a 1.78 : 1 full-frame image, otherwise you'd have to have a camera with a 0.89 : 1 shaped sensor, wouldn't you?

You might as well use ANA mode because you can't use more than a 1.20 : 1 area of the sensor anyway, and if you crop to 16:9 full-frame, you'll use even less of the sensor.
 
This would be an ideal use for a full frame sensor.


Waiting...
 
Considering s35mm is Actually a half frame, wouldnt a ff35 have a more "squarish" aspect ratio? That would allow us to use a lot more of the sensor and also avoid as much cropping of the image circle.

But, I could be wrong!!
 
Super-35 can be 4-perf (1.33 : 1) or 3-perf (1.78 : 1). 35mm anamorphic is 4-perf, usually Academy width but Full Aperture height.

8-perf 35mm / VistaVision / Full-Frame 35mm runs sideways rather than vertically and is 36mm x 24mm, which is 1.50 : 1.

Actually the shape matters less than the resolution and size -- you want a sensor that is close enough to the 18mm height of 4-perf 35mm so that the focal lengths used are similar, and you want enough resolution that you can crop the sides to use a squarer area of the sensor.

So while the optimal solution would be to build a 4K sensor that is 22mm x 18mm, roughly the size of the 35mm anamorphic negative area, right now on the Epic, for example, in 5K ANA mode you are using a 17.8mm x 14.6mm area and 3.3K across for a 1.20 : 1 recording with the 2X optical squeeze, which is pretty good.

The only advantage of a FF35 sensor is that, even if an anamorphic lens doesn't fill the 24mm height of the sensor, you can crop to the 22mm x 18mm area of 35mm anamorphic and hopefully still have enough resolution if the sensor has enough pixels. If the sensor is 6K FF35, then a 22mm x 18mm area would be around 4K. If the lens covered the 24mm height of FF35, then the resolution could be even higher.

ARRI is going to make a 4x3 sensor for the Alexa that will be suited for anamorphic, probably be 2.8K RAW, so slightly less resolution than Epic's 5K ANA at 3.3K RAW. Of course, if resolution was the most important thing, you'd just shoot 5K RAW on an Epic with spherical lenses.
 
I've done a few music videos with ANA modes on RED and usually shoot 4K ANA and pan'n'scan/crop the 16:9 from de-squeezed DPX sequences.

If your worried about resolution shoot spherical and use a blue streak filter :P
Kidding, kidding!

The Lomo's are beauty lenses! They take the digital edge off the RED really nicely. We've got a set in Toronto as well, I'm after something longer for a feature in August.
PM sent to you Albert! I hope you've got a coveted 100mm I can rent from you for a month :)

Kevin
 
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