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  • Hey all, just changed over the backend after 15 years I figured time to give it a bit of an update, its probably gonna be a bit weird for most of you and i am sure there is a few bugs to work out but it should kinda work the same as before... hopefully :)

A couple of TV spots i shot with my Anamorphic Lomo Squarefronts

Brilliant!

Those Lomos are amazing: creamy and yummy...well done, Adam.
 
Adam - have you got some diopters on for some of the shots?

Particularly China Holidays - at about 00.21 (the lovely blur bokeh effect is typical of what I see on my 50mm with the diopters).

Anyway, nice job on them both - China Holidays is my personal fave.
 
Thanks for the kudos guys.

Andy do use a lot of diopters but none were used for the china holidays spot as everything was hand held. I did use the diopters for the close up shots in the coffee commercial, i usually hand hold the diopters and focus that way so i dont get the bowl of jelly stretchy anamorphic focus pulls.

James L Brown was the second unit for the China Holidays spots and i won a NSW Bronze Australian Cinematographers Award award for the China Holidays spot for local TV commercials.

I was very excited to win that award since it was the first project i shot professionally with my lomos and it took me about 4 years to make a good set.
 
Adam - I think you briefly had my original lomo diopters a few years ago :thumbup:

This was back in late 2010. I'd managed to source two Squarefront original diopters from the Ukraine... and when my package arrived I had some weird Lomo Squarefront... can't remember what it was, I just know the seller had sent my Diopters to Oz and your lens to the UK.

The original diopters are quite good as they slot into the front pins/holes on the 50mm/80mm. There are two types of diopters though, as they kept changing the designs slightly (60's had a couple of variants and I've seen at least 2 70's style ones).

Anyway, the China Holidays TVC is the better of the two (IMO), but obviously (due to subject matter alone!) you got the chance at a much wider range of shots.

I know what you mean about Lomo quests - LOL. I was lucky with my Squarefront set... but some others I've wanted have been a real PITA!
 
Adam, anamorphic goodness. Great tip on the diopter rack. Source footage must be great, 1080p on Vimeo would be a treat.
 
Yes Andy i did get your diopters!

The ones i use are my schneider 133mm full round ones in both half and full. i have a full set of both and hold them in front of the lens to create focus racking. I mount them inside my chroziel mattbox when i need to shoot macro work with them.

The reason i put in the coffee commercial is that i lit the scene with 2 dinettes and a hand full of tungsten lights and the lomo's were wide open. Mine are sharp all the way open, as most aren't and alot of people complain the the EPIC doesn't look ver good under tungsten light. As you can see the Epic looks great.
 
Thanks jim and Luke. The lenses I used were 35mm, 50mm and 85mm Russian lomo square fronts that I had rebuilt and converted to pl
 
Thanks for the positive feed back Justin and Gunleik.
 
Beautiful job, lovely work. What was involved with the LOMO rebuilds? Mechanical or optical or both? Who did the work?
Very nice use of the lenses.
 
I bought and sold at least 20 lenses till i found a set that were sharp wide open, the 50mm and the 85mm were made from 3 lenses. All were changed from oct19 or some other weird mount which no one knew what it was to PL, all lenses fully relapped, iris overhauled and collimated. They lens tech is from Sydney Austraila, Peter Grabavich he is in his late 70's now and has worked on cinema cameras and lenses all of his life.

Each lens cost me between $1000- $3000 to buy and everytime i sold one that I wasn't happy with I made money. The cost to totally overhaul each lens was about $3000 as it was hours of painstaking work.

It was a frustrating process because sometimes i would buy a lens that looked brand new, without a mark or scratch on the casing or lens optics and the lens would be totally soft so it was only usable from T11. Even after collimation. And the lens would be totally shimmed etc, and you wouldn't really know until after the lens was restored. ( i had about 4 or these!)

I am currently restoring a lomo 20-120 zoom with anamorphic adapter that takes it to 40-240. And i am having the same problems, but i think i will get a good lens as i have bought 3 to make 1.
 
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