Anamorphic Adaptors

[Alexander Mejia]

After seeing Transformers and Star Trek, I've become fascinated with Anamorphic filming practices. I love the Flare and oval shaped out of focus artifacting that happens with the lenses.

I looked at the IMDB pages for Star Trek and it says that they used the Panavision ATZ and AWZ2 systems. I know that Panavision custom engineers their own stuff, but to me it looks like they've put an anamorphic adaptor on top of a spherical lens.

Can you achieve horizontal flares and oval shaped out of focus artifacts with pretty much any anamorphic adaptor in front of a spherical lens, or do you need to just get your hands on an expensive anamorphic lens?

I've heard of people adapting a 1.33x anamorphic adapter for SD cameras onto high end DSLRs to shoot anamorphic, but I didn't know if you would get the same anamorphic artifacts as a real anamorphic lens or if it just increases the viewing angle.

Panasonic makes one with a 72mm diameter that some people are attaching to other cameras: http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/produ..._LA7200_Anamorphic_Lens_Adapter.html#features . Are there any other adapters that you can buy that are higher quality?

I currently own an HVX 200 (82mm front) and Canon 5d Mark II (77mm front). I'd like to be able to buy ring adapters and fit it on both cameras for testing.

 

[Craig W. Bickerstaff]

Systems? The ATZ and AWZ2 are zoom lenses.

 

[J. Bernard Vallon]

anamorphic adapters that squish the image on the way into the lens are usually of pretty poor optical quality. Its about as nice to your light as shooting through a coke bottle, covered in snot.

But, they will give the weird bokeh and curved focal plane.

Vantage has something they call Blue Vision, which is a filter set that creates horizontal blue flare. People say nice things about them.

 

[J. Bernard Vallon]

http://www.vantage-film.com/en/news/index_28.shtml

 

[Andrew Ceperley]

I've used the Century anamorphic adapter (which is only a 58mm thread) and gotten some good results. It's useless wide open, especially with longer lenses. From 50mm on I have to be down to f8 for it to work on a close-up. It gives you the horizontal flares you're looking for (a little less 'traditional' than what you're probably expecting, but they're there)...but none of the vertical bokeh. If something's out of focus, ih has some vertical blurring, but none of the actual squeeze one expects from a traditional anamorphic lens. I've used it on an HV30, HF10, and my D90 (primes only, as most of the zooms' threads spin with the focus, rendering the anamorphic element completely useless)

Century also made a focus-able adapter (which could be customized from its Sony bayonet mount to a 58mm thread, like mine currently is) which would help greatly when it comes to using longer lenses wide open.

I've never used Panasonic's adapter, but I can say from footage that I've seen that it seems to flare a little less, but it gives the image a much more distorted image at wide angles. But then again, what I've seen wasn't meant as a test of those artifacts, so I really have no idea. I'm tempted to grab a used one for it's much larger thread-size.

As for the Panavision zooms they used on Star Trek, are those the newer zooms with the front anamorphic elements?

Here are some flare examples from the Century:

 

[Alexander Mejia]

http://www.vantage-film.com/en/news/index_28.shtml

After looking online, it looks like you really can't buy these anywhere. Do you know of any companies in the US that rent them out?