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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 :)

anamorphic crop factor = less resolution?

Rick LaLonde

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If anyone who knows would be kind enough to clear this up for me: Shooting in 4K ana on Red One MX has a crop factor that appears to be some where in the area of 1/3 of the angle width if I'm correct. And the crop is achieved in camera from what I see on the monitor. am I correct that the final resolution is approx 2.6K?

Any help appreciated. Thanks.
 
If anyone who knows would be kind enough to clear this up for me: Shooting in 4K ana on Red One MX has a crop factor that appears to be some where in the area of 1/3 of the angle width if I'm correct. And the crop is achieved in camera from what I see on the monitor. am I correct that the final resolution is approx 2.6K?

Any help appreciated. Thanks.

Unless someone finds a good way to reposition the extra photosites into a 4:3 arrangement to preserve them, that sounds about right!

:)

This is proably the main reason for the new Alexas to go 4:3, FOV/Resolution for anamorphic glass.

Now... Prometheus was shot ana on Epic, and apparently looked quite ok.
 
Thank you for the link, David - much appreciated. My math is not great. I'm still not clear on the final res in terms of "K". I need this in order to know how much room we'll have to play with in post before we cross the 2K threshold when cropping or panning in post.
 
Thank you for the link, David - much appreciated. My math is not great. I'm still not clear on the final res in terms of "K". I need this in order to know how much room we'll have to play with in post before we cross the 2K threshold when cropping or panning in post.

There's no easy answer because you are using less horizontal pixels but more vertical pixels for a 2.40 image compared to shooting spherically and cropping vertically to 2.40, so it's not as simple as comparing the horizontal pixels between 4K spherical versus effectively shooting 2.8K for anamorphic, but if resolution is your main goal, you're better off shooting spherically anyway if your sensor isn't 4x3.
 
Sadly, Ridley seems to be all about sphericals these days.

It's not that. I think he really would loved to do it with ana lenses and probably did several tests doing so. But the "lens artifacts" that ana glas will brings to the table is not really welcome in 3D / stereo land. It's extremely hard to make 2 identical ana lenses. So for that reason I think Ridly and the others use sphericals.
 
From what I remember - wasn't the last film Mr. Scott shot on anamorphic "Matchstick Men?" I read an interview where he was very vocal about how anamorphic was very difficult for his style of shooting - and that he switched to Super 35 to take advantage of faster lenses with less focus pulling problems.
 
From what I remember - wasn't the last film Mr. Scott shot on anamorphic "Matchstick Men?" I read an interview where he was very vocal about how anamorphic was very difficult for his style of shooting - and that he switched to Super 35 to take advantage of faster lenses with less focus pulling problems.

I read an article in which he made similar comments about ditching ana for spherical without it having to do with 3D. I honestly don't get how he can think his more recent films look better than the ana he used to shoot.
 
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He likes using big 10:1 zooms, which in anamorphic tend to be limited to T/4.5 if built from a T/2.8 spherical zoom. So in 35mm when he was using the anamorphic zooms he wasn't getting the anamorphic bokeh but still getting the improvement in grain from using more of the 4-perf negative area for 2.40. So once grain in 35mm improved with new stocks and then with D.I.'s replacing the optical blow-up for Super-35 to anamorphic (and now that's almost been replaced by going to a DCP instead of a scope print), there is even less reason to shoot in anamorphic if your main lens is a big zoom.
 
He likes using big 10:1 zooms, which in anamorphic tend to be limited to T/4.5 if built from a T/2.8 spherical zoom. So in 35mm when he was using the anamorphic zooms he wasn't getting the anamorphic bokeh but still getting the improvement in grain from using more of the 4-perf negative area for 2.40. So once grain in 35mm improved with new stocks and then with D.I.'s replacing the optical blow-up for Super-35 to anamorphic (and now that's almost been replaced by going to a DCP instead of a scope print), there is even less reason to shoot in anamorphic if your main lens is a big zoom.

Interesting. The inside baseball's always better than what I get from articles. Makes me feel blessed to have the fast Russian zoom - sharper than my square front primes. Heavy beast though.
 
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