Anamorphics

[Paramon Ivanovich]

There is no cheap option for anamorphic.None of those cheap adapter solutions,Kowas dont look like panavision anamorphics at all.

here is the answer to your question Michael,
Get the Panavision Anamorphics, or forget this idea

 

[Nicholas Lee-Shield]

here is the answer to your question Michael,
Get the Panavision Anamorphics, or forget this idea

I think thats a pretty harsh thing to say. For a start, unless your loaded then Panavision anamorphics are blatantly out of the question. There's always rental options, but Panavision anamorphics aren't the be all and end all. There's been plenty of things shot on cheaper anamorphics.

 

[Nick Gardner]

1.33 anamorphics aren't worth the effort in my opinion. For professional work, even the best anamorphics involve production challenges. Modern anamorphics are surely the easiest to work with, but most of the movies we love and associate with the anamorphic look are from the 80s or before. Those lenses were and are funky. Panavision doesn't have some magic that is unique. If anything, panavision is a small company with limited resources and wonky sets of lenses. If the anamorphic look for you is shallower dof, distortion, and great flares ( it is for me) than almost any 2x anamorphic cinelenses will get you there. The rest is film making.

Nick

 

[Björn Benckert]

1.33 anamorphics aren't worth the effort in my opinion. For professional work, even the best anamorphics involve production challenges. Modern anamorphics are surely the easiest to work with, but most of the movies we love and associate with the anamorphic look are from the 80s or before. Those lenses were and are funky. Panavision doesn't have some magic that is unique. If anything, panavision is a small company with limited resources and wonky sets of lenses. If the anamorphic look for you is shallower dof, distortion, and great flares ( it is for me) than almost any 2x anamorphic cinelenses will get you there. The rest is film making.

Nick

Agree.
Bäut I think most of the challenges is to convince everyone involved that they should shoot anamorphic. Normally Somebody says that 16:9 is needed, or they really need close focus range or even macro, or faster lenses and so on. But honestly I never ever regret pushing anamorphics onto a project, and I done so quite frequently. But there is so many project that I been sitting in post with and thinking, o man... imagine if this was shot with anamorphics... To me the benefits are so many so the few drawback can easily be ignored.

I use the MP Diopters with our hawks and boom, then I got close focus to the point where I can pretty much have focus on the front glass.
They are also quite fast, they open up to f2.2 and that is gives more focus falloff than most people even want to have.
And even when cropping out a 16.9 center frame out of the full height sensor of the dragon or epic there is still a lot of resolution and, just as people like to shoot full frame and rack the shots into 1:2,40 and benefit from having extra top and bottom to reframe with. Shooting anamorphic 32:9 or 2.40:1 give nice side material that makes great room for doing "pan in scan. If you think of it. a full sensor anamophic capture actually gives you an image that has half an image of bonus material on each side if you are going to master in sensor resolution. And to me it's quite simple to understand that normally things are happening along the horizont so it's more common that you would like to have some extra canvas on any of the sides than above or bellow the image you framed. For that reason full sensor anamopphic capture is really really nice.


Now not to derail the thread. It would be super nice if RED made a capture mode that was capturing full sensor but on the screens only showing full sensor height 4:3 anamorphic. Basically giving us a good view of the anamophic 2.40:1 but capturing whats on the sides aswell. That way we could have critical focus on screens and capture the safety/ pan in scan areas on the sides aswell. As it is now I belieave 4k 4:3 ana is as big as it gets on dragon and that does not utilize the absolute full hight of the sensor which is a bit frustrating I think.

 

[Marcus Struzina]

OK if you're looking for the cheapest solution to getting at least the anamorphic flares then you could try my iOS 8 app
Scope Flare http://itunes.com/apps/scopeflare Shoots 24P or 25P 1920x810 video.
Doesn't give you the oval bokeh or shallow focus but it does a very nice real time simulation of anamorphic lens flares ,
has a number of pretty convincing cinematic style grades and even simulated anamorphic wide angle lens distortion.

Its what I wanted in an iPhone video camera so I made it.

Cheers Marcus

 

[Kemalettin Sert]

here is the answer to your question Michael,
Get the Panavision Anamorphics, or forget this idea

There are Hawks,Cooke and Zeiss Master Anas

 

[Zack Birlew]

Before I started making my new film over the summer, I was prepping something anamorphic related just for this very situation. In practical terms, the Cinemorph filter will do wonders for you. I used it on my summer film for my most low light scenes, since that's where it becomes most useful compared to anamorphic adapters/lenses, and it gave an incredibly cool look to what would have been a normal low light sequence. I used a Nikon 50mm E 1.8 as my "wide" lens and had a Jupiter-9 85mm 2.0 for closeups but I primarily used the Nikon 99% of the time as the project simply required that. The Cinemorph did look better on the Jupiter-9 though and it was character on character in terms of the looks of the lenses which was pretty nice.

Although others have put down the 1.33x adapters, understand that those will be the easiest to use and will give you the most basic of anamorphic looks. I have both a Panasonic DVX LA7200 anamorphic adapter and a 58mm adapted Century Optics 1.33x anamorphic adapter and they both do a pretty satisfactory job, the Panasonic being the better and less soft of the two. The SLR Magic and Letus adapters are much clearer and were designed to work well with modern digital cameras. I haven't tested either of them first hand but I have seen them at conventions and although they don't add anything too special to the anamorphic look over my older adapters, both being the same 1.33x, again, they are at least better in being sharp and clear. If I were to buy one, I'd go for the Letus since it covers more lens choices by optionally mounting on 15mm rails. I use SLR lenses and some can vary from as little as 49mm to a larger 82mm, so a much bigger adapter is required to cover all of my possible lens choices.

There was an announcement by SLR Magic about a new age 2x adapter here:

http://www.eoshd.com/2014/09/slr-magic-2x-anamorphic-footage-first-impressions/

To me, it looks to be the best of everything you could ask for in an anamorphic adapter. It emulates the true 2x look, single focus, it's designed for modern cameras, and it's not too large and cumbersome. However, it looks to be for smaller lenses, at least based on those early prototype pictures, and will probably be limited much like the Kowa 8Z for wide lens selection. If they make it cover at least 72mm filter threads then that will help out quite a bit, 77mm would be ideal though for use on many DSLR lenses. Still waiting to hear on price and release date though.

So yeah, that's pretty much what you're looking at. You could get a Kowa 8Z for about $1,000, but it's only for small 52mm filter thread lenses and you'll need to hang on the telephoto end. For now, it would simply be best to get the Cinemorph and use it when you need the anamorphic look. You can customize it a little bit to suit your needs but remember, be careful which size you pick. Picking the larger Cinemorph and using smaller lenses with filter thread adapters will produce cut off oval bokeh. So if you're going to use smaller 52/58mm filter thread lenses, then get the 58mm, anything bigger than that, then get the larger one or simply get both to cover your bases. Good luck and have fun with it!