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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 :)

Panavision Anamorphics on the 5D2

David Mullen ASC said:
If you are just shooting day exterior time-lapse, is there much reason to use anamorphic lenses versus just cropping your 12MP images to 2.40? Are you really going to see a lot of anamorphic lens artifacts to make it necessary to use the same lenses as the main production, which I assume is shooting on film anyway?
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It's not my choice, David. I had initially thought the same thing you are suggesting. I was going to offer my 14-24 Nikon or 24 f/1.4 still lenses but the production seems to want anamorphic. We will be shooting quite a bit of night timelapse stuff around the city, with lots of shimmering lights.
 
Tom said:
It's not my choice, David. I had initially thought the same thing you are suggesting. I was going to offer my 14-24 Nikon or 24 f/1.4 still lenses but the production seems to want anamorphic. We will be shooting quite a bit of night timelapse stuff around the city, with lots of shimmering lights.
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I'm interested to see some city stuff from you Tom. I don't think I have seen any yet. All the clips I've seen have been the awesome star fields. The city is fun to shoot but it can be a little rough sometimes.
 
That sort of answers the question because at night, wide-open, you can get a lot of anamorphic artifacts which are interesting, especially on longer lenses with out-of-focus planes. So I can see why they want you to shoot anamorphic for that, just make sure you use primes with front anamorphic elements. There's no reason to use an anamorphic zoom because a rear-anamorphic lens hardly has any anamorphic artifacts.
 
Tom said:
If anyone is interested I will try to get some more pics and info as the shoot progresses.
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"If anyone is interested".... don't be coy Tom. Who WOULDN'T be interested? :D
 
Tom said:
So how do you measure it? The image area the 5D2 captures with the Primo 50mm is roughly 4K x 4K - not quite but nearly square. So do you expand horizontally to 8K x 4K? Or reduce vertically to 4K wide x 2K tall and just gain all the extra detail?

I guess you could just figure out what your final post width will be -- 4K or 2K or whatever -- resize it to that width, then squeeze it vertically to fit?
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You're getting eactly as much resolution as you're capturing from the sensor. I think you're a little confused by the anamorphic, because you can only ever capture as much detail as the camera has pixels(or in your case the number of pixels being exposed). The captured resolution would be 4kx4k or ~16 MP.
 
Kenneth's bang on - the "extra" resolution you get from anamorphic is due to not cropping the sensor (or film gate, of course!) down to the 2.40:1 ratio and loosing a lot of information.

Now, if you are finishing for a non-anamorphic projection, then you're probably going to loose that resolution at some stage anyway (as you'll convert the image and squeeze it back down to fit in either a 2K or 4K 16:9 frame), but at least that will be later on, once CC and effects have been applied (or at least, one hopes so). But if you finish for an anamorphic projection, it all stays in the frame...

Sounds like a great project by the way Tom, congratulations on landing it - judging by your previous work it certainly seems like you deserve it...

Cheers,
Dom.
 
Wow, RAW timelapses, I always just end up shooting small jpgs....

What kind of rigs are you going to be using, Tom??

Still with your own motor driven dolly, or getting into more advanced motion controlled crane moves and the like??
Lately I attached a wee motor to my Kessler pocket dolly, and then put the dolly on a severe tilt, do a timelapse, and the result is like a small crane-move in timelapse... good stuff!
 
Andrew Walker said:
I'm interested to see some city stuff from you Tom. I don't think I have seen any yet. All the clips I've seen have been the awesome star fields. The city is fun to shoot but it can be a little rough sometimes.
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Andrew should know... he seems to have done time under every dark, seedy bridge in the LA area... way late at night with an expensive camera clicking away...
 
I haven't seen it, but it would either have to be a moonlit shot exposed fully so it looked as bright as daytime, or a composite effect adding stars to a daytime shot.

Here's a photo of my car taken under moonlight:

moonlit3.jpg


If I had set the color temp of my Nikon to 5600K instead of 3200K, it would be normal daytime color as well.
 
Wow wow wow Tom you have a lot of fun :thumbsup:
Cant wait for results.
 
Well I hate to disappoint, but it looks like after meeting with the director today and looking at some test shots of the 5D2 cropped vs Red anamorphic vs 5D2 + anamorphic, etc, we've tentatively decided to do what what David said -- just shoot spherical on FF35 still lenses and crop to 2.40. The anamorphics were just too exotic and heavy, plus the 5D2 cannot take any Panavision anamorphics beyond 180mm, which is actually similar to a 60mm on a cinema 35mm camera -- not enough reach for some of the long-lens shots we have planned. Plus we are wanting to use multiple 5D2s, so unfortunately, I don't know if I will be able to work in any anamorphic shots. We'll see.

Drew, I was hoping to maybe bring you into this production to help, since your LA timelapses are so freekin awesome and you have so much experience with this. I'll PM you about it. One up side is that several of our locations, including some nice rooftops, will be fully permitted and rented, so no hassles getting chased off by the popo.
 
Joe G. said:
Tom--

A side question, how did they do that daytime timelapse at the end of Baraka, where you can see the stars in the daytime?

Is there something magical in filtering it, or ultraviolet/infrared, or is it just stopped down a lot?
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That's all shot at night, Joe. It's like David's photo there. Long exposure with moonlight creates a blue sky that looks very similar to the daylight skies we see with our eyes.
 
Tom said:
Well I hate to disappoint, but it looks like after meeting with the director today and looking at some test shots of the 5D2 cropped vs Red anamorphic vs 5D2 + anamorphic, etc, we've tentatively decided to do what what David said -- just shoot spherical on FF35 still lenses and crop to 2.40. The anamorphics were just too exotic and heavy, plus the 5D2 cannot take any Panavision anamorphics beyond 180mm, which is actually similar to a 60mm on a cinema 35mm camera -- not enough reach for some of the long-lens shots we have planned. Plus we are wanting to use multiple 5D2s, so unfortunately, I don't know if I will be able to work in any anamorphic shots. We'll see.

Drew, I was hoping to maybe bring you into this production to help, since your LA timelapses are so freekin awesome and you have so much experience with this. I'll PM you about it. One up side is that several of our locations, including some nice rooftops, will be fully permitted and rented, so no hassles getting chased off by the popo.
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Sounds f-ing awesome man. Of course I'm down to shoot some timelapse from rooftops...check your PM:thumbsup:
 
Matthew Bennett said:
Andrew should know... he seems to have done time under every dark, seedy bridge in the LA area... way late at night with an expensive camera clicking away...
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I've learned to grow eyes in the back of my head. People on bikes are sometimes the quietest. I usually setup my camera and take up a position to see who's coming my way. Its just safe practices on the streets of LA.
 
Aw dang. Was lookin' forward to some stills. But gotta do the right thing.

Thanks for at least posting a test still!
 
I still might try to work in one anamorphic shot if I can! Just to say we did it. :)
 
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