Rehoused front anamorphic adapter

[David Kellermann]

A friend asked to me to shoot a short he wrote later this year. Because of the film's topic, an anamorphic look (distortion and flares) would help the story. Since it's a no budget short, rental of Hawks is not an option, and I'm not such a fan of Lomo lenses. I'm sure that there are great Lomo lenses, but most of them just don't look very pleasing to my eye. So right now, my best option is probably to use light streak filters.

When reading up on low budget anamorphic solutions, I stumbled upon these:

http://www.eoshd.com/content/3492/redstan-cine-modified-iscorama-anamorphic

http://www.flickr.com/photos/34211301@N00/5959563228/

I have a nice set of Nikon AI-s lenses, so the idea was to add an Iscorama lens, since they allow to leave the focus on the base lens to infinity. There are just two problems left... they are often in a bad shape and they can't focus closer than 2m / 5ft (the Iscorama 42 can, but it gets very soft).

So.. does anybody know if there are solution on the market (under $5k)? Or what happened to RedStan's lenses? Having some kind of Iscorama lens which could be easily swapped between lenses, is reasonably sharp and allows to focus up to 1m would be an amazing option for low budget films.

 

[David Kellermann]

bump

 

[Zack Birlew]

David, you're not going to find much beyond what you've described. There just aren't that many DSLR-lens-friendly anamorphic adapters out there, let alone ones that allow you to do everything with no limitations. The Iscorama lenses when used with diopters increase the usability of the lens in certain situations but you would have to test and make your own judgments, so that could take up a little extra time on set. The Panasonic anamorphic adapter for the DVX is what I have and use on occasion and it's nice and the 72mm filter gives it the most flexibility with lens choices but it's not as good image-wise as a regular anamorphic or the Isco or Kowa adapters.

If all you want is streaks, then try the filter route with these guys:

http://www.vid-atlantic.com/cinemorphic.html

That should give you everything you want minus the traditional anamorphic lens distortions. Other than that you could hope that a nice copy of an Iscorama comes up on auction soon, that's sadly just how the anamorphic adapter market is until somebody realizes the goldmine and makes something new.