PaulClements
04-10-2007, 03:11 PM
After reading about Dalsa producing anamorphic lenses for 4k I was initially excited by the idea, but then I got to thinking, is there actually any benefit in a digital environment?
Aren't you just going to lose those extra pixels gained vertically?
Originally anamorphic lenses gave film better picture quality, but the projector had to have a complementary lens in order to play the film back and gain the extra detail.
With digital you project a pixel as a square, otherwise you would need to develop an anamorphic projector, which frankly seems unlikely with the transitions going on in theatres for current digital projection (Unless they are infact capable of anamorphic display already).
Cropping an image also becomes an issue with Anamorphic lenses because you have less room at the top and bottom of any image. Mics dropping into shot, leads on the floor etc become a bigger issue.
To me itt would also seem to mean more work in post if the image enters into the workflow with the wrong dimensions.
Apart from the artifects of using anamorphic lenses such as elongated lens flares that many consider to be visually appealing, I can see little benefit to actually using them.
Frankly it seems like having an adaptive sensor would be more useful. It could switch certain pixels on and off and alternate between 16:9 to 2.40:1 and also realign the sensor to allow for the wider format.
If the sensor changed from 16:9 to 2.40:1 you would have more pixels horizontally and less vertically and when displayed on a cinema screen would be more detailed than a 16:9 crop to 2.40:1. Yet you would still only be passing the same amount of data out of the camera. This would have a greater benefit surely?
Aren't you just going to lose those extra pixels gained vertically?
Originally anamorphic lenses gave film better picture quality, but the projector had to have a complementary lens in order to play the film back and gain the extra detail.
With digital you project a pixel as a square, otherwise you would need to develop an anamorphic projector, which frankly seems unlikely with the transitions going on in theatres for current digital projection (Unless they are infact capable of anamorphic display already).
Cropping an image also becomes an issue with Anamorphic lenses because you have less room at the top and bottom of any image. Mics dropping into shot, leads on the floor etc become a bigger issue.
To me itt would also seem to mean more work in post if the image enters into the workflow with the wrong dimensions.
Apart from the artifects of using anamorphic lenses such as elongated lens flares that many consider to be visually appealing, I can see little benefit to actually using them.
Frankly it seems like having an adaptive sensor would be more useful. It could switch certain pixels on and off and alternate between 16:9 to 2.40:1 and also realign the sensor to allow for the wider format.
If the sensor changed from 16:9 to 2.40:1 you would have more pixels horizontally and less vertically and when displayed on a cinema screen would be more detailed than a 16:9 crop to 2.40:1. Yet you would still only be passing the same amount of data out of the camera. This would have a greater benefit surely?