3.5:1 Anamorphic on Epic?

[I Bloom]

Hi,

I'm shooting a brand film that will be incorporated as horizontal element in a website and special projection using Anamorphic lenses on a Red Epic camera.
My hope is to shoot the full sensor size and have the resulting image cropped to just around 3.5x1.

Does anyone have any experience doing this on Epic?
Are there issues with coverage etc with particular lense series.
What are your personal lense preferences for sharpness and other characteristic.
I don't believe the camera will desqueeze the image without cropping it to 2.35. Hence can anyone recommend an onboard monitor and a set monitor that will do the desqueeze well.

Many thanks,
I Bloom

[Michael Wilson]

Just finished a feature with a set of elites from handheld films. Very nice lenses. Fairly heavy. t2.2 and pretty sharp all around. Lacks many of the desirable anamorphic abberations. Not too expensive either.

The image will desqueeze coming out to any monitor as well as the red lcd. No playback so you'll need a recorder if you want playback. Also you won't really gain any resolution shooting anamorphics on the epic in the way you would using an alexa. If epic has widescreen enabled you could just shoot with that and save yourself a few headaches, dollars and pounds by shooting spherical glass. Can only do 96 fps in ana mode. Their is a nice article on cinematography.com that breaks down most of the anamorphic lenses available.

[I Bloom]

So, we were using normal 5K mode, so the desqueeze doesn't work. I tested those Elites but they are just to big for what I had to do.
I ended up going with PL mount Panavision lenses which I believe to be the rehoused Joe Dunton glass. Unfortunately ended up needing to get the lenses shipped and when they arrived I noticed some alarming chromatic aberration on two of them, they definitely need to visit Duclose.
I had a hard time finding an HD monitor that could de-squeeze the image and ended up using a transvideo composite video onboard (thanks Steve Gal) to operate while we checked focus on the squeezed image on the Red LCD. This isn't ideal, and I'm hoping for a better solution in the future... apparently our client really loved the result and they are likely to ask for this crazy aspect ratio again.

Here are crop tests I made for the director in case you're curious.

[Sergei Franklin]

I used the Hawk V-lite's on a feature. High quality, light weight but expensive. Hand Held in New York carries them. They are well corrected and barely flare.
Great for steadicam.

Sergei Franklin
www.sergeifranklin.com

[Justen Nguyen]

Ian, those shots are definitely looking awesome. Starting to make Lawrence of Arabia look small!

[Will Keir]

Where the crop tests all shot using the same lens?

[Andy White]

Where the crop tests all shot using the same lens?

Will - you might want to drop the OP a PM, as he's only posted a couple of times in the last 6 months or so.

[Björn Benckert]

Where the crop tests all shot using the same lens?

Yes is one single frame cropped in to different aspect ratios. from full sensor down to half sensor. Half sensor is becomes 16:9 and full sensor becomes 32:9

[Mark K.]

Wow, framing for 3.6:1 should be an... Interesting experience.

[Ryan Boyer]

I saw one of my buddies using those lenses on set Saturday, amazing lenses. The shots and ratios are looking great as well.