What Anamorphic Lens?

[JohnF]

An interesting set of responses, thanks folks!

LOL Turnover "Makes a change from DPs giving each other the "hairy eyeball" across the bar !"

I'm interested in anamorphic for landscape type shots to maximise the resolution of small objects at infinity on the chip, therefore image, so as to not miss a trick or rather capture as much detail as possible.

Yes, I can do this with a more traditional aspect ratio but, and here's the subjective part, I love the anamorphic look I think cinema has gone backward in dropping the use of technicolour and anamorphic. For instance I totally agree with Stephen Williams point about "shooting 2 perf today does not look as good as it did 30 years ago."

My approximate thinking around shooting 2.35:1 with RED @4k was that by simply telling whatever edit software I was using that the pixel aspect ratio was 2.35:1 (rather than square or 16:9) that this would not effect data rates . Though it might well throw up other workflow issues!

What do people think of Evin Grant's suggestion of an anamorphic adapter on the front?

As a note of further discussion I've also seen old Russian (Soviet era) anamorphic lenses on the market for a few hundred dollars...


JohnF

[Jeff Kilgroe]

What do people think of Evin Grant's suggestion of an anamorphic adapter on the front?

As a note of further discussion I've also seen old Russian (Soviet era) anamorphic lenses on the market for a few hundred dollars...

Evin brought up a few good points. Image properties like bokeh being effected for example, I hadn't thought of that...

An anamorphic adapter on the front could make sense. I used an anamorphic adapter with my DVX100 to get proper 16:9 out of 720x480 and it worked very well, but it did have some distortion at the wide end. You will lose about 1 stop by adding the extra glass, shouldn't be an issue if you plan accordingly and do some tests. A lot will depend on what lens you would be putting the anamorphic adapter in front of and how you would attach it.

If you can pick up one of those Russian lenses for a couple hundred $$ and they have a usable mount, they may be worth playing with, even for stylistic purposes.

[M Olsen]

Digressing slightly.. In the 80s I shot an anamorphic tourism promo and we used the Technovison ( ?) system from the UK. Main lens was a Cooke 5-1 with anamorphic rear element. Projected dailies were terrific. Alas the end use was VHS tapes in travel agent offices and on planes. As an aside are Technovision still in business ?

[Dominic Jones]

Yes, Technovision are still in business, but they're not a British company - they're based in Rome, Italy. They may have had a UK office, but not one I'm aware of that's still in existence.

As for using anamorphics on Red for the true 'scope look, the best bet would probably be to shoot with standard 2:1 optics and centre-crop the frame to 1.17:1 to get the correct image size, then print for anamorphic distribution (assuming a 35mm distribution). If you want a 2.35:1 ratio, barring new 1.5:1 optics of a good quality, then you need to crop the image somehow - either vertically using sphericals or horizontally using anamorphics, and with 4K resolution you'll get a perfectly good print out of either method, it just depends on the look you want (and if you don't mind the extra hassle of shooting with anamorphic glass).

There are, as someone mentioned, filters for emulating the look of anamorphic glass (or at least the blue horizontal flares, I doubt the bokeh differences can be emulated satisfactorily), but I haven't tried them so I don't know how effective they are. I'm shooting an HD movie which will be cropped to 2.35:1 soon, so I may test them for that - I'll let you know what I think if I do...

[Kenn Christenson]

If you're really married to the "anamorphic look" at the expense of losing resolution by cropping, then I guess you could do it (use 2:1 optics.) Bearing in mind that in order to get the equivalent sharpness of sherical glass you're going to have to shoot around f4. Not to mention all the "fun" you're going to have in post. Check out Steve Wright's book about Digital Compositing to see the added complications anamorphic adds to FX work.

Also, read the reply by David Mullin in this thread: http://www.cinematography.net/Pages%...Super%2035.htm

Note: I'm not against the "idea" of shooting anamorphic, I'm just wary of the reality - having shot an anamorphic short in 16mm, I know the difference between what sounds cool in prepro and what turns out to be a royal pain in the backside during production.

[Dominic Jones]

Well, as I said, if you want the 2.35:1 ratio (and I for one far prefer the compositional possibilities it presents over 16:9, but that's a whole different argument - the point is people do want it, whatever their reasons), then with a 16:9 sensor you're going to need to crop and lose resolution either way - vertically with sphericals or horizontally with anamorphics - there's just no other option at present.

Everyone knows that anamorphic is more time consuming to work with as a format, but that's no different with digital than with 35mm - i.e. it's a long way from impossible. Ultimately it's a choice that each production needs to make based on look vs cost, and each project will have to have it's director, producer and DP choose wisely to get the best out of the budget, as ever it was!

I don't think you need to be "married" to a format to decide that it's right for a given project, and to be honest the difficulty in shooting anamorphic is a little over-egged sometimes, imho - it's not *that* much of a challenge! I don't tend to do stuff with a lot of VFX work in it, so I wouldn't want to comment there, but for general narrative work I don't find it that much of an additional strain on shooting schedules...

At the end of the day it's different strokes for different folks, isn't it?! If you're not comfortable with or not fussed about shooting anamorphically, don't. If you are and you are, then do!! It'll be nice to have a camera that can easily handle both situations and give cinematographers the same tools in the digital realm that are enjoyed in the film world.

That's my 0.02, at least...

[C.H.Haskell]

So its possible to put an adaptor on the front end of, lets say a Red lens? An adaptor that does not exist of course but I like the idea. Worked well back in the DVX days so I can only imagine an Ultra HD anamorphic adaptor will be produced for the 4k users of tomorrow.

[David Mullen ASC]

Front 1.33X anamorphic adaptors have been used by DV cameras, but the optical quality has never been high enough for 35mm photography, plus it would be a HUGE adaptor to cover a 35mm cine lens front anyway, less huge if you are talking about an SLR lens, but again, optical resolution loss negates the whole point of trying to avoid cropping pixels.

[Evin Grant]

So we would need a set of dedicated 1.33x anamorphics like the Dalsas then. David, have you used the Vantage film Blue-vision anamorphic flare filter?
Is it of any use in this regard?

[David Mullen ASC]

The blue flare filter from Vantage is only for creating that blue anamorphic lens flare artifact. No, I haven't used it.

The Dalsa anamorphic lenses will only have a 1.22X squeeze because the Dalsa sensor is 1.96 : 1, not 1.78 : 1 (16x9).