nahua

I guess it's a balance of performance, size and price.  Letus has two of them - big price and big size - literally.  But performance - haven't seen enough footage to justify it.  SLR Magic has done a great job and they really balanced it out well.  The look is personal preference of course.  There is a difference in look for 1.5x-2x anamorphics no doubt.  But the practical side is hard - affording very expensive optics - whether it be Iscorama or Panavisions or Hawks; and also the physical size as well.  For small personal projects or indie films, you can't go wrong with a small 1.33x adapter that you can handhold.  Letus just seems way too large to handhold.  In any case, I wish you luck finding the right adapter. 

Been waiting for your video!  Glad to see you got some great results!  I wish I kept my Nikon 24mm F2, but oh well.  The taking lens is so important for the look.  I think you're right about anything over 50mm (100mm FF) not working well.  I hope you can upgrade your camera soon.  So many great options coming out in the next month.  I loved my hacked GH2 too.  But with 4K, RAW and better codec options, it's about time for a switch.  BTW your brother's kids are adorable! 

I hope so!  Last year was really bad - high prices and low quality/broken anamorphics.  I think everyone getting into it finds out how hard it is to shoot with anamorphics.  Even with SLR Magic, it ain't that easy...

One thing you can take from the test is that there's no banding at all.  The shot above the Notre Dame (I think?  I don't know Paris) shows some absolutely clear skies.  Try that with your hacked GH2, or even the GH3.  We know there's detail, but the color and tones are more important for an 8-bit image.  I'm liking what I see and I can't wait to get a GH4!

@Nahua at 180mm you had to be using a diopter and in a fairly extreme ECU situation, no?  Or are you using one that's been modified so that front and rear element can be manually adjusted?  Is any of that in one of the videos you might have online?

 

The longest prime that I have is the Nikkor 105mm f/2.5 and I need to do some more shots but it seems like it'll be useful with the Anamorphot at a decent stop.  I had to be so stopped down when pairing it with my Century Optics that I only tried it the one time and never messed with it again.  After that I've only got a couple big zooms which are more useful for personal defense than anamorphic shooting.

@ Sean sorry I got my focal lengths mixed up.  85mm for M4/3 which is 170mm FF.  But I even got my 100mm Macro to work with the LA7200 on my GH3.  The LA7200 doesn't work well with my Canon 5DmkIII though, so nothing over 100mm was in focus.  Also my Canon 70-200mm never worked with anamorphics either.  I think it's too complex with too many elements.  Always the simplest optics work the best.  I guess that's why all these old lenses work so well.  Small front element with few elements inside.

We agree on 1.33x lenses in general and I'm also with you on smearing in real life... 'The Mission' is a great inspirational example of this for me, Academy Award Winning Anamorphic Cinematography...edges look like an LA7200 all the time.  

 

I know companies can't control what random people put out but these guys got preproduction GH4s and free Letus' to play with and I just think it's a waste of everyone's time.  I see enough bad LA7200 videos and know my own results that I suspect the Letus may work for me, but I'd like to know for sure before dropping $2,700.  

 

I know people hate Panasonic lenses sometimes but I swear I'm getting a lot of mileage out of a 12-35 and an LA7200.  If I had a damn way of using the 35-100mm reliably I think I'd cave for whatever the solution was...even if it means having more than one adapter or some kind of diopter solution.  I'm just afraid of being light on close-ups shots and cheating some in and cropping is fine but it's not the same as we know well.

I was reluctant to sell my LA7200 but I swear the SLR Magic Anamorphot is the better option.  If you have the money then I would say own both.  LA7200 is excellent for super wides, but you can use diopters so easy on the SLR Magic.  Plus the two diopters they sell are really worth it.  Very sharp, although heavy, glass that really does wonders for closeup shots.  BTW I never got smearing with GH2/3 with the LA7200 unless I went over 180mm.

I just got the 12-35mm X lens and I really like it too.  Has to be at F2.8 to even get close to shallow depth of field, but I really like it.  Great fast focus, IS works great and it's sharp too.  Not clinically sharp like most Panasonic lenses but really good.  I think Sean (BR) should really reconsider selling that old 14-42mm and get the 12-35mm X lens instead.  Footage looks way better and the IS helps a lot.

I've tried to use MLV with the recent February builds but I get the sensor pattern lines even at ISO 100.  I thought they fixed that issue last year?  It's been very hard to find the correct info on builds for MLV.  Also getting it converted to CDNGs is not very fluid.  I like the new updated interface though, but until I can get reliable video I'll stick with last year's stable version.

I'm not liking the look or form factor of the Letus.  I wonder also if the GH4 footage was shot with the stock settings.  Looks oversharpened like the GH3 at stock setting.  I know we should be able to lower the sharpening at least.  And the night scene outside Grand Central wasn't good at all.  I'm also wondering about the flare from the Letus.  Looks like almost nothing in the footage, yet the tests from earlier in this thread showed some excellent flaring.  What gives?  It can't just be the panasonic lens can it?

I think I was getting confused on how wide is "wide".  Comparing spherical to anamorphic, 40mm at 1.33x is 30mm in FF.  I prefer the 35mm in spherical, so I guess 40mm is wide enough on the SLR Magic Anamorphot.  I just need to get used to the angle of view.  Time for a few more tests...

Amazing look and that focus puller was great too!  Just wish it would flare.  I mean there are no flares at all!  Just disappointed, otherwise the sharp but great cooke look on her face is great.

i used a shoulder mount with two grips - it's really the best.  i was also using the kinotehnik, so at least four points of contact.  gunstock-style  are okay, but on long shoots, you're really spending time continually contracting your back muscle, and you're going to introduce shake with them.  so i think two-handed shoulder mounts are best.

 

Lee - had a variable ND on there.  even though i like the variable, putting the ND on and taking it off with the diopters was a hassle because it kept screwing up my alignment.  going to use a mattebox next time.  shot at 2.8 the entire time just adjusting iso (800 and under) and the fader.  exposed to the right.

 

tony- cool, will try that when i can get my hands on one of those. 

I'm surprised you didn't get stares for walking around with a rig.  But then again it's NYC and there's camera crews everywhere.  I use a monopod with simple rig and I get stares and questions all the time.

I know using a vari-ND and diopters isn't easy.  I have my Anamorphot in a collar on my rails.  Makes it much easier, and alignment is stable.  I wish there was a quick mount instead of screw-in for the adapter for easy changes.

Here's my video to share.

Had some trouble nailing focus shooting T2.8 on some crap BMPC LCD screen, but here you go!

 

EXPERIENCE
I enjoyed using this. This is a final production prototype that I am testing. What makes it great is that the setup was really light, pretty well-built, and the learning curve is pretty easy. It can resolve sharp images, especially with the achromats. On the small LCD of the pocket camera though, getting focus can be a crapshoot. Focus peaking does not always work and I had to guess a lot. I did have to tell Ying to slow down a couple times because there was no way I could pull focus, especially on a fairly fast aperture of T2.8 and pretty much 100mm equivalent lens. Really should have a large monitor. But then it's not really a run and gun lens like I was using here though. I don't feel like anamorphic in general is normally for documentary style work. Neither is the pocket camera. Hope this helps you.
Erik

Great footage!  Did you use a monopod or something?  Must be small if you didn't get any looks in the metro.  I like those closeups, really nice bokeh.  I really like the SLR Magic 35mm CINE too.  Be nice to see more shots from Canal St too.  Keep up the great work!

With ML and card spanning turned on with a 5DIII people are getting about 110 MB/s so that is about the limit that camera can do continuously anyway. ML doesn't limit the maximum resolution in any way, those limits are a result of limits of the data stream that they hack into.

 

In non-crop mode the maximum resolution is the max resolution of the camera / 3 5760 x 3840 / 3 = 1920 x 1280. That is because the camera takes the raw sensor data and only reads out every third pixel and then sends that to compression. ML can grab that data after it has been down sampled and dump it to the card. They have no direct access to the sensor data so they are limited by what they can access which I believe is actually a raw data stream meant for the Live View.

 

In crop mode the data stream is much larger (3584 x 1440) and is every pixel instead of every third so that is the max resolution in that mode. Also the resolutions have limitations as well can cannot be just any random value. The width in pixels should be evenly divisible by 16 and the number if bits per horizontal line must be divisible by 16. If you do the math you will see that most of the possible resolutions are already included, I recently added one my self at 1792 wide.

 

So shooting roughly 4/3 aspect the highest non-crop mode res you can do is 1728 x 1280. In crop mode you could do 1920 x 1440.

Thanks dhessel for clearing this up.  I really don't know the technical aspects.  I just shoot with it!  :-)

"bow" as in barrel distortion?  I don't like it personally but it's unavoidable for proper wide shots.  I do a lot of landscape panoramics too and I stitch a lot of wide shots.  It's just the nature of the shot.

As for video, well it does have a weird perspective.  And no I don't really like it.  But I'm trying to go from a photo stills view to a video view.  Adding motion makes things so much different.  In the end I really like 35mm FF as the widest.  Anything wider and you do get that "bowing" effect.  So in essence I guess having 40mm as the widest for the SLR Magic Anamorphot is a good thing.  Stops me from going too wide.  LOL

OK I'm looking at my ML settings now.  The vertical resolution is maxed out at 1288.  I don't know why, it must be in the forums somewhere.  Here are the resolutions:  1600x1200, 1728x1288, 1856x1288, 1920x1288.  However - there are resolutions from 2048 up to 3584, you just can't select them.  I believe the 4:3 setting I use 1920x1280 is near the max resolution with the most stable continuous recording.  If you want more answers maybe you can post in the ML forum or PM A1ex. I believe he's the main person responsible for the resolution settings.  I know you can modify the resolution if you change a file in the Raw_rec module, but you'd have to recompile it.  I don't know anything about that, maybe A1ex can do it.  I'd love to shoot 2048, at least get close to 2K.  But I don't think it's possible for continuous recording, again because of the recording bitrate would be too high.

In the very early stages of development you could choose your aspect ratio, or more the vertical and horizontal resolution.  I believe you could get 2048 x 1920 too.  But they soon found out that the bitrate is what limits how much you can record.  In order to help people out, they changed it to presets with aspect ratios, then you can choose your resolution.  But they couldn't get consistent recording at 2048, so the horizontal is fixed at 1920.  Vertical was a problem too, so they limit it at 1440 I believe.  I think you can shoot 1920x1440 for a few seconds only.  The 3:2 sweetspot is 1920x1280 for continuous recording at 104MB/sec.  I haven't tried 1920x1440 because I can only get a few seconds.  I believe the bitrate is 125MB/sec way over the rates of any current CF cards.  And the buffer is too small to store so much information.  You can check out my video tests on Vimeo and download the video file if you want to take a look:

Yeah, it pretty much ends up being a wash, horizontal-FOV wise, between larger and smaller sensors with these adapters at the wide end.  You can get maybe a few mm wider with a GH2/GH3 but you would be hard pressed to really tell in the footage.  Still, you have to consider this is, with a 1.33x adapter, close to the same FOV you get from a 30mm Panavision lens which isn't as wide as they go but it's pretty wide.

 

The thing that needs to be confirmed by other sources, and possibly tested at multiple distances throughout the focus range, is whether the Letus is actually 1.33x or not.  A few folks have reported an effective ratio of more like 1.21:1 which would have an impact on our shared affinity for wider angles.

I think the widest anamorphic shot was from the remake of Total Recall.  I read that they used a custom old Panavision 20mm lens.  I think all the terminal scenes were shot with it.  But that's maybe too extreme?  I mean it's a one-off lens.  So yeah it's impossible to get ultra-wide, but around 30mm is good.  I think with the LA7200 I could get 28mm with lots of smearing, but equivalent of 24mm FF.  In any case, I guess it's just a lot of preplanning a shot and making sure to get the right angles.  Thanks for the opinions!

I like the look of this footage too.  However I think your anamorphic is aligned wrong.  Out of focus bokeh should be vertical (up/down) versus sideways ovals (left/right).  When you look at the lens from the front, the oval opening should be vertical.  Also to help alignment (vertical lines like doors, walls, windows, etc) use a cheap LED torch.  Shine it into the front and then you can align it with the line of the flare.

Dual focus is a pain.  Really pain, but you have to get used to it.  I think you need to really understand the distance markers and follow it.  Get good at estimating the distance to your subject, then you can dial in the proper focus.  It takes a lot of practice.

I really like the footage and look of it.  Keep working at it!

A pretty extensive review 

I must admit that damn thing is huge.  HUGE.  I guess they didn't want to mess with drop-in diopters, but damn it's huge!  I laugh at the GH4 pic handheld because there's no way you can handhold this thing.  And the focus/aspect ratio shift is insane.  Is this really worth getting?  Wouldn't it be easier to just rent a true anamorphic lens rather than deal with this?  Or just get the SLR Magic Anamorphot.  At least I get very few looks with the SLR Magic Anamorphot when shooting in public.  Try that with the Letus and you'll get fucking stares at it.

Made this quick and dirty vid the other day to try RAW out, and I discovered that with grading there was a very fine raster visible when I started to grade it with film convert.

 

I have it here: 

 

But due to vimeo encoding its now very muddy and you hardly see it anymore. Maybe a little bit in the first and third shot if you look at the sky on the right side of the image.

 

Any ideas what it is? 

 

Also, do you guys have tips for a good and fast RAW workflow. I tried making a rough cut in da vinci and than exporting an xml to either premiere cc or FCP X, but in both cases it doesn't work (with FCP X it said resolution is not support, I shot 1920 by 8something, widescreen).

 

And finally, whats the best format to give to vimeo, I now always use a high bitrate h264 version, but I feel I lose more sharpness than other vids I see.

I like this video.  Nice look.  Must have been very windy to have sand flow like that.  Maybe 30mph sustained winds?  I'm surprised you didn't need to cover your faces.  Usually it stings the face and eyes.

I think the way you process the raw files might be the problem, or maybe you shot at a very high ISO and it's the digital noise in the file.  Davinci Resolve is very good with the files, however the LITE version doesn't have noise reduction.  I use Neat Video to remove noise, then you can use Film Convert to process the "film look".  I don't think there is a fast raw workflow unfortunately...

I believe if you look up "Handbrake" there was a post with the optimized settings for H264 for Vimeo.

Yeah, once you go sufficiently stopped down you get fewer cues that funky optics are involved, in the sense of a still image.  I still think you get a different sense of perspective and spatial relationships between objects that's different than that of a spherical lens though, revealed through Z-axis movement.  I think the cues end up "feeling" different even if you were to match horizontal FOV with an equivalent spherical lens.  

I agree with you.  Practically I can't get a wide enough anamorphic lens.  I wanted to keep my LA7200, but the smearing is terrible.  I look forward to the Letus adapter although that thing is huge.  It's a compromise at this point - accept that 40mm FF is the widest I can shoot and reframe - or shoot spherical and at small apertures of F11 or larger.  I love the anamorphic look, but it's difficult for sure.

This might be off topic but do you think wide footage can be spherical and just be cropped?  I want to have wide Anamorphic footage, but usually shooting at F8 to get a lot in focus, at 1.33x it looks just like regular spherical footage.  I think for medium, tight and closeup shots Anamorphic is fine.  It's just the wide shots.  I figure a 35mm shot spherical daytime at F8 or F11 can just be cropped and mixed seamlessly with Anamorphic closeups.  I also just saw Basic Instinct and they shot it all with Anamorphic (except maybe the car chase scenes).  I think they blended the shots very well.

I've long since sold my GH2, but with the GH3 it is 20mm (40mm FF).  I have the 14-42mm too, it's too sterile an image.  I'm going to get a 20mm pancake and try it out.  I wish I could use 17.5mm (35mm FF) since I love that wide look - not super wide but not "normal" either.  If you try the Anamorphot with the 25mm Leica Summilux, you can use F2 although it's a soft image but great bokeh.  I'm going to try the Anamorphot with the 12-35mm X lens when it comes in next week.  I hope that at the wide F2.8 the image still has great bokeh but just enough sharpness.  I'm worried though, only the 25mm Leica has great bokeh.  All the other Panasonic lenses just are too sterile - too sharp, too much DOF.

That Letus 1.33x is massive. I hope it allows for wide angles.

Damn it sure does look massive.  Maybe 2x the size of the SLR Magic Anamorphot and 1.5x the LA7200.  It's all in the image though.  I'm surprised there isn't more footage out there either.  Maybe they're still tweaking the image/coating?  I look forward to it although I'd like to see more footage.

I've been looking at this lens too.  Either this or the Canon 40mm STM pancake.  But I'm looking at the SLR Magic Anamorphot because it vignettes at 35mm, but is good at 40mm.  I'm going to try and get a cheap Canon and see how it looks.  But the Voigtlander would be better because it's F2, and I can stop it down to F2.8 and get a little sharper image but still get some smooth bokeh.  Let me know if you get a chance to try the lens.