QuickHitRecord

This is a forum for anamorphic shooting. Post this in the main forum and you will get more feedback.

It had me mesmerized for the first fifteen minutes as I tried to figure it out. Then I surrendered to the abstract and was only able to keep watching for another five minutes or so. Hats off to Lynch for taking some risks.

Be honest. Who watched it all the way to the end?

richg101, I didn't realize that you were Richard Gale. Congratulations, this is a pretty slick design!

I have spoken to several people at Panasonic about this issue and sent them examples because it has been an issue for me as well. Panasonic is aware of the problem but their canned response is basically that it's a consumer-level camera and the video function is not meant to be pushed the way that we are pushing it, so they are not going to do anything about it. Their attention is on the GH3 now. The banding actually starts showing up at anything above ISO 640 for me. Andrew may disagree, or maybe I just got a bad unit, but I do not see the GH2 as an adequate "low-light" camera at all. But this has forced me to pay more attention to lighting composition, which I really should have been doing all along. If you light properly, you can get great results with it.

It is a cool piece of gear to be sure but you'll probably get a better response if you post it in the main forum.

I have found that sometimes the aspect ratio changes slightly depending on the where the lens is focusing (close focus vs infinity focus). This causes the lens to "breathe" when you try to rack focus. I am not sure if this is a focusing adapter but it's something to consider. And either way, it's not the end of the world. Stretch the footage to whatever it needs to be, and then crop it to anything you want.

Put some diopters in front of your LA7200 (+1 or less are the most useful). You will be much happier with the result.

In Quicktime 7, you can change an image's size (both vertically and horizontally) to whatever you need them to be under 'Visual Settings'. I have not tried it with Quicktime X. And I know of now way to set this as a default.

Free advertising for Ray Valenti! Of course, I'll never be able to afford a house after buying all of these anamorphic lenses. There are a couple of generic/off-brand models out there. I have no idea of what this one is. But it's good to hear that you seem to have found a winner. To answer your question about aspect ratio, try this: Print a picture of a circle and tape it a wall. Square up your camera as much as possible and get a quick shot of the circle. Then take it into your editing software and stretch it out until it's a perfect circle again. Look at how much you had to stretch it and you'll know the ideal ratio of your lens.

I preferred the image from the Alexa myself. But if they switched up the DPs for round two, would I be saying the same thing? The fact that the GH2 is even a [i]part[/i] of this conversation is remarkable. I sold off all of my Canon gear and bought the GH2 because I wanted to have a camera that could produce an image without any distracting visual shortcomings -- I wanted people (professionals, casual YouTube surfers, and everyone in between) to be engaged with the content instead of the pixels. For the most part, I feel like it has been a good decision. There will always be bigger, better and newer cameras coming out but as far as I am concerned, this one sets the bar for consumer video cameras and will continue to as long as 1080P is still a part of the conversation.

[quote name='richg101' timestamp='1342374464' post='13893']yuck! is that 16:9 I see? where's the morph?[/quote] Right on the money, Rich. This doesn't belong here by any [i]2x[/i] [i]stretch[/i] of the imagination. (Commence puns)

I'd like to set up a post where people can talk about their experiences having their anamorphic lenses serviced and repaired. I have very limited knowledge and (fortunately) no experience with an actual repair so far, but please contribute if you have something that you can share here. Many of these lenses are very old and might need some work! In no particular order: GENERAL ANAMORPHIC LENS REPAIR Super 16 Inc (New York) - Bernie O'Doherty repairs and services anamorphic lenses. From Bernie: "A maladjustment of 1/64th to 1/32nd of a degree can mean the difference between a sharp image and one that needs a close-down to f4/5.6 to provide a decent image. And customers seem to accept lower image quality where anamorphic lenses are concerned. Of course, some lenses have imperfect design features which prevent optimum image quality, but, in general, after a good optimizing, most lenses, even anamorphic, benefit from such a servicing." Focus Optics (California) - They may service other anamorphic lenses. When I emailed them, I got a one-line reply that said something like, "Yes, we service anamorphic lenses". Which ones, I am not sure of. Abel Cine Tech (New York, Chicago, Los Angeles) - I came across a forum in which they offered their services when someone asked about a problem Kowa. ISCORAMA REPAIRFocal Point Lens (Colorado) - John Van Stelten was the official one-man Isco projection lens repair service in the United States up until they were absorbed by Schneider a few years back. He has worked on lots of Iscoramas. He is one of the few lens repair specialists that I have talked who offers lens polishing and re-coating. It's not cheap and it can be risky, but in some cases, this process successfully removes any trace of scratches, coating issues, and fungus that has etched into a lens element. He also has an autocollimator, which is essential for re-callibrating lenses after they have been taken apart. Nippon Photo Clinic Service (New York) - They are listed in the Wikipedia article on Iscorama as being a repair show that can service Iscoramas. They can probably service Kowa and Bell & Howell as well. I need to give them a call to confirm (they are closed for the weekend). LOMO REPAIROlex Camera Services (Ukraine) - I have emailed back and forth with Olexandr quite a bit with questions about my Lomo square front. He is very knowledgeable. I have not yet had to employ his services, but Ed Lee of the Lomo Anamorphic User blog has, and he's given Olexandr high marks. I wish that Olexandr accepted PayPal! Super 16 Inc (New York) - Services Lomo anamorphic lenses. See mention above for more info. RafCamera (Belarus) - Rafael can install PL mounts and geared rings on Lomos. Focus Optics (California) - They service Round Front and BAS model Lomos.

I just got an email from SmallHD about some of the features of their new DP7 monitors that will be hitting the market this Fall. Of particular interest to the people who frequent this forum: [i][b]ANAMORPHIC DE-SQUEEZE[/b][/i] [i]2x, 1.5x, 1.33x — However your image is squeezed, the DP7 can correct the image to appear at the correct aspect ratio, even with DSLR scale. Particularly handy is the ability to send the un-squeezed picture downstream to other monitors for clients/directors who usually prefer non-squishy images [url="http://www.smallhd.com/site/dp7-pro/roadmap.html"](Coming Fall 2012 via free software upgrade)[/url].[/i] You can already more or less manipulate the DP4 and DP6 to display your 3.55:1 image (as well as the other standard crop ratios), but it's nice that they thought to add it in as a preset. After shelling out all of this dough for anamorphic lenses, not everyone will be able to afford a DP7 (myself included), but I would not be surprised if this is pushed out to the lower-end monitors as well in the next firmware update. Let's hope that the good folks at SmallHD are feeling generous!

That's quite a list of credentials. It is great to have such a seasoned veteran in our midst. I could be wrong but I don't think that too many of us have rubbed shoulders with greats such as Kubrick. Having worked with so many anamorphic lenses (8mm, 16mm and 35mm from the sound of it), which have been your favorites? I know that you've spoken highly of the Baby Hypergonar and Iscorama...

Tony, would you mind telling me what your background is in? You have a lot of great insight and everytime you post I know that I am going to learn something. [quote name='tony wilson' timestamp='1342107473' post='13793']lomo has sexy cinematic softness,hypergonar amazing flares,kowa sharpness. iscorama is just sublime ease of use with superb near modern hollywood level picture quality not bad for something knocked up in 1958 [/quote] The images produced by Lomo and Hypergonar both really speak to me a lot more than Iscorama. I guess it's easy to tell what I am not so keen on. I will soon have an Iscomorphot to play with. It delivers the distorted filmic image that I like so much, focuses to under one meter without diopters, and is also rack-focusable. So the best of both worlds perhaps!

Nice work, Rich. The anamorphic adds a lot of interest. Thanks for sparing us the flare-fest. I believe that anamorphic footage itself is a treat to watch, and having some soft ([i]soft[/i], not out of focus) shots is part of that. Flares are just icing. Thanks for sharing!

Thanks for sharing your Baby Hypergonar setup, Seb. I've had great luck with the Konica AR pancake, also in 40mm. I will have to try out the Voigtlander as well. Sorry for misspelling your last name!

So you must be [b][i]jaecjaec[/i][/b] over on Personal-View. If that's true, I've spent a lot of hours scouring eBay because of that post of yours. I finally scored a 105mm +0.3 diopter recently. It's opening up all kinds of new possibilities on the LA7200, so thank you for that. What's the minimum focus distance with your diopter? It might be the same as mine.

I am not sure why anyone would have a problem with this footage. I think that it looks great. Some of the better footage that I have seen from the LA7200 for sure. What strength was your diopter?

[quote name='tony wilson' timestamp='1341955321' post='13710']the others will be in land fill or cracked or scratched or at the bottom of the sea .[/quote] I sometimes wonder about all of the good glass out there that gets thrown out every year by people who simply don't know what they have. It is heartbreaking.

[quote name='tony wilson' timestamp='1341934549' post='13695']the tiny focus iscomorphot are a higher quality optic in the quality of materials used but i believe the none focus hypergonar used with low power close up lens will give better results.[/quote] I will be able to test these out side by side very soon. ;-) [quote name='tony wilson' timestamp='1341934549' post='13695']50 of these optics where made around 1956 by Henri Chrétien company benoist s.t.o.p paris.[/quote][list] [*]You have three. [*]I have one. [*]The person that I bought it from has one. [*]Seb Farges has one, and he sold a second one that he found. [*]eBay has had listings for three in the past month. [/list] That's already ten. Do you really think that there only fifty of them out there?

Looks good. Though, the view counts are going through the roof. Was it not counting views by non-member guests before?

[quote name='EOSHD' timestamp='1341923012' post='13673'] Did you get yours on eBay? I'm trying to find one of those at the moment. Very interesting little lens and 1.75x pretty much unheard of. [/quote] Yes, I got mine on eBay a couple of months ago. In the past month, I have seen three up for sale for much less than I paid for mine. There's a rumor going around that there were only 50 of them made, but it seems that there are more of them out there than I had realized.

Seb Farges has been posting videos shot with this lens for quite a while now. I thought that it was impressive so I picked one up for myself. I believe that it may be the smallest anamorphic lens in the world. It is TINY. It's an interesting little beast (completely different from it's grandfather, the Hi-Fi 2) but I think that the footage has a nice, soft look to it! The Baby Hypergonar seems to work best in broad daylight between f8 and f16, but with the +0.4 achromat attached, I can take it all the way down to f1.8 on my Konica AR 40mm and still have pretty sharp results (and a five-foot rackable range that expands as I stop down). I should mention that there is no focus ring. You just shoot through the anamorphic. The lens vignettes very slightly on a 35mm lens (MFT), and the image bends at the sides ala wide angle a little much for my taste. At 40mm, I think that it looks good. And of course, 50mm works well too. Someone recommended trying it with a Nikkor 55mm Micro, which I did, but I was not impressed -- the extended barrel of that lens makes for a great place to conceal a tiny anamorphic like this, but you just can't get the anamorphic close enough to the taking lens. The flares seem to be soft, streaky blue and segmented white (or sometimes both at the same time). I find them to be very pleasing. The 1.75x crop vs the 2x crop that is a characteristic of so many other lenses is surprisingly more manageable, though I do find myself often shooting distorted, without an external monitor, just to have easy access to the magnified focus assist. Here's some footage that I shot this past weekend with this lens (attached to my Konica):   http://vimeo.com/45483904