QuickHitRecord

A great read, Kye. Way to roll with the punches. It's neat to have what is probably the only instance of this lens in use with this camera in the world. I look forward to seeing your footage with this setup.

Good news for me, bad news for my camera cabinet. Looking forward to this.

This is super intriguing and it's great to know about this inexpensive action cam for lens experiments. Thanks for sharing the detailed notes. Hope we can see some video soon.

I loved the idea of this competition. Wish I'd been able to participate but I was in the process of buying a home. I hope there's another one soon.
In a similar vein, I've just launched a new group on Facebook called Junk Camera Cinematography with the following thesis:
I'm hoping that this group can be the antidote for those that feel like there's too much emphasis on new and better gear. It would be great to see some of you in there.

Since I have all three at the moment, I decided to make a test for my fellow anamorphic enthusiasts: 
 
http://vimeo.com/60401188
 
Not exactly scientific, but I tried to be methodical. The Iscorama is sharp wide open, but my Iscomorphot 2x has to be closed down to f/2.8 or smaller, and the Iscomorphot 1.5x really isn't too useful before f/5.6.
 
They each have their own unique character. Which image do you prefer?

There's a thread over on DVXuser: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?356042-The-Hunt-(F3-still-delivering-the-goods)

There's a thread over on DVXuser: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?356042-The-Hunt-(F3-still-delivering-the-goods)

There's a thread over on DVXuser: http://www.dvxuser.com/V6/showthread.php?356042-The-Hunt-(F3-still-delivering-the-goods)

Pretty sure I fall into this category.

The footage from this old sensor just looks better to me than anything else that's out there, including the new cameras or the really high end cameras. That's just my personal aesthetic.

Pretty sure I fall into this category.

The footage from this old sensor just looks better to me than anything else that's out there, including the new cameras or the really high end cameras. That's just my personal aesthetic.

Pretty sure I fall into this category.

The footage from this old sensor just looks better to me than anything else that's out there, including the new cameras or the really high end cameras. That's just my personal aesthetic.

Pretty sure I fall into this category.

The footage from this old sensor just looks better to me than anything else that's out there, including the new cameras or the really high end cameras. That's just my personal aesthetic.

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Had it at one point and it was good, but ultimately replaced it with the Olympus 35-70mm f/3.6, which may be sharper and doesn't rotate when focused.

I post this in another thread, but it might be interesting to those reading this one as well:
 

My friend dropped by this afternoon with his new a7Rii, so we did a quick test against my 5Diii (Magic Lantern Raw) which seems relevant to this discussion:
PW: shootout
Just as when the a7S came out, I am still happy with the image (and pleasing skintones) that I can get from my 5D3.
For those of you who take issue with my methodology, please feel free to post your own tests.

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I'm not sure about the Mark II, but I always use Data Import Utility to import files from my Mark I. If I don't, sometimes I will have a small interruption between longer clips that span multiple files. Data Import Utility combines these spanned clips into single files. This may have been corrected in later versions of Premiere but I still do it out of habit, and I try to avoid working with spanned files whenever possible.

ML Raw Compression Ratios (5D Mark III; 1080P)
10-second clip
Original MLV: 872MB RawMagic Compressed CDNG: 466MB (47% reduction) Davinci Resolve ProRes4444XQ: 479.2MB (45% reduction) Davinci Resolve ProRes4444: 316.4MB (64% reduction) Davinci Resolve ProResHQ: 222.9MB (74% reduction) Davinci Resolve ProRes422: 92.2MB (91% reduction)

PREFACE: I have been doing some testing with this lens for a while now, but lately I have been swamped with work. Also, there has been some sadness surrounding the girl who appears in the demo video (and several other anamorphic tests of mine), so anamorphic shooting has been on the back burner for a while now. But I'm seeing now that someone else has had the same idea, and is trying to make an unrealistic profit from it. And so I feel that I must post this write up, because this isn't a $1400 lens.
 
The search for the perfect anamorphic lens is over (at least for me).
 

 
Some months ago, I saw a post here from a member named frerichs. He claimed to have purchased a Bell & Howell 2x 16mm Anamorphic Projection lens (not the excellent Kowa model) for cheap and discovered that it was single focus, like the coveted Iscorama. I was skeptical, but since they can often be had for between $75 and $150 on eBay, I bought one to try out for myself.
 
At first glance this lens does not look like a winner. It has neither the steam punk appeal of the Lomo square fronts, nor the timeless curves of the Iscorama. The impossibly long and narrow build of the lens suggests that this would never be viable match for anything but the longest taking lenses.
 

 
And yet it works. The front element is a -7 diopter that focuses the other two elements in the housing as the head is turned, similar to the Iscorama. Unlike the Iscorama, the lens takes about five full rotations to go from infinity to close focus, which is limiting for practical use. But I have been working with a CNC machinist to resolve this, and I now have a prototype that allows me to do a full range rack focus in a one and a half turns:
 

 
(Want to do this yourself? Ask a machinist to design a new front housing with a "multi-start thread" that will house the front diopter and screw directly onto the existing thread on the tube; this could also conceivably be done for Iscoramas to the same effect). 
 
We have also added a standard 58mm threading for easier filter mounting, and I've since installed a custom seamless ultra-wide delrin focus gear to add just a little torque for even easier focusing (not pictured).
 
The Bell & Howell projection lenses that originally shipped with this lens were f/1.2 and f/1.4, so it is designed to be sharp at faster apertures -- and I find that it is. Perhaps not razor sharp, but as sharp as I'd ever want an anamorphic lens to be. And once you've removed the two limiting screws from the "head" of the lens, you can focus as close as two feet without diopters. Too much closer than that and the head will screw right off, but it's just as easy to screw right back on.
 
Flaring is nice:
 

 
The lens is not without its drawbacks. For one, it focuses to about 40 feet, not true infinity. That's not an issue for me, but it might be for some shooters. It's all-metal construction makes it a bit heavy which combined with its length will benefit from a lens support (which eliminates the shake that appears in my rack focus test). It vignettes when paired with wider lenses, so it is a better fit for smaller sensor cameras or Canon DSLRs with Magic Lantern raw crop mode enabled. For instance, I can shoot 1600x1200 with a Pentax Takumar 105mm f2.8 lens on my 5D Mark III and I don't see any vignetting before f/8. I also tested it with a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AI-S on my GH2, and it was vignette-free so long as I cropped my 2x image down to 1.5x.
 

 
So how does the footage look? Here's something that I shot with it: 
 

 
I am excited to add a sharp, easily rack-focusable, short minimum-focusing anamorphic to my arsenal. It won't be the right lens for every anamorphic user, especially those who want to be able to shoot as wide as possible, but for the price, it could make single-focus anamorphics more accessible to those who have not had a chance to work with them yet. 
 
Happy shooting!