I've owned an Iscorama 36 for many years -- long, long before its DSLR popularity -- and have enjoyed using this anamorphic on a Nikon F2A, Nikon Pronea S and, with adapter, on my Canon EOS 20D. Now that I've just acquired a Canon EOS 6D, I'd like to shoot some video with the Iscorama.
I hope longtime forum members won't think I'm asking a stupid question, but how do you precisely align the anamorphic element so that the compression factor is absolutely level? Based on my experience shooting stills, I occasionally need to correct the image slightly in Photoshop.
I've been observing a lot of anamorphic movies lately and am wondering whether using a anamorphic handheld vs. on a tripod makes any difference. I'm guessing it doesn't, since the compression/decompression is constant regardless of camera tilt, right?
I've also noticed in a number of anamorphic films that background out-of-focus point light sources occasionally are skewed significantly off vertical, even though the in-focus foreground elements are correctly rendered.
I'm wondering if maybe I should put the lens on the camera, put the camera on a tripod, level the tripod and then view a circle on the wall and use that as a basis for alignment rather than the indicator triangle on the lens barrel? In another topic here, there was a suggestion to shine a flashlight into the anamorphic and check whether horizontal flare aligns with a camera's grid lines. That's a good idea, but isn't the 36's element likely to shift during the course of a day's shooting?
Here's an example of an image that I was sure had been taken with the anamorphic element aligned properly, but clearly looks slightly off.
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