tonydtv

Thanks bud!

I think it's hella productive to hive mind these DIY projects. Who better to play with than a community of filmmakers who thought it was a good idea to strap a projector lens onto their camera?

I've got nothing against the folks selling their wares, I'm sure they will work amazingly well (and judging by the tests, they do). But for those of us who can't afford the thousands of dollars for adapters or iscoramas, a couple hundred on achromats and old wide angle adapters let's us in on the whole "being able to focus my lens" rage.

So let's play people!

samples now:
 

 
+10 achromat and two 0.6x wide angle adapters = much shorter travel between achromat and wide angle block = less vignetting, less breathing (but still there) + keeping infinity focus intact.
 
All the shots close focus to between 1 to 5 feet. Also built a wonky PVC housing, so while the elements are aligned better, they're still a little off.

35NAP 2-3M, Sony A7S (fullframe), Samuang 85mm F:1.5.

Tech talk aside, this was a really powerful piece, you should be proud.
Just bought myself an RX100 iv and I second it as a damn solid B cam and FS700 stand in.

The real suprising champ is the RX100IV - the slow motion out of this guy is beautiful.
I am shocked by how good it came out.  Mixed F35, A7S, everything - especially at the waterpark.
 
 
 

Might as well throw this into the anamorphic forum explosion!
 
I came across this focusing solution earlier this year by taking my 20% understanding of comments made on varied forums about optics and vaguely knowledgeably combining elements from the large amount of random glass I've amassed over the years. I don't claim to know much about optics, and I'm certainly no engineer, but this technique has worked when I didn't have the budget to rent a set of Kowas or the like.
 
This is definitely a lo-fi, DIY solution. The other products popping up around the forum are higher quality than this, and really this solution's quality depends on the quality of glass you use. Also, I could be totally wrong about how and why this is working.
 
But if you like to tinker as much as I do, and don't mind a lo-fi aesthetic, then, here:
 

 
(handheld the optics, hence the wobbles)
 
In a nutshell, arrange the following items in the following order:
a. Camera
b. Taking Lens
c. Anamorphic Adapter
d. Achromat
e. Wide Angle Adapter
 
Instructions:
1. Mount camera, taking lens and anamorphic adapter together.
2. Attach achromat to the front of the anamorphic adapter, as close to the glass as possible.
3. Place the wide angle adapter as close to the achromat as possible.
4. Through your viewfinder (and not lens markings) set infinity focus.
5. Move the wide angle adapter away for close focus.
 
At some point you'll start to vignette from the front element getting to far away. If you want closer focus, reset your 'infinity focus' to something closer, like 15ft. That's what I did in the embedded video.
 
There's more notes in the video description, but here's a couple more to get you started:
 
The trickiest part is finding the relationship between strength of the achromat to the strength of the wide angle adapter. I'm sure someone with knowledge of optics will say how. Loudly. Before dropping cash on any achromat, you can use closeup filters to ballpark a strength. In fact, you can use closeup filters, but image quality will suffer. But good if you want to experiment.
 
Also, old DVX or HVX wide angle adapters are a good starter to tinker. 72mm or higher gives you more travel before vignetting.
 
Any questions, ask away!

Thanks Santiago!
As far as diving into Blender, I recommend this youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuGWRbFrq3bZkOEpQ02Xpww His videos are short (sometimes too short) but they are very clear, and he covers A LOT of topics. Start with this playlist: Blender 2.6 Tutorials for New Users Beyond these tutorials, just search for intro to Blender type vids on YouTube. 
And while there are constantly new versions of blender every few months (they are on Blender v2.7.5 now), you can safely follow any beginner tutorial that uses Blender 2.6 and up. For the intermediate level videos, try to stick closer to videos about Blender 2.7.x.
Also recommend the website blenderguru.com. His tutorials are on the more intermediate/advanced levels, but they are very good.
I will be honest, Blender can be frustrating to learn at first, so be patient. Like I said, it took me two weeks just to feel comfortable using the program!

Thanks Hans!
The car vault was a tough shot to nail (though not for Amber). We were dollying back on a jib with no monitor and no remote focus, just aiming and hoping for the best! To one day have a crew and a video village instead of throwing out my back would be a dream...

Impressive stuff...especially seeing as you taught yourself Blender as you went! 
That slomo shot of her vaulting over the car towards camera is awesome, straight out of a Luc Besson film.
 
 
 
 

Lot of FX work, really love it.
"I never had done 3D work before and I certainly had no budget to hire anyone."
I feel like you, Blender is my pending subject and I want to do a video for Christmas about a comic superhero with a lot of FX and green screen.
Could you post some links to the best tutorials or examples of Blender?
Thank you very much!
 

Hello all! Just completed a music video for the track 'Freefall' by Koishii & Hush. I was approached to make an action scene, no band performance at all, which was a challenge. There could be no dialogue and it had to be interesting for the length of the track. 
 
I wrote a detailed treatment about a female thief coerced into sneaking an organ into a fortified hospital, which the band approved. Casting the thief would be tricky; the character I wanted to create was not a tough-as-nails-seen-everything-badass. I wanted a sense of humor, not a female Steven Seagal. So I needed someone first and foremost who could act, but who was also athletic enough to handle the role. Thank god for Amber Marie Bollinger. 
 
Amber was in an absurdist comedy webseries I stumbled across a while back called Hollywood Is Hard, and she was hilar. I looked up another couple roles and reels she was in, and she more than had chops to handle the acting required of the role. And to boot, she was a collegiate track and field competitor, which knowing as many stunt people as I do (married to one), is one of the gateway drugs to becoming a stunt performer. Odds are she could handle the athleticism of the role.
 
I cold contacted Amber and she was game to play. We met up with my stunt coordinator James Hutchison and my wife (who happened to be the right height to double Amber) and ran her through some basic fight training, which she picked up impossibly fast. We did maybe six or seven fight training/rehearsal sessions before the shoot.
 
The shoot was three full nights and two half nights. I had the parking garage at work locked down on weekends, which was a godsend (I still owe the building manager a case of booze). Even so, we needed to fly through setups, I want to say 25-30 a night, and with more than half of them being fights/stunts, with a skeleton crew. For lighting, we kept it natural, augmenting a bit here and there, throwing a backlight or scrape when needed. We used a lightweight homemade LED system I built that was battery powered, which allowed us to work quickly. 
 
We shot on the a7s with Nikkor glass. I chose the a7s mainly for its lowlight; I couldn't afford to light a whole underground parking lot. I also wanted a high shutter speed AND the ability to shoot slowmo, and in that low light, only the a7s made sense.
 
Given the time constraints, I'm happy with what we got. And while I love good cinematography, nothing is more important than performance, and Amber and the stunt crew killed it. Hat tip to Mark Musashi and Darren Bailey (knife guy) who had the longest of the fights and made a meal out of their performances. But the biggest asset was Amber, who aside from pulling off all her choreo (and that car vault!) kept the cast and crew laughing throughout.
 
Post was a whole other story. The edit took less than a week, but the effects took about eight months. Reason? I never had done 3D work before and I certainly had no budget to hire anyone. So I taught myself how to use Blender 3D. Why Blender? It's free and there is a huge community of users and tutorials to help learn it. Took maybe two weeks to get literate enough to know what kind of questions to ask. From there it was tutorials and trial and error. The learning curve was a bit steep, but by month two I stopped yelling at the screen. I think had there been a real deadline, I probably wouldn't have even had a gunfight, but since I didn't I did.
 
So that's the long and short of it. Any questions, I'll be around.
 
The Music Video:
 
 
 
VFX Breakdowns:
 
 
 
 

You guys are acting like a bunch of kids. It's really painful to watch.

Well I guess it's time to move on. Hard to argue against so much funded wisdom.
Seems like I have to dump my sharp single focus 2x Cinelux / FM combo.
Must be my fault that I can't produce soft, distorted images with lots of lovely CA like other recently hyped 2x double focusing anamorphics do.
So the 75,-- bucks I had to spend for the Cinelux were a complete waste.
 
Now I need to get one of those bargain Isco 36 plastic lenses. I heard they can’t do close focus below 2m without modification or diopters, but who on earth would need to get any closer? I sure hope they come with a decent user manual.
 
 

It is kind of a given that down scaling UHD to HD in post is going to give better results than HD straight from the camera on the A7s even though that is exactly what the camera is doing internally anyway. The reason for this is simple, the A7s needs to read the data off the sensor, de-bayer it, downscale it, and compress it in real time at up to 60 fps were down scaling in post the footage only needs to be scaled and it doesn't even have to be real time during the rendering process. This means that better more computationally expensive scaling operations can be used compared to those used in camera.
Here lies another advantage of cameras that can shoot raw, all of these operations can be done on more powerful machines at higher quality when done on a computer in post rather than in camera. 

Mine just arrived not more than half an hour ago...

At the moment we are 14 on the list, here we are:
comurit
eeeceegee ( to be confirmed)
yannis.zach ( to be confirmed)
nahua ( to be confirmed)
oznimbus ( to be confirmed)
dahlfors
silvertonesx24
tonydtv ( to be confirmed)
valid
anti12 ( to be confirmed)
bootsie
kristoferman
Caleb Genheimer
Kerrick ker-Bear Martin
 
At the end of october I would like to send this list to anamorphic shop and see if we can get a discount coupon for all of us on the list.
Some of you need to confirm before the end of october please.
thank you for your cooperation!!!!

there are some nice micro 4/3 helicoids on ebay that are great

I think we as forum users should be able to discuss and talk about whatever mysterious company/person we want. I don't see the connection between unlocking the topic and actually supporting said company. Not relevant at all.

I'm afraid I agree with my readers on this John. What seems to be going on here isn't really fair. The selling "rules" are not a set of laws to be enforced by mods, they're meant as a general guideline to staying safe and as a disclaimer. Also your bad relationship with some of the other mods isn't sustainable. I'm afraid from now on you will no longer have moderator rights on the forum John. Sorry.
 
I am sure you can appreciate my position here. I feel you are abusing your power as a moderator to sell your stuff and censor competitors and this is just not acceptable. Way too many complaints for you to stay as a mod.

Interested, depending on tests/footage

Let us know what you find out!

I have the same math. The only thing I'm having trouble figuring out is how the powers interact (ie, what power glass would shorten the distance of movement required to focus)

Just got a hook up with an optician that works locally and has some tinkering toys at his house. Hopefully I'll gain more info there.

Thanks bud!

I think it's hella productive to hive mind these DIY projects. Who better to play with than a community of filmmakers who thought it was a good idea to strap a projector lens onto their camera?

I've got nothing against the folks selling their wares, I'm sure they will work amazingly well (and judging by the tests, they do). But for those of us who can't afford the thousands of dollars for adapters or iscoramas, a couple hundred on achromats and old wide angle adapters let's us in on the whole "being able to focus my lens" rage.

So let's play people!

and the winner is????
:D
Mr........DOUBLE FOCUSING ladies and gentlemen!!!!

HD should be up soon but here it is.

I'm using plano-convex lens mounted to the front element of my anamorphic. On the rails, I've mounted a plano-concave lens (pretty ghetto set up, but works enough for proof of concept). Moving the rail mounted lens further away gives me closer focus, in fact, pretty fucking close. Sharp as can be too. All I need to do now is figure out the power of the lenses, buy larger elements, and house them. Baby steps.