Bold

I set myself a challenge: To turn a lowly Sony FX3 video camera into a run-and-gun rig for shooting with vintage 35mm-movie anamorphic lenses from ISCO and Schneider etc. These movie-theater lenses are massive, but are great for video work. The problem is in mounting them. They need a taking lens at the rear, and a variable-diopter at the front.
I'm in the process of designing and machining a new type of cage for the FX3 (and other similar cameras). As you can see in these basic renderings, the FX3 body will be 'caged' in a purple-anodized exoskeleton. This is bolted to the camera body using all available mounting-points (there are several). This allows the addition of four, strong aluminum rods. These extend in both directions perpendicular to the camera body.

On the front-end, these rods allow various lens-support struts to be added. On the back-end, they allow a shoulder-rest to extend out. With suitable counter-weighting, these massive ISCO and Schneider lenses can be used in a run-and-gun style set-up:

It is especially important to me that this rig can be knocked about during shooting. Like you, I am tired of flimsy camera set-ups that look like they're made of Frankenstein-parts. I'd like a camera rig that has some coherence, style, and durability to it. For this reason, I've slightly over-engineered everything for high-durability. The Sony FX3 sits inside a tank-like, milled-aluminum exoskeleton. The on-board fold-out display is protected by a stainless-steel 'hood' section. Personally, I'm not a fan of adding external-monitors to these cameras. The on-board display is more than classic 35mm movie cameras ever had.

Onto this entire rig-framework, outer panels are attached, giving the system a waterproof, protective covering, and cleaning-up the look:



I am now working on a parametric CAD model, and will be machining prototype parts this month. I'm interested in any feedback from the community here. Colors in the models are for clarity, the finished rig will be a neutral palette 🙂
My interest is not in whether you like the rig or not, I'm more curious about whether I have overlooked anything vital in the design. Thank you!

Lens-cyclopedia has been updated with a reference to this thread 

Wanted to say thanks again man! It seems to be working well and it's so much fun to use!!! 
 

So, it arrives today, and this thing is mint. Not a scratch anywhere.
It's identical to my Sankor 16C, but in much better condition. 
Going to do a flare and sharpness test later. 

@Cosimo I applaud your work.Thank you for sharing, and contributing. For me and many others, experimentation is the cornerstone of learning about anamorphic. Non-conctructive criticism of other people's work seems petty and antithetical to the anamorphic community. Ignore the haters, and keep doing what you are doing!

Tinkering with lenses and hacking together stuff is what makes anamorphic fun to me, I think some people totally miss the point of why many of us do it.

Cinemoller 1.6X with 50mm f1.4 FVD on 5d3

@Cosimo I applaud your work.Thank you for sharing, and contributing. For me and many others, experimentation is the cornerstone of learning about anamorphic. Non-conctructive criticism of other people's work seems petty and antithetical to the anamorphic community. Ignore the haters, and keep doing what you are doing!

To be honest what Dan Sasaki from Panavision says is much more valuable to me than what you wrote.You can read my private conversation i had with him. These are only DIY prototypes  and there is no hacksaw involved, even a child would know that these would of course benefit from a new housing , but since I am not selling it or launching anything on the market I am not worried. But most of all  please do not worry at all about my children, I am the father. How dare you! 

Sorry, I did not mean to sound mean. But this is not how internet works, I am free to voice my opinion. I see a BS post and I call it out. OP pretentiously talks about "galilean action" and "horizontal artifacts", yet the images are highly uninspiring home shots with some of the ugliest flares I've seen. Then he proceeds to post lenses that look butchered. It seems he just took a hacksaw to some schneider cinelux lenses, then butchered some other lenses and randomly paired elements until he got a useable image. Using pseudo scientific terms to describe this process does not make it anything different. Just pure lens hacking. Pointless exercise, because no self-respecting DP will use something like this to shoot anything remotely important. Sure, if you want to learn by destroying lenses – go ahead. They don't make them anymore though.

But what really worries me is that I see at least 4 different kids in these shots. I don't know how old OP is, and I don't want to assume their gender, but this is not normal. 

@Cosimo I applaud your work.Thank you for sharing, and contributing. For me and many others, experimentation is the cornerstone of learning about anamorphic. Non-conctructive criticism of other people's work seems petty and antithetical to the anamorphic community. Ignore the haters, and keep doing what you are doing!

No offense, but this is pointless. I mean, maybe if you have too much time on quarantine it's an interesting hobby, but it looks like you simply ruined schneider cinelux lenses. Any cheap sankor lens can do much better than this, with nice waterfall background. Get yourself a good cinelux and it will be a proper lens with good image, that won oscar.  I don't know what's a point in these, they look hacked together, not suitable even for lowest budget indie productions. I don't think any DP would put that on their camera. Maybe you should look at Rapido Technologies, they make good products like cases for anamorphics with engravings. etc. They still don't look very good, just a dull black pipe, but anything would look better than this. I think this would scare away any model or client when they see it in front of the camera. Maybe that explains why you only photograph kids and have no serious work to show with these.

Matching  different cylinders glass from different anamorphic scope is equivalent of a cylindrical Galilean telescope running backwards, finding a match with different systems that meet the afocal condition. Here are few prototypes  I put together and some sample shots. I hope you like, thanks!
.
 
 

Digressing abit,  a 3d printer would be cool, spent years running cnc machines, was learning a water jet cutter before corona virus, but thats fallen by the wayside. I have a powerful need to get a rapido fvd16a next. So that is what any spare money is going towards at the moment.
If i get back onto a waterjet I'd be tempted to throw the nap 35 lenses under it and resize them to something a bit more convenient Probably just enough to have them fit the  rapido fvd16. No idea how that would work in reality but the nap was pretty cheap, i'd sacrifice it in the name of science

A large majority of anamorphic shooters seem preoccupied - if not obsessed - with run-and-gun setups.  Which is totally fair, who wants to drag a heavy hand-held setup around?  But for me it has never been an issue, as my goal is to shoot narratives someday.  Narratives with pre-planned camera shots, involving tripods and other supports, where weight is far less of a concern.
In the grand scheme of things, a B&L is not that huge. Although an FVD-35A will definitely increase the weight to 5-6 pounds. Still, I bought a couple B&Ls on the cheap a few years ago, and I definitely want an FVD when I can afford it.
The 335b is another story. Combining the B&H and the Kalee, we're talking 10-11 pounds of glass.  Something for that would be for specific needs, like "I need a 24mm low light shot for this John-Car[enter-style horror film I'm shooting."
Vazen is too rich for my blood. If I could afford a Vazen, I could afford to pay a CNC machinist to create a B&L rehousing 🙂
 

If you call your knowledge limited, then I don't know what I could say about mine. XD 
 
I think it's to be expected. 
You are literally bending the universe and going to the extremes of lens coverage. 
 
Your numbers are 100% correct. 
And that's why Vazen made their lenses 1.8x - so that people won't have to crop anything out of 4:3 video. 
Speaking of Vazen, have you seen their 25 mm T2.2 1.8x anamorphic lens?
 
Cool! 
If they weren't that big and heavy, they would certainly be far more popular. 
Big single focus solutions are also easier to get nowadays (FVD-35A), so maybe we'll see some change in the future and people will start to carry around those bazookas with them on shoots. XD 

So does that work out to about 43-44mm on full frame? Not bad!
35mm projector lenses generally let you go a wider than 16mm lenses. I've read that big 35mm scopes (Bausch & Lomb, e.g) can go as wide as a 35mm taking lens w/o vignetting (I haven't tested this myself). In this Vimeo below someone followed the 'cooking anamorphic' tutorial (a video which I can no longer find... seems to have disappeared from Vimeo) to achieve a 24mm taking lens on an m43 sensor.  Granted there's a LOT of barrel distortion (see the pillars at the 0:45 mark) and edge aberration. 
My uneducated, wild-ass guess is that unaltered, the 335b might allow for 28-30mm with little or no vignetting, as the the glass is almost 20% bigger in diameter. Using the cooking anamorphic technique of shortening the distance between the front & rear elements would definitely allow for 24mm, in theory with less barrel distortion than the B&L.
Of course this would mean it would no longer be 2x anamorphic. But if I could achieve 1.8x it's still enough to produce pronounced oval bokeh.
Shooting with M43 in 4:3 at 2x produces a 2.66:1 aspect ratio. If my math is right, shooting with m43 in 4:3 mode at 1.8x would produce an aspect ratio of 2.40:1
Again, this is all compeletely hypothetical, based on my incredibly limited (and probably flawed) understanding of lens optics 🙂
 

I'd say yes - go for it, if you can. You won't be disappointed with his services.
 
If you manage to pull it off, you'll be the first one to do it.
( :
Nonetheless, I wish you luck!
So far, the widest setup I've heard of was:
Sony A7III + Helios 58mm F2 + Kowa 16-H + Century .75x WA converter that acted as both single focus and wide-angle converter (the huge one with the 3 elements, rehoused in a Pooli Century .75x helicoid).

La rue Sainte-Catherine is the longuest pedestrian street in europe, 1km250.
It's located in Bordeaux, south west of France.
Each day thousands of bordelais and tourists from all over the world walk in this street.
Since the 17th march 2020, lockdown has been in place in france.
This street has never been so empty.
This is a run and gun, street video style, a hommage to the bordelais.
It's a mix of archives, filmed in anamorphic, from 2012 to nowadays, this covid-19 time.
One day all the crowds will come back to la rue Sainte-Catherine, Bordeaux, France. 
Let's enjoy life and people through these contemplative moments.

Reach out to https://rafcamera.com/
He's your go-to guy, when it comes to affordable yet custom design regarding helicoids, clamps, etc.

Modified Lomo 35 NAP 3M with custom D.O.F adapter / f 1.2 lens and 4k Panasonic digital camera. This pic shows a plain set up. Usually 7 inch monitor and follow focus attached. More of my rig examples on Anamorphic bespoke rigs / set ups

My humble rig many years ago on the beach, STILL works great!
GH5, Metabones 0.64XL Speedbooster, Minolta Rokkor 58/1.2, Rapido V2 clamp, B&H for Kowa 2X, Rapido front clamp, SLR Magic variable ND.

Bringing the topic back from the dead.
This is what you get, if you are advised to stay home and have some time at your hands.
Some people fix broken cabinets, some paint walls, I opted for completing the rig and making it more handy.
X-T3, Helios 44-4 via dumb adapter, Tiffen Variable ND, Isco Ultra Star (1st Gen), myFM from Eugene Myreev.
And at the back: 10,000mAh power bank plus NP-F750 battery, both acting as a counterweight and supplying power to the camera and external monitor (Fotga A50TL).
The coiled cable is responsible for triggering recording remotely, so that I don't have to touch the camera buttons, at all.
I was lucky enough to get the majority of parts from SmallRig, and at discounted prices (I paid 8$ for the cage, 15$ for the baseplate, 10$ for the top handle).
The strap acts like a cheap-o alternative to easyRig, I just hang it off my neck.


 
And it fits into my backpack!

That's awesome Tito!  Make sure you copyright that before animorphicstore puts it on his site and claims it as his own :P
 
"Do you hate Communism?"
Hilarious!

Hey y'all! After a long time playing and testing, I made a flowchart that guides you through the process of buying scopes. This is mainly aimed at beginners, but I'm hoping it can at least be fun for experienced shooters too. I'd love to hear your thoughts!
http://www.tferradans.com/blog/?p=15998
Thanks!