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those red clamps are crap and that tokina doublet will soften the image it is not necessary. john barlow has already scientifically destroyed the tokina myth with math and nasa physics. tokinas sharpness has been proven to be all in your mind. get a refund you have been conned : )     and do not reply by saying nasa is a fraud. ok  buzz lightyear and lance armstrong did not go to the moon but that simple fact does not provide evidence that they do not udderstand science and the laws of quantum mechanicals.

Oh, I also forgot to mention, it'll focus at 1.5 feet!   Screw the diopter crap, this thing rocks!   Close ups are soooo nice!   I'll be shooting a music video with it later this month as well... should be a lot of fun... hoping for some "Monty Python" inspired violence!

Got my Bolex about three weeks ago.   Got my Redstan clamp last week & it's fantastic!  I hope to get out into the field tomorrow & do some serious shooting with it.   I've done some minor test-shoots with it & it's great....   On the GH2, I can shoot with a super Tak 35mm at f2 with the very slightest vignette.   Stopped down, it increases.   28mm gives a little to much vignette, IMO... The Restan Clamp can only get the two lenses so close together.... they'd have to be touching to get rid of the vignette, probably. The Konica 40mm is sharp as hell even at f1.7... and there's almost zero distortion.... Freakin' awesome. Here it is on the Tak 35.   Dual focusing is really NOT an issue.  It's fast & simple.

It's not all related to this topic but here's John McTiernan illustrating composition and film grammar:   http://vimeo.com/56000479   ...through all these anamorphic scenes the long lens stuff is a minority and pretty easy to pick out.  What's also interesting here is he illustrates and explains why he likes composing wide with wide angle lenses versus his reference to Tony Scott who will often compose a wide shot with a telephoto lens, even when he's shooting anamorphic.  Totally different feel.  Affects the viewer in a totally different way.   Telephoto shots are, generally speaking, in the minority for actual motion picture production unless the filmmaker has a specific affinity for compressed, telephoto composition (whether or not this is motivated or necessitated by having multiple cameras constantly running) like a Tony Scott or Peter Berg.  They're the special cases though and not reflected in the bulk of anamorphic cinema that's 99.999% of the reason why we're even here talking about this stuff.

anyone make music?   it'll probably follow a similar pattern,... emulator plugins will come that will letterbox+add cheesey flare+fiddle with colours/sharpness.etc all at the touch of a button and it'll have a special "add mojo" randomizer and a special algorithm that is written by an anamorphic "expert" ...   and lil johnnys and janes everywhere will have their first steps rendering in glorious faux-nemascope,..   but there will be a core of us that would rather shoot and capture the look at the shoot than spend hours fiddling with sliders into the wee hours of the morning, so the prices of certain lenses will remain high if not go higher as supply dwindles.   just like in music where you have guys who have gone back to portastudios and tape and four track recorders and vintage synths cos all that technology got in the way of doing what they want to do.   dual focusing is nothing compared to the hours you could waste fiddling with sliders and always going just a smidge too far  :P

Well, I've found the Tokina to retain image sharpness. I don't know about the image improvement that some credit it with, but one thing is for sure, it doesn't make anything drastically worse, and that's saying something because many of the cheaper diopters available certainly do make things worse. Also, it is a low power diopter, which is less common and far more useful.   As for the front clamp business, I'd rather not go fiddling taking my lens apart to find these alleged threads. It is in very good condition, and the RedStan clamp is working just fine. I always do my research before buying anything, and I did no small amount before putting together this anamorphic setup. The RedStan rear clamp is absolute top quality as far as I am concerned. It is solid anodized aluminum machined to a precise fit with excellent threads and sturdy plastic lock screws that do not scratch my anamorphic. The front clamp is much the same, although it is a tad more bulky than need be, perhaps.    I have been using this setup for half a year, and have recently completed a 30 minute short film shot entirely with the Kowa, Tokina diopter and Redstan clamps, not to mention many shorter videos.    At the time of purchase, I emailed RedStan directly (I believe I found his email on the RedStan site), and I ended up trading RedStan for the package deal (Tokina and RedStan clamps). RedStan was courteous, prompt to reply and eager to work out a mutually beneficial deal. It is difficult to calculate precisely what I paid for this setup because it was a trade of goods, but there was no way with the exchange rate that I would have been able to afford the USD $300+ price of all these parts. Obviously I'm thankful and happy that RedStan was willing to cut me a deal, because I love anamorphic shooting and will never go back. 

Times change. Anyone can now buy a camera kit and call themselves a cameraman. But you can't buy a set of knives and call yourself a surgeon. Well not just yet :)

I posted this elsewhere in simplified form. Stick your 8-bit 4:2:0 footage into After Effects, set it to 32-bit and it's being treated as non-sub sampled individual frames anyway, in a a floating-point space. Transcoding is pointless hassle really. You can't gain detail, and the finishing software is doing the same thing for you. God bless the floating point!