Caleb Genheimer

Kowas are among the best glass out there. A Rectilux would probably be the ideal single-focus solution to maximize quality, but the FM and Rangefinder also do an admirable job.

I use NX1 with a Kowa 16-H/8Z. My personal opinion is that 2X looks by far the best. Otherwise, just shoot spherical, crop, and add some barrel distortion in post. with the UHD capabilities of the NX1, cropping off the sides to get 2.35 or 2.66 is really no great loss. The Kowa is among THE best anamorphic glass, period. Full stop. Add a Rangefinder or Rectilux, and it also becomes a versatile and useable professional tool.

Consider the Samsung NX1. Ignoring all the crap about it being discontinued, it's a great camera and always will be. The color is pleasing, and the 4K provides lots of information to work with when craving an image. Add to that the recent support via FilmConvert, and I think it might have a lot of what you're looking for.

I've never checked the minimum, but it's near a foot possibly less. Max is around 9 feet as you said.

Yep.

Kowa 16-H 2X anamorphic, outfitted with Redstan front/rear clamps and an SLR Magic Rangefinder. The "taking" lens is a Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8. A bit of a heavy load for the Ronin M, but that gives it a Hollywood style handheld look to the movement.

That's where it fits. The Tokina ATX is very, very good. But it's a 72mm filter, so it goes on the 72mm Redstan. Then the step up to 77mm, with the rangefinder finally on front. I think the Rangefinder front is something like 82mm, so there would be serious vignetting with the Tokina on front.

It is the 77mm version with focus marks. I've not noticed any extra vignette, though I've not been looking for it either. The 40mm is pretty much as wide as you can go on s35 with the Kowa, and it still works with the rangefinder on front. Sometimes I put my Tokina ATX diopter behind the Rangefinder. Then it creates a tiny vignette in the corners at 2.40:1 ratio. All of this certainly vignettes at 3.55:1.

It's funny how lenses for anamorphic are. The Konica really isn't very inspiring on its own, but with the Kowa on front it's awesome. Conversely, my 50mm Zeiss C/Y is bonkers good on its own, but quite bland with the Kowa. It's a bit hair-splitting once web compression rears its ugly head, but full 4K files hide nothing. I did a version with the skew fixed (actually quite easy to correct for in post if it's this minor), but I liked it better with the skew to it. Adds some low-fi and a sort of "toyish" aesthetic akin to tilt-shift. Makes it bleeding obvious that it hasn't been done with yet another Canon 5D and 24-70.

I shot this a couple months ago, and had a blast! It's always changing, but my anamorphic rig is getting more useable. Kowa 16-H (still amongst the best ana glass.) SLR Magic Rangefinder (could loose the blue blobs but otherwise does a great job.) RedStan Clamps (what more needs to be said? They're the best, and they're red. Makes Canon L-glass jealous.) Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8 (this lens just works. Really well. Set to f/4 and forget.) Samsung NX1 (yeah I'm one of those guys. But this thing pays the bills, and will continue to do so for at least one more season.) EDIT: yes, the anamorphic is not perfectly aligned. That's actually on purpose to add to the vintage low-fi aesthetic.

This is mine, done with FilmConvert. I always do a curve node before the FC plugin. (Davinci Resolve). I like that FC wrangles the color away from a digital look, and adds some grain when needed. You've still gotta pick which film stock though, and massage the clip with some curves/levels. There's no true magic bullet solution to grading, and no substitute for a careful eye.

Do NXL Dumb adapters ship regardless? Or only if the full goal is met? Why are the earlier ship dates less expensive rather than more expensive?

There's a price bracket/performance sweet-spot where a camera magically disappears into complete irrelevancy for 99% of people. This one hits that sweet-spot. I'm sorry, but $30K (likely more)?! I'm sorry, but that places it squarely as a rental cam in almost every case, and up against ARRI/RED offerings. I know what Alexa (and even Amira) can do, and sorry, but a Canon won't come close. Not even ballpark. I feel gross mentioning them in the same sentence. And if ARRI ain't your style, there's a high chance that RED has you covered, and in many cases for well under $30K. If by chance you're REALLY docu, I'd throw my money at however many Sony FS-5s you need. That new electronic ND should be a complete run -n-gun game changer. If you're still not covered by those options, you're either Nolan/Tarantino, and only film will do, or you're one of the countless professionals that realize: any of a number of DSLR/mirror less cameras will get you damn near close enough, for 1/10th the cost, in 90% of situations, if you know what you're doing. I LOVE pouring over gear specs, especially cameras, and mentally crunching the numbers. But almost since the 5DII, Canon have been consistently making cameras that just don't match up in the price/performance categories. I'm not saying they don't make good cameras, they do. But they're either too pricey vs the competition, too late to the party, or too flawed. At the risk of being "that guy" that brings the Samsung NX1 into every thread, that's what I've shot on since it came out, and I fully expect it to last another 1-2 years as my a-cam. I have ISO mapped to one wheel, Aperture to another, and Shutter Speed to the third. White Balance is a button press away (though quite frankly the AWB produces more pleasing color than the presets 90% of the time), and a variable ND filter fills out the kit alongside that killer 16-50 zoom, which pulls focus like a champ with no hunting. It truly resolves UHD and 1080p. Works for me. There are folks with Sonys, Panasonics, Nikons, Fujis, and even Canons that would say the same. At this point I glance at new Canon offerings, and read them in-depth later when I need a good laugh.

I'm so far done with Canon. Have been for years. Y'all have fun still giving a crap because I sure don't. I've gotta go to work every day with my gear, and as long as you know your gear, you can do good work. Is it nice to have all these features? Sure. But at what price? As long as you know your core camera functions and how they influence exposure/motion/color/texture/etc, most modern cameras will do fine. Alas near as I can tell, there are two truly innovative features out in the last few years, both related to single-op use: DPAF: for all your non-hunting autofocus needs Electronic Variable ND: Smart Transition Lenses For Your Camera (tm)

Everything is at f4 through my Konica Hexanon 40mm f1.8 and Zeiss C/Y 50mm f1.4. I'm not a fan of the blue blobs either, but for the price it has been a very good solution for focus. I'll probably stick with it until someone manages to make an acceptable and affordable anamorphic prime.

Hopefully they have enough success with this 4K camera to convince them to include 4K on the rumored medium format mirrorless camera too. I'd rock a 4K MF camera with Fuji color science till the cows come home!

I've always been surprised at people that swear by 1.33X or 1.5X anamorphics, because it seems that they don't understand this stuff. It is a HUGE part of the look! If you're going to go less than 2X (or if you're going to use a rear anamorph), you almost may as well just use a streak filter and crop with a barrel-distorted spherical prime. One of my better ideas would be for someone to do a range of 1.5X lenses where the aperture itself is a 1.5X oval. DSO already technically does this with their TRUMP lenses (as individual disks), but a nice 11-bladed aperture mechanism would not be difficult to redesign to close as an oval rather than as a circle. IMO you still need at minimum 1.5X to get decent flares that aren't thin and wimpy.

Meanwhile I've been shooting corporate stuff all day long with my Sammy NX1/Ronin M combo. No slow-mo, but the colors and resolution are gorgeous.

Hmm focus-throughs always seemed sketchy to me. But if it works at f4 and is sharp throughout the range, then go with it!

Get yourself a single-focus unit (Rectilux or Rangefinder), and a monitor that can de-squeeze the image. I personally stick to f4 and think it almost always looks fantastic.

The blueness of those coatings makes me want to vomit. There's far more complexity to good anamorphic flares than the coatings that SLR Magic has been slathering on their otherwise exemplary optics. I also consistently find the images out of 1.33X systems to come off as awkward: not clinical enough compared to good spherical, but not unique enough compared to a good 2X Ana. Just.... Awkward looking, checking all the boxes on paper but missing the mark in practice. There's no reason not to shoot 2X now that 4K is so accessible.

I would advise against putting anything unnecessary in between the taking lens/anamorphic/rangefinder. Anamorphics work better when they're as close to the taking lens as possible. Same goes for diopters (the Rangefinder is a diopter.)

Yes, I could've rendered motion blur on the cross-processed effects and the non slow-mo shots, but I like that the crispness keeps everything from being too muddy in the effects shots. It is 30p down from 60p, so that the slow-mo remains "in time" with the music (just halved in speed.) This causes the non-slowmo to be crisper, but because of the shooting schedule constraints, I had to shoot everything 60p just so that slowmo was an option on all shots.

I recently shot and edited this 2X anamorphic music video, rigged up on my DJI Ronin-M. The Kowa 16-H is already heavy, but add an SLR Magic Rangefinder in front, and along with a DSLR, the gimbal is at its length and weight limit. The band footage was shot in 3 short hours after a last-minute location change, and we just managed to fully cover the song, having thrown out unnecessary parts of the storyboard. The color effects were shot non-anamorphic, on the NX1 with 16-50 OIS and the trusty GH2 with an 85mm f1.4 Zeiss C/Y prime (pretty sure it's still running either Moon T6 or 7.) While there ultimately are a lot of cross-processing effects, the 2X anamorphic look still adds something unmistakable to my eyes. I made the decision early on to sacrifice 4K for an increase in frame rate to 60p for slow-motion flexibility in post, which did come in very handy. The Rangefinder wasn't used at all to pull focus during shots, but it made it much easier to refocus in between takes, and it seems to guarantee sharper results if you pay attention to what you are doing. Edited in FCPX and effects in Motion