QuickHitRecord

My lens cost me $100. The modification cost about $400.

>All will be revealed.

PREFACE: I have been doing some testing with this lens for a while now, but lately I have been swamped with work. Also, there has been some sadness surrounding the girl who appears in the demo video (and several other anamorphic tests of mine), so anamorphic shooting has been on the back burner for a while now. But I'm seeing now that someone else has had the same idea, and is trying to make an unrealistic profit from it. And so I feel that I must post this write up, because this isn't a $1400 lens. The search for the perfect anamorphic lens is over (at least for me). Some months ago, I saw a post here from a member named frerichs. He claimed to have purchased a Bell & Howell 2x 16mm Anamorphic Projection lens (not the excellent Kowa model) for cheap and discovered that it was single focus, like the coveted Iscorama. I was skeptical, but since they can often be had for between $75 and $150 on eBay, I bought one to try out for myself. At first glance this lens does not look like a winner. It has neither the steam punk appeal of the Lomo square fronts, nor the timeless curves of the Iscorama. The impossibly long and narrow build of the lens suggests that this would never be viable match for anything but the longest taking lenses. And yet it works. The front element is a -7 diopter that focuses the other two elements in the housing as the head is turned, similar to the Iscorama. Unlike the Iscorama, the lens takes about five full rotations to go from infinity to close focus, which is limiting for practical use. But I have been working with a CNC machinist to resolve this, and I now have a prototype that allows me to do a full range rack focus in a one and a half turns: (Want to do this yourself? Ask a machinist to design a new front housing with a "multi-start thread" that will house the front diopter and screw directly onto the existing thread on the tube; this could also conceivably be done for Iscoramas to the same effect). We have also added a standard 58mm threading for easier filter mounting, and I've since installed a custom seamless ultra-wide delrin focus gear to add just a little torque for even easier focusing (not pictured). The Bell & Howell projection lenses that originally shipped with this lens were f/1.2 and f/1.4, so it is designed to be sharp at faster apertures -- and I find that it is. Perhaps not razor sharp, but as sharp as I'd ever want an anamorphic lens to be. And once you've removed the two limiting screws from the "head" of the lens, you can focus as close as two feet without diopters. Too much closer than that and the head will screw right off, but it's just as easy to screw right back on. Flaring is nice: The lens is not without its drawbacks. For one, it focuses to about 40 feet, not true infinity. That's not an issue for me, but it might be for some shooters. It's all-metal construction makes it a bit heavy which combined with its length will benefit from a lens support (which eliminates the shake that appears in my rack focus test). It vignettes when paired with wider lenses, so it is a better fit for smaller sensor cameras or Canon DSLRs with Magic Lantern raw crop mode enabled. For instance, I can shoot 1600x1200 with a Pentax Takumar 105mm f2.8 lens on my 5D Mark III and I don't see any vignetting before f/8. I also tested it with a Nikkor 50mm f1.8 AI-S on my GH2, and it was vignette-free so long as I cropped my 2x image down to 1.5x. So how does the footage look? Here's something that I shot with it: I am excited to add a sharp, easily rack-focusable, short minimum-focusing anamorphic to my arsenal. It won't be the right lens for every anamorphic user, especially those who want to be able to shoot as wide as possible, but for the price, it could make single-focus anamorphics more accessible to those who have not had a chance to work with them yet. Happy shooting!

I use one at work and it makes my life a lot easier. The NDs and waveform are wonderful. The amount of detail in the images is very pleasing. It's a workhorse, and that's why I chose it for us.

I often edit for 8, 10 or 12 hours straight and this is what I use to keep the carpal tunnel at bay: http://www.evoluent.com/vm4r.htm

Good comparison. The jagged edges on the 5D3 are unfortunate, but not usually very apparent without magnification. The GH4 is really tempting. Has anyone seen this yet?

THAT made my day.

Yes, that's the kit. It did work well and everything looked good. The softbox is a nice key and I packed a tiny reflector as a fill, leaving me with a rim light and a kicker for the background. I also ordered a dome diffuser, and the fresnel lens, which both attach via magnets. The fresnel will give you the hard point that you are looking for. All that being said, I wouldn't use these for a green screen. There's simply not enough luminance here to do it properly without boosting your ISO through the roof. For wider shots, you could potentially take a white balance and then dial these heads in to match the color temperature (provided that you are working with a single, consistent source). Then you'd be able to add to what was already there. There aren't any proper reviews out yet since it's a relatively new product, but I've been happy with them for what they are.

This is either someone reselling my Lomo square front set (asking about twice what they paid me for it about a year ago), or using the images and description from my original listing: http://www.ebay.com/itm/141271312464

I just wrapped up a travel shoot with a three-LED kit from Fiilex (P360EX) that my work bought. I haven't reviewed the footage yet, but it looked good in the LCD. They were a joy to work with -- bright, lightweight, and checkable on my flight.

Baby Hypergonar is focus-through. Wonderful lens though.

If you value a large sensor and raw over 4K resolution and workflow, then absolutely.

I've used them with the doublet, no problem.

Can you share a link to where this was posted? EDIT: Nevermind, it's in a1ex's signature!

Looks nice. Some of the better looking footage from this lens I have seen.

The "rant" in this article has been some of my favorite EOSHD material yet.

No one has mentioned Nikkor AI and AI-S primes yet. I have a set of five, cine-modded by Duclos, and I have been pleased with them; first on my GH2, then on my FS100, and finally on my 5D3. I've also had them on a RED Scarlet, and they looked great at 4K. They are compact but well-built, and the lens characteristics match closely across the set. The only downside that I can think of is that the focus ring goes the other way, making a reversible follow focus a necessity. Here's a nice rundown on them by Caleb Pike of DSLRVideoShooter:

Some of the converters have "vertical stripe correction" built in and it seems to solve this issue. The one that I am using right now is this one (definitely works on MLVs, not certain if it works on .raw files): http://www.magiclantern.fm/forum/index.php?topic=9731.0 It's not the latest one, but it seems to work well.

I used one of these for my old Baby Hypergonar. I do not think that it will be able to grip the Iscomorphot 8/1.5 properly (as I recall you have to secure this lens by the silver portion at the rear of the lens; the black part rotates when focusing). There is not much surface area to work with.

Here's another way to mount it, if you have parts like these lying around:

NAB is only a month out. I'd wait.

I think that you have to use conversion software with "vertical stripe correction". Not all of them have it.

Wow. A simple search in this very forum will give you all of the information that you need.

Pretty neat. Reading the thread, it looks like there is a new version right around the corner. I've been using an older converter (with the recursive0.4.command file) to convert to DNGs. It applies "vertical stripe correction", which I assume removes some of the fixed noise pattern that can appear at higher ISOs. Do you know if this one does anything like that?

Most forum users have probably already read Andrew's article on the effects of scaling 8-bit 4:2:0 4K footage down to 10-bit 4444 1080P footage: '?do=embed' frameborder='0' data-embedContent>> We in the anamorphic world are constantly rescaling our footage, though only on one axis. What I am curious to know is whether this can affect (positively or negatively) the color space and bit depth of the resulting footage. Also, can we better preserve footage by using wider pixels (as opposed to using square pixels + resizing)? This is new territory for me, and probably for a lot of others as well. Note: I posed the question in the thread above, but I think that this deserves its own thread.