richg101

Though I agree spherical can be mixed with anamorphic, I don't think your two examples are ones really capable of fortifying the argument. Big budget or not, Neither one of these examples appear to have had any real care put into the tactful and artistic elements of the shooting process - in the same way the majority of modern pieces appear the same. Spring Breakers has a little more of an artistic feel but more in an annoying hipster way where a dop has tried to meet the demands of a tattoo'd prat in charge or art direction rather than in a careful Kubrick fashion.

Same with leadless solder... its a pile o shite. I only use lead based solder

In my opinion the key is to expose for the most important element in your scene, for example the faces of your cast. if a window is peaking either leave it that way, use nd sheet on the window to bring it down, bring lighting up on your subjects to meet the window exposure, or try to keep it out of shot all together. if there is an area that is underexposed use fill to bring it up. use a point meter on the faces of your cast. As fuzzynormal suggested, if it looks good on the lcd, roll with it.

Comparing my A7R with my Nex5n the differences are not massively apparent until you raise iso. at 8000iso the a7r is as clean as the nex5n at 3200iso. the detail is also a lot better - if the nex5n's 1080p compared to true 720p, the A7R is somewhere between true 720p and 1080p. AVCHD still limits things in terms of post production. The talking internal h264 the Sony Nex5n still holds up against everything primarily still photography based, apart from GH3 (which didn't improve much over gh2 in terms of video performance), This has a larger sensor too.

This isn't a soap opera. Who the hell are you to come on here with such rudeness and condescendment? If this were Eastenders you would have had the Queen Victoria bust smashed over your head by now.

Looking at this footage there is no denying the image is sharp, and the flares are also there - I'd like it if my iscorama gave a blue flare of this hue, but maybe not as prominent. I believe this video brings up a valuable factor IMO - that it is key for users of this anamorphic to find a suitable match in terms of taking lens selection - some of the shots bring to me a feeling of disconnection between the taking lens and the anamorphic - from certain shots it's quite obvious it is 2 separate optical designs working together but not fully in unison as you feel with a cinema anamorphic lens. It's hard to express in words. But a few minutes into a test i did with Hans_Punk's lomo square front it is illustrated here:- I'd like to see the slr magic lens in partnership with various semi modern primes such as contax zeiss, Olympus OM zuikos, and later FD / Nikon lenses. I think something like a helios 44 might be a bit too vintage to marry well with this anamorphic, whereas something like a 1980's cutting edge slr lens might have a better time amalgamating with the slr magic. I also felt the Sony A7 footage though less detailed, had a lot more of a aesthetically pleasing feel to the imagery - probaby because I'm a whore for the Full frame look and it's rare to see anything less than an iscorama delivering in the sharpness stakes on full frame. Please Please Please someone test the slr magic on an oval FF58. A year ago when i was testing a Century with oval ff58 prototype it automatically made it feel like a real anamorphic. I think the SLR magic will create better results.

I think the A7R is the first true 'photographers' digital camera within reach of consumers. It's the only one that allows proper use of high quality full frame manual focus lenses without needing to hit the live view button and hold the camera like a mobile phone to obtain focus. Everything else affordable in the full frame sector is hopeless for traditional photography using tactile manual focus lenses due to lack of evf. I think the biggest flaw of most people's quarms with the camera is that they expect the native lens selection to compete with the Nikon and Canon EF selection. As Andrew has shown, it falls short on the video resolution aspect, but I am certain in still photography my A7R and 25mm, 50mm and 85mm old zeisses will match or outperform anything else under £10k, and give the new £26k phase one cmos medium format setup a run for its money. And as a result i have finally stopped visiting rumors sites since the camera does everything I want and i no longer feel like I am in need of more. It's a nice feeling

This sounds like the ramblings of a jealous fool. Am i right?

This was a 1.5x oval aperture and the iscorama 36 in very low light:- not really a good indicator of sharpness but it illustrates the more pronounced 2x ovals being a m4/3 user you have the advantage of being able to use the speed booster to get away from the loss of lens speed.

Be sure to add the 85mm f2.8 sonnar to your collection. An incredible match for the rama IMO. I find the helios 44 being 58mm is the best lens overall since it is the widest you can go on full frame. As Lucian kindly commented, an oval aperture FF58 is awesome on a rama since it boosts the ovals to 2x and the oval results in a stopping down the lens speed to f2.8 and keeps the overall sharpness a little more refined than when a helios 44 is wide open and since the oval aperture is as tall as a round aperture is at f2, you maintain the same shallowness in depth of field in the verticals. here's a full size sample of the sonnar I mention, attached to and iscorama 36 :- https://www.dropbox.com/s/fz1paa2uj1w5avo/A7R_Sonnar85mm_Iscorama36_f11.tif

@Burnett - I thought The Devils Rejects was shot on 35mm. Just checked imbd and sure enough it says 16mm. The movie looks superb. It looks more like how I consider 'Hollywood' than most big movies shot on Alexa. I think I'll watch it tonight actually.

But it's film. And the digital camera that best mimics film is the Alexa. So in effect it makes perfect sense. Thing is, I imagine current film stock prices, and transfer costs probably bring shooting 16mm up to the same total cost as shooting on a hired Alexa?

No, the helios 44 has about the best defocus rendering characteristics of any taking lens there is. It's subtle and doesn't grab attention from the in focus areas.

do you still have any of those novel adjustable iscorama clamps you had for sale a while ago? I loved those and never got round to grabbing one. superb little product man

thanks for the comments guys. all noted. and additional focal lengths are in pipeline. I'd hoped for them to be available sooner, but it's taking longer to develop than I'd expected. looks like possibility of a 40mm and a 25mm, both in f2 aperture in the next few months.

Talk has been had about a focal reducer for canon to hasselblad. Though the benefits are less obvious than those found on a full frame to aps-c type affair. focusing all of that incredible resolving power onto a full frame sensor of 36mpx and above (in the future) will be a lot more capable in high resolution photography than using lenses designed for the 35mm format. the hassy 40mm would effectively become a 25mm and if the reducer were good enough would result in the highest resolving power 25mm full frame lens in the world - i'd imagine:).

thanks for the comments. does the single focal length pose a big turn off? -please bear in mind the key criteria is to develop a full frame friendly outcome, with possibility of using the crop modes in ML to obtain various field of views. and for use with speed booster or not depending on fov required when using on smaller sensors.

cheers. It will be a smaller than the century and will have an alignment mechanism. it will couple directly to the 55mm thread of the FF58 and to a helios 44 via 49-55mm step up I imagine.

Hi Guys. I'd love to have some opinions from the boffins and serious enthusiasts before pushing forward in development of a new anamorphic product. As some might know, I make the Dog Schidt Optiks FF58 lenses (from vintage helios 44). As a big fan of the 58mm f2 helios I am working on a anamorphic front module which will be tailored to integrate perfectly with the helios 44 in the same way a wide angle adaptor (specific to a particular lens) integrates with it's partner lens. - thus resulting in a significantly better result than is normally achieved from off the shelf universal WA adaptors. The specifics are limited as follows:- 1.5x or 1.75x squeeze specifically designed for the helios 44. providing good image quality on full frame - may work with similar lenses but unlikely. single coated single focus system, using the existing focus mech of the helios 44 very compact designed with equal priority on photography and motion picture end users what monetary value would a product like this be worth to you? 1. as an all in one FF58 with front anamorphot 2. as a user installed module for use on the helios 44 / FF58

Undoubtably the helios 44-2 is the best lens on the iscorama 36 when used on aps-c. for full frame, i have found the zeiss sonnar 85mmf2.8 is very well matched and is incredibly sharp. the olympus 85mmf2 is a stop faster, but even at 2.8 cannot match the sonnar for sharpness, and at f2.8 has a horrible ninja star aperture shape which looks nasty on the bokeh when mated with the oval deformation, however I very much love the wide open f2 aperture for shots requiring selective focus where sharpness over the entire frame is not required. i really want to see the rama on full frame with the sonnar 135mmf2.8. I predict great things. funny thing is, the whole reason DSO was started was to make a lo-fi lens to get the Iscorama looking more like a smaller more humble 8mm anamorphic look. The exact opposite of the lenses I list above, which exhibit very little of their own character to the image. - even a standard helios 44 (from the early 80's, with more modern coatings) is very clean if the aperture is tweeked closed by half a stop. based on the success of a marriage between the iscorama and a helios 44, it prompts my thinking into finding longer focal lengths based on the same optical arrangement as the helios 44. (a simple double gauss design). an early 80mm planar for medium format could be an ideal choice, though the pentagonal aperture might not be to everyone's taste - particularly in oval form.

Another piece of evidence why these beasts command such a high price! This was the Olympus 85mm f2 with a single coated isco 36. this is with the Olympus set at F2 for a 10 second exposure. '>

I think this is the best example of where you and I differ in our priorities. A Red Epic is cheaper than an Alexa Studio and almost 5 times the resolution on paper. But still, I'd choose an Alexa over the Epic.

I'm of the belief that if greater image quality than what can be had from true fullhd from the black magic pocket, or hacked canon 5dmk3 is required, then it's time to hire a camera for the job. The jump in image quality that will be had from anything within reach of consumers is going to be null and void in my opinion. It would take an expert to tell the difference between a hacked 5dmk3 and an Alexa shooting RGB into an external box. Focus on glass is priority IMO. A nice set of Contax Zeiss on a hacked 5dmk3 is gonna literally match or ruin anything else within the budgets of most of us. Full HD cameras are more than good enough nowadays.

A7R owner with no expereince with the olympus, so this is biased... I agree that the A7R video is somewhat lacking in resolution in this day and age. however apart from that, the camera is faultless. No gimmics like image stabilisation and speed boosters can compete with a true full frame sensor in my opinion. Particularly a 36mpx sensor like this. If I need a long exposure or a steady shot I'll lock it to the tripod. I can put a 50mm f1.4 planar on my A7R, set shutter to 1/50th sec and set auto iso bracketing to 200-3200 and take pictures in low light that are better than anything I could have taken with a Contax RTS, fast film and the same lens. I could also walk into a studio and photograph a Ferrari with the A7R and the images would be good enough to be compared to the same images taken on all but the best medium format systems. M4/3 is to me like a toy when it comes to still photography. As an all out photographers camera I personally cannot see how anyone can look at m4/3.

pro's requiring the photographic performance of the 1dx and 4k 8bit that can be downscaled to superb 1080p, and supreme low light performance will still see the 1dc as a viable option. Not to mention, the h264 coming out of the 1dc, 1dx and 5dmk3 is rather good!