dahlfors

Great that you created a thread about this! I've learnt the most I know about anamorphics through eoshd & eoshd forums, so I bet most other newcomers to anamorphics will end up here as well while looking for lenses... :)

I'd suggest using a very wide lens. Then if your camera allows it, you can then let the aperture & ISO change, preferrably in a set range, without too much of a difference in depth of field / sharpness (as long as no object is really close to the camera).   Also, on nikonrumors there was a nice article about time lapse photography: http://nikonrumors.com/2012/02/27/guest-post-astronomers-paradise-time-lapse-video.aspx/

Oh yeah, good idea to link in some resources. Ken Rockwell has a lot of good info, although he's quite the personality and you will need to read him between the lines sometimes :)   I'll add in two more things that has been helpful for me when hunting old Nikon lenses:   1) Online auctions might not tell you what exact model the lenses are, or in some occasions might be labeled as another model. If there are photos of the lenses, here's how to make out if a Nikon lens is Non-AI, AI, or AI-S: http://rick_oleson.tripod.com/index-153.html Non-AI lenses are the really old ones, the majority of them single-coated. AI-lenses are 1977 and newer, if they have multi-coating, the front element will have a green coating. AI-S lenses are 1981 and newer, I believe all of them are multi-coated. In general, AI and AI-S lenses are optically superior to Non-AI lenses, and I'd recommend them as your first choice. Some of the AI-S lenses can still be bought brand new from Nikon, like the 50mm f/1.2: http://imaging.nikon.com/lineup/lens/mf/normal/50mmf_12/index.htm   2) To avoid vignetting and to easily fit my Iscorama with filter rings, I've chosen to go with Nikon lenses with 52mm filter thread. Tiffen has a nice list of filter thread sizes for Nikon lenses here: http://www.tiffen.com/nikon_lens_to_filter_chart.html   Also, if you consider getting a Nikon autofocus lens for some reason, there are a few different versions. AVOID the lenses with a "G" (like AF-S 50mm f/1.4G) after the f-number - these are modern Nikon AF lenses that lack a manual aperture ring and aperture can only be set electronically from the camera body. Older AF lenses marked with "D" or no letter after the f-number will have manual aperture ring.

Since I have a FX Nikon D800 I use the following Nikon lenses:   - 50mm: 50mm AF-D f/1.4 + E-Series 50mm f/1.8 (also tried the AF-D 50mm f/1.8, works fine) - 85mm: AI-S 85mm f/2 - 105mm: AI-S 105mm f/2.5 - 200mm: AI 200mm f/4   These all have 52mm front thread. For a camera with smaller crop I'd suggest a Nikon 35mm f/2, which also has 52mm filter thread. All of these lenses are sharp and I've had good results with all of them. The 85mm is probably my favourite out of these, an excellent lens.   I'm not sure how wide lenses you can use with your camera, but since you mention some other 28mm lens, the Nikon AI-S 28mm f/2.8 is a very sharp lens and might work for you as well.   From my experience, the Nikon AI/AI-S lenses are pretty consistent with color, but if you mix the newer AF-D lenses with older AI/AI-S lenses there can be some differences.

  The FS700 sensor and Super35mm is about the same size as the Nikon APS-C format (1.5x crop). Tokina 11-16mm on an FS700 would be able to capture as wide as a 16-24mm lens would on a full format camera like D800 or 5DMk3.   Given the 2.3x crop factor on BMC, the Panasonic 7-14mm f/4 could be used to get a similar wide shot equaling a 16-32mm lens on a full format D800/5Dmk3 - and equalling the Tokina 11-16 on a FS700.   Considering the good optical quality of the 7-14 - if what you need is a solution for crazy tight spaces, the 7-14mm should be a great companion for the BMC.

Indeed I noticed the same earlier - very little info around on the net about longer focal lengths and anamorphic adapters!   I have shot with D800 + Nikon AI-S 200mm f/4 together with both my Iscorama and on the dual-focus Isco Ultrastar anamorphic projection lens. Worked fine with those two anamorphics.    The Nikon 200mm f/4 is a very sharp and overall nice lens. It has a small 52mm filter thread in front - which makes it fit nicely to anamorphics. With some stronger diopters, around +1 to +3 or so, the 200mm + Isco lenses are a great combo for facial expression closeups.   I don't have any experience of the Kowa anamorphic - but if it behaves similarily to my two anamorphics, then 200mm shouldn't be a problem.

Thanks for the replies guys. Seems to be awesome monitors. ...And oh boy, didn't expect pricing on the OLED HDMI version to be almost double the price of the normal HDMI version! OLED is nice, but it wouldn't be worth $500 extra over a normal LCD display to me - especially not since both are 8-bit. The entry level one seems to be nicely priced for what it is though!

The new SmallHD AC7 monitors with 8-bit color OLED displays and 1280x800 resolution seems awesome. They write that the monitors support "Even works on 2X anamorphics, stretching and cropping to a 2:35 aspect ratio for a 16:9 input (pictured)". That's interesting, but unfortunately they don't mention anything about other modes available. I'd assume the options for aspect ratio scaling will be similar to the settings on the older SmallHD models. Anyone who have experience on those and what options are available for desqueezing aspect ratios? Link to new AC7 monitors: http://www.smallhd.com/products/ac7/

Thanks for the tip about the Sigma close-up, just ordered one to try out :) I also have set of +1, +2 and +3 close-up filters for the Cokin P-system filter holder, but I think this one will be better.

The Small HD DP4 as well supports the anamorphic viewing, for a much smaller price: http://www.smallhd.com/products/dp4/ Here's someone mentioning it in an earlier thread: http://www.eoshd.com/comments/topic/919-smallhd-monitors-and-anamorphic-footage/

For Nikkors, you might want to have a look at either the Nikkor 35mm f/2.8 AI (sharper than the AI/AI-S 35mm f/2), or the extremely sharp and low distortion Nikkor 28mm f/2.8 AI-S depending on what Iscorama you have. Both of these have 52mm filter threads in front for mounting. Since you have around 1.6x crop factor on the 60D the 35mm's shouldn't be a problem, maybe slight vignetting - I use a Nikkor 50mm f/1.4 on my Nikon D800 (full frame, pretty much equivalent to how a 35mm will appear on 60D with 1.6x crop) together with the old Iscorama with 30mm rear lens element and can avoid vignetting very nicely if I stay around f/2.5 to f/2.8. The 28mm f/2.8 is one of Nikon's best made all-metal manual focus lenses, and if you got a larger Iscorama 42/54, the 28mm f/2.8 would be a great choice for 1.6x crop. The 28mm however will most likely vignet a bit on the Isco 36. Especially the 35mm f/2.8 can be had really cheap if you look around.

Ah yes, great addition to this guide! Yes, the preferences file will be written the first time you start VLC up. I edited the first post to mention this.

Yes. These files are not shown in Finder. If you are used to using UNIX command line, you can edit it through Terminal app. I take it you aren't used to command line since you ask the question - so here's another alternative: 1) Open Finder 2) In Finder menu, select Go -> Go to Folder (or use the keyboard shortcut shift+cmd+g) 3) Insert the following path into the dialog that pops up: ~/Library/Preferences/org.videolan.vlc 4) Now you should see the file named "vlcrc" in the Finder window 5) Drag and drop the file into some text editor that handles normal .txt files. OS X own TextEdit didn't do it for me, but most editors suitable for html and such should be able to open it up. TextMate works, and there's a 30-day trial on it: http://macromates.com/ 6) For editing, just follow the steps I described in my earlier post Good luck :)

In newer versions of VLC there's a "lock aspect ratio" feature. If I drag & drop 50 files into VLC (or its playlist), it actually locks it to that aspect ratio. If you open them one by one I don't believe it does that. Cheers.

Since I don't always want to fire up my videos in an editing program when I do some quick viewings of the shots, here's how to use VLC for viewing footage in different aspect ratios. On VLC in Windows it is easy: - go to Preferences -> All -> Video and you'll find a field where you can enter custom aspect ratios, separated by commas. Keep in mind that VLC only wants whole numbers without decimals, so to get 2.66:1 and 3.55:1 ratios, you would type in: 266:1,355:100 On VLC in Mac OS X: - There isn't unfortunately not anywhere to input this in the application interface, and I just spent some time figuring this out and I'm sharing the howto for you guys, since I couldn't find this information anywhere else on the net! 1) Locate the VLC preferences file: ~/Library/Preferences/org.videolan.vlc/vlcrc Note: ~ equals your home folder for your user, e.g. /Users/myusername. The preferences file is created the first time you run VLC, like Caleb mentions further down in this forum thread. You might want to make a copy of this file before you edit it, just in case... 2) Look for the line that says (lines marked with a # character in front are comments that are ignored by VLC): # Custom aspect ratios list (string) #custom-aspect-ratios= After that, just add a line that says: custom-aspect-ratios=266:100,300:100,355:100 Then you will get the custom aspect ratios 266:100, 300:100 and 355:100 (2.66:1, 3:1, 3.55:1) to choose from in the VLC interface (Video -> Aspect ratio in the menu). Again, keep in mind that VLC won't accept decimals like 2.35:1 for custom aspect ratios. They must be entered like 235:100.

thanks to eoshd I have now found an m42 mount iscorama :) so, I'm no longer looking to buy one!

Since there's a lot of gearheads here, I guess I could add a listing of the lenses I currently have for my D800: 50mm: Nikon E Series 50mm f/1.8 (manual), Nikon 50mm f/1.8 AF-S D, Nikon 50mm f/1.4 AF-D 85mm: Nikon AI-S 85 mm f/2 (manual) 105mm: Nikon AI-S 105mm f/2.5 (manual) 200mm: Nikon AI 200mm f/4 (manual) 400mm: Tokina 400mm f/5.6 (manual)

Someone asked about lenses. All of the old nikon AF-series, AF-D, AI-S and AI lenses have aperture rings, and if I've understood it correctly, these will make you able to change the aperture while in Live View. All the newest nikon lenses marked with G lack a manual aperture ring, so these are lenses you might want to avoid for the D600 then. Personally I've used the 50mm f/1.8 AF-D a lot, and it's one of my absolute favourites, very sharp. I have the 50mm f/1.4 AF-D as well, but I actually tend to like the 1.8 a bit better. There's a lot of great 85mm lenses in Nikon's line-up as well. There's several nice 105mm lenses from Nikon as well For wide shots, the 17-35 mm f/2.8 zoom is quite an expensive one, but has manual aperture ring as well. The 24mm f/1.4 is awesome, but very expensive as well. For a budget wide prime I'd probably go for AF-D 24mm f/2.8 or the old AI/AI-S 28mm f/2.8, or maybe a Samyang 24mm f/1.4 prime. With Nikon, there is a lot of nice old lenses to be had among AF-D, AF, AI-S and AI series (different versions listed from newest tech to oldest here). Several AI-S, AF and AF-D lenses can still be had brand new from Nikon, others you can find second hand. Hope this might help.

Regarding the aliasing/moire on D600 and D800, here's one photographer's in-depth research about how the video of Nikon D800 is processed: http://falklumo.blogspot.se/2012/04/lumolabs-nikon-d800-video-function.html His findings seem very plausible to me, and considering Nikon D800 being a 36 Mpixel sensor that most likely samples each 3rd line, I'd assume that the 24 Mpixel D600 samples every 2nd line on the sensor. Maybe the Expeed 3 processor could be fast enough to process every line on a 24 Mpixel sensor, but I don't see it as likely. Considering that the dynamic range of the D600 is almost on par with the D800, I think the D600 should be wonderful. I'm a happy D800 owner and the dynamic range of that camera surprises me again and again :)

For video use - the only thing that would make me pick the 5D Mark III is if I'd constantly would need to shoot in very low lit situations. Having the control of color and dynamic range that you can get with the RAW workflow of the BMC would be a major plus, in combination with the sharp non-blurry 2.5k image. As previously stated, it's great to be able to pick RAW or 4:2:2 depending on needs for a project. Personally I went for the Nikon D800 for a few reasons: 1) I do stills and film, so BMC wouldn't be the best suited option, 2) the low-light performance is enough for my needs - I rather have a sharper image and better dynamic range than better low-light performance and not as much resolution. Also, I already had a set of Nikon lenses. Another thing I like with the D800 is that the 36 Mpixel sensor makes for a really fine-grained noise that I like. Personally I come from an analog stills photography background, so being able to shoot 1080p at ISO 800-1600 seems like plenty compared to film. Having that background, one of my golden rules is: not mattering what I do - there will always be something limiting the tool I'm working with, so if I end up in a low-light situation I can find ways to solve the problem, be it with a different style, angle, different fill lighting etc. That said, resolution is one of those aspects that it's harder to work around.

Thanks for the tip, but yes, I'll also want to stay away from that one :)

Great shots! I've shot quite a bit with mine lately as well on the D800, mostly using a 105mm f/2.5 Nikkor lens. Except the double focusing I haven't really found many weaknesses with my Isco projection lens. Just wish I'll soon be able to stay at home for some weekends soon and get some time to edit the footage as well. All work and no play... :)

Oh... Sounds awesome. I'm very interested in how that material will turn out :)

I'm still interested as well, but haven't yet received any reply from Tony :)

Yeah. I hope I'll get my hands on some black magic devices with hdmi inputs or an atomos ninja sooner or later so I can do some testing... :) Looked alright on my computer monitor at least, but hard to tell what it received.