Paulio

Tony can you share any details on what sort of thing you are trying achieve?   Digital bolex is going to have 4:3 which is pretty exciting for 2x anamorphic shooters, is that the squeeze you'll be doing?

"Tony wilson" could answer that. My understanding is they were not cheap when they came out due to complexity of building them, thus why no one can make a comparable modern anamorphic at a reasonable price.   You don't want to know the price from a decade ago, or even 3 years ago, it will make you weep :)

There is only one picture above and its a side profile. I don't know where you posted the other picture sorry.

 I cant tell exactly what you have unless you show the front, someone else here probably can. My guess is a Nikon mount as it looks a little different to mine.   Iscoramas are special in that as far non cine anamorphics go, they are probably the best balance of function, features and quality of optics.   Congrats on acquiring one. They are quite rare.

Awesome, thanks Rob!

Dude, it's pretty clear a lot of people prefer 1.5x and 2x  when you look at the responses here and on personal view. Anamorphic is a niche market and these are the folks who would be dropping $1500 on an adapter.   Bit of unnecessary stretch to generalize them all as fanatics.

Regardless of hacks, I'd say there is more demand for 1.5x 2x. That seems to be the feedback SLR magic are getting on the personal view forums atleast. I've shot 1.3, 1.5 and 2x on 16:9 without issue?

Tony Wilson mentioned they were using century optics for "reference".

This is much better than the previous test, as I suspected the constant soft focus must have been due to user error. The image quality here looks great, nice and crisp. That said the flares are horrendous and the anamorphic character is so mild that simply letterboxing your footage would get you close enough to this and you could spend the $1500 elsewhere to bump up production value.

I would say 70% of the test footage looks soft to me, but it may be operator error.   I'm excited people are pushing to make new anamorphics, I can see this depreciating LA7200 and Century Optics. Doubtful it will have any affect on the prices of kowa's, iscos, lomos and other squeezier adapters.   Looking forward to Andrew's footage since he knows what he is doing.

Forget raw it will just slow you down if you are wanting to learn. Buy a gh2, they are well documented workhorses. Save some money buy 1 tota ligt (100 usd) and 3 light softbox kit (150usd). Then you have everything you need to get going!

I can't see myself ditching anything for a this unless they make a 1.5 or 2x and completely fix the flares which look like  90's computer graphics at the moment. I love the concept of an affordable, functional anamorphic, but images from the previous test didn't do it for me. That said it's very exciting they are making so much progress, I really hope they make 1.5 or 2x in the future.

I've heard 1200-1500

Nice job Rich, keep experimenting with these. 2.5 is a bit stylized for my tastes but very interesting. I really loved the look of the last batch you posted, the "deliverancy" looking test.

Two strips of black cardboard......letterboxing!

Depends what you are shooting. I have access to a bunch of arri lights through work and often loan them for personal work, then once on set reflectors, diffusion and a cheapo set of daylight softboxes I got from amazon end up doing all the work.   Full disclosure, I havn't used LEDs and hear they are great. one Arri7 led light costs nearly 3k though....

So you guys recommend avoiding 320? its kind of a hand iso for indoor daytime. I guess i'll try 400.

Glad to see Ben Mendelson getting some roles. He's a regular on Australian TV since the 80s!

I agree, screen actors know to keep it contained in CU, but that isn't what i'm talking about. The pictures above have the actors nose in focus and not his eyes and so on in every single shot. If the DP cant even get the actor's face in focus for a still, it's not the actors problem.

Thats it, i'm definitely watching it

Yes you can get oval bokeh with close up shots. this specific composition in the above examples has been re-created a million times, and these ones look really nice, but all the above have focus issues even in stills. Try getting your actors to stay in focus when in motion with dof this shallow. Not very practical for my tastes.     I agree it's a matter of taste. My preference would be for a 2x, single focus, no flares or super subtle.

Footage looks spectacular, I didn't watch this as i'd heard not good reviews but I think I'm gonna have to check it out. Hopefully I can follow the story and not just nerd out on the anamorphic.

Rich, my experience is the opposite, the longer I've had my 36 the more I use it, total workhorse. 1.5x is a nice sweet spot, some bokeh without massive cropping on 16:9 sensors, on my gh2/gh3 I'm shooting as low as 25mm and up to 115mm, giving me a full range of shots  all with rack/single focus and clean optics. And with your mod I'm focusing down to 3.5 feet without diopters so I rarely need them.   The only lens in this bracket I can think of that compares/exceeds in terms of quality and versatility for real world narrative use is the centavision. (or a full range range of dso when they're ready)   sure 1.3 with 16:9 will result in a perfect 2.35, but so will just cropping your footage... whats the point of anamorphic if you are not getting the bokeh/burnt in stretch?    

I don't want to be overly negative, but 1.3 stretch is pretty negligible, and the flare looks very cheesy to me. Maybe just personal taste but I don't like the images at all.

Hi,   Wondering if anyone can recommend a workflow for smoother editing of hacked gh2 footage in premiere. Bringing the files straight in is pretty cumbersome, is there a way to automate lower res proxies or something?  image quality while slapping together a rough edit is not paramount. Setting the preview to half or a quarter doesn't do much...   cheers