BrooklynDan

Alexa 65 is a very limited production camera that must be used with 65mm-format glass, which is in very short supply. This new Panavision DXL can be used with a much wider selection of glass. Even windowed down to Super 35, it's still 4K, which opens the opportunity for full 4K anamorphic, which will be a very tempting proposition to cinematographers shooting big budget movies. This might be a very high-end camera, but Panavision is positioning it as a general purpose camera for production, especially since Red's compressed codec makes 8K manageable, whereas 6K Arriraw has a staggering data rate that requires enormous storage space. It's just a seriously lean and mean camera that should give Alexa a run for its money in a way that Red on its own has struggled to. And now let's see what Sony and Canon will up with. The gauntlet has been thrown.

I feel like this is really gonna light a fire under Arri's belly. They've had a nonchalant attitude thus far toward their competition and have really been patient and unhurried. It's good to be the king, after all. Panavision was Arri's biggest customer, too. Has been for decades. But now that PV has united with Red, it's gonna give Red a new level of legitimacy in the high-end, and productions that might have gone Alexa on principle before will jump on this. Panavision has many, many big DPs on their side. The success of their business model is due to their skill at cultivating relationships. Those relationships are about to pay off.

The D21 does indeed have a great image. The sensor technology is derived from the chips used in Arri's film scanners, so it's designed from the ground up to replicate the exposure curves of film negative. But despite the fact that it is so cheap now, it's just too cumbersome of a machine to be used practically. The F35 took off because it is relatively easy to plug it into a prosumer workflow. The D21 was always very proprietary in design and many of the bits and pieces needed to run it are no longer available. You had a limited choice of bulky recorders, out of which only the Codex M has any kind of support at all. Also, with a recorder and accessories bolted on, it approaches the weight of an Arri 535. And I believe the native ISO is 200.

I work in a rental house and see Alexas, Amiras and Minis fly off the shelves all day long while F55s and Dragons sit in their boxes. And it's only increased as the attention has turned to the newer models and the original Alexa has come down in price. People who might've once settled for a prosumer-style digital cinema camera like the C300 or F3 can now afford to hire an Alexa, and many do without a moment's hesitation. It's the only camera that really operates on a "what-you-see-is-what-you-get basis". The Canons come close, and the Reds and Sonys are a hideous mess of LOG profiles, LUTs and complicated menus. And one thing I can say for certain is that the Alexa is the only camera that is dead-on with its ISOs. ISO 800 on the Alexa is a true ISO 800, seven stops over and under middle-gray. The Canons and Sonys are somewhat faster. The FS7 in particular is way off. I would reckon that ISO 800 on that camera is closer to 1600. Meanwhile, you can take the Alexa out of the box, hit LOG-C on 2K Prores, pull up the Rec.709 LUT on your monitor, light the scene using your light meter like they did in the good old days, and go home with an image that can look good without requiring any special color-correction sauce beyond gamma and color tweaks. And it holds up on a 40-foot screen, And it never breaks or fails. At my workplace, we practically never receive customer support calls regarding Alexas. They come back in perfect condition and our technicians turn 'em around in a matter of minutes. Meanwhile, these Reds are making my co-workers tear their hair out. Simplicity, reliability and raw image quality independent of specs and numbers is where it's at. Arri gets this, which is why they keep winning despite the exorbitant cost of their products.

They won't. The camera comes packaged with the Prime 65 lenses as well as the Codex Vault 65 data management system. The day rate is somewhere near $10k per day. And beyond some extremely high-end commercials, I can't imagine anyone using this but Hollywood features in the nine-figure budget range. The post-production costs for 6K Arriraw are astronomical. Some day, maybe fifteen years from now, I'm sure that these Alexa 65 bodies will wind up on the used market selling for a pittance, much like the Arri D21 and Sony F35 have. But by then, I'm sure we'll have 12K IMAX-sized sensors in our DSLRs. Maybe not Canon. They'll still be doing 8-bit HD.

I've been rolling with a set of Olympus OM primes. Good sharpness when stopped down, beautiful skintones, dreamy bokeh and a warmth reminiscent of Super Balters or Cooke Speed Panchros. The 85mm is a rare bird though. Haven't been able to get my hands on it.

Good to hear that at least it's short. One of the big problems with hand-holding anamorphic lenses is that unlike spherical glass, where the elements are more or less the same size over the length of the lens, anamorphic lenses have big front elements that are generally ahead of the handles. I remember working on a film with the V-series lenses, and the size of the focusing group on the 40mm made it a challenge for the steadicam op. The front element must've weighed at least two pounds, and as you focused, it literally caused the rig to go out of balance. I'm glad that a smaller, cheaper version is in the cards for us ultra ultra-low budget filmmakers. Should I keep my fingers crossed for a 2x version? Clearly, the optics will be able to handle it. Designing a 2x group is a whole 'nother story....

The variable diopter design is nothing new. It has been around since the 60s, and not just in Iscoramas. It was first used in Japanese anamorphic lenses, before being brought to Europe by Technovision and Joe Dunton, whose lenses both used optical component built in Japan. Note the 'Made in Japan' logo on this set of 80s-era JDC Xtal Express lenses, as well as the familar variable diopter design visible in the front of the lenses. I'm excited to see how Olivia-Scope performs. I do fear that with such massive optical components, it'll be difficult to hand-hold and will require a 6x6 matte box, which will make the camera even more front-heavy. A 150mm front is basically the same size as the front of the Hawk V-series lenses, as well as Panavision Primos and Arriscopes, all of which are some of the largest prime lenses ever built. Here's hoping for a smaller, cheaper, more nimble version with a 114mm front. Doesn't need to cover wide angle lenses at T1.4.

The G 25mm does have distortion, but relatively speaking, it's much straighter than comparable lenses from other manufacturers. It's definitely better than any of the wide-angle Lomos. The 25mm Hawk V-series is nearly unusable, and the various Shiga-based squarefronts from JDC, Cineovision and others don't fare much better. The Elite 24.5 is decent but suffers from breathing and mumping. Cooke 25mm can be seen here: https://vimeo.com/152621245 It still has the pin-cushion distortion that the Anamorphic/i series is unfortunately known for, but to my eyes, it's less prominent than on the 32mm. Actually a pretty decent lens in my opinion.

I think that in order to play with the big boys, you gotta cost like the big boys. There is no simple way to build 2x anamorphic primes that have any decent quality for much less than what they already cost. The 1.33x lenses look pretty good for the money, but still have considerable distortion, softness around the edges and chromatic aberration that wouldn't hold up on anything resembling a big screen. And forget about ever seeing a decently priced super-wide-angle anamorphic prime lens. The only really good ones I've seen are the Panavision G-series 25mm and the new Cooke 25mm. The rest suffer from severe barrel distortion and breathing. Building a good wide-angle anamorphic lens is one of the most difficult assignments that a lens engineer could ever receive.

I use the Sony A7RII (as well as the Panasonic GH4) at work every week. Fact: My personal Canon C100 eats it for breakfast when it comes to motion cadence, rolling shutter, color science and overall cinematic quality. The 4K cameras might be sharper, but only by a little, and at the end of the day, resolution is the spec that matters to me least. All the fancy tech and high-power processing in the world doesn't matter if the image isn't pleased. And I mean pleasing right out of the camera, not pleasing after several hours in DaVinci resolve wrestling with SLog. Super flat profiles work great for RAW or 10 or 12-bit RGB video. For 8-bit compressed codecs, it's generally better to have a strong REC.709 image right off the bat. Also, the A7RII overheats after about 10 minutes of recording. Not great for interviews or long takes. The sad thing is, once upon a time, Sony had a magical camera called the F35, which had more mojo than anything this side of the Arri Alexa. And as much as people love to chalk it up to the CCD sensor, much of that same silky cinematic quality trickled down to the CMOS-carrying Sony F3, which as other people have pointed out, continues to be a beast of a camera, especially at the low, low prices that it now sells for. But somewhere along the way, Sony switched directions and decided to go for brute-force processing power and crazy specs, rather than real cinematic image quality. And as a result, while they have gained tremendous ground at the consumer and prosumer levels, they have ceded the high-end to Arri and Red. I have a lot of friends in rental houses and they clue me in as to what is going out most often: 1. Most people hire Alexas. 2. Can't afford Arri? Go for a Red. 3. Can't afford Red, but still need 4K? Sony, it is. 4. Don't need 4K? Have a Canon C300.

It's probably feasible, but it wouldn't be cheap. In the past, rear-adapted zooms were used out of necessity since it's just not possible to build a front anamorphic zoom with a 10-to-1 ratio. That said, they had a reputation for being soft and generally low in quality compared to primes. The rear anamorphic unit costs you one stop of light, and you had to stop down more in order to get a sharp image, rendering these old Angenieuxs and Cookes useless expect in day interiors and brightly lit studios. But what were you gonna do in the 70s without a zoom? It's the 70s, dude! Zoom, baby, zoom! That said, you can get better results with modern adapters, but they don't come cheap. The ones Duclos makes go for $11K a piece, and they're not just slipped on to the lens. They have to be adjusted by a lens technician and semi-permanently attached. The alignment must be perfect or the image goes to mush. You're inside the flange focal distance of the lens, so there's no room for error. Not sure how you would go about doing with with flimsy, shaky DSLR mounts. And as others said: no flares, no oval bokehs, no real anamorphic characteristics.

I don't really understand why the 1.33x lenses cost twice as much as the 2x lenses. Surely the 2x lenses are more difficult to manufacture? And the fact that the 1.33x lenses look more like 2x anamorphic than the 2x lenses is telling. I guess it's just an aperture mask to whittle the ovals down. Looks better than the weird diamond-shaped ovals on the 2x lenses. And as others have said, way too much distortion. Now, I don't want a totally rectilinear lens. The Arri Master anamorphics look just plain dull to me. But these lenses (both the 1.33 and the 2x) have way too much distortion considering the field of view. I've seen 25mm anamorphics with straighter verticals. Anyway, for the cost of a set of these lenses, you can actually pick up a decent set of Lomo Squarefront these days, especially if you buy each lens separately. 35, 50 and 80mm.

The red circle is caused by the old magnesium fluoride coatings on the spherical components. And considering The Thing used Panavision Super Speed lenses, the spherical components might've been from the 60s or 70s when such coatings were prevalent. The old Todd-AO 35 anamorphics as well as the Dyaliscopes had similar artifacts. If you want to reproduce it, you should pay special attention to the taking lenses you use. Maybe something like a Super Takumar, or even older glass would make it happen.

I think that any true Scope lens must be 2x in order to fit into existing workflows and monitoring capabilities. Best not to reinvent the wheel. Going with 1.79x squeeze in order to get 2.35 from a 1.33 sensor is engineering math. Sensors are getting larger and higher resolution. Judging by where things are going with the Red Weapon 8K, we'll be able to slice out any portion of a full frame sensor in the future and still get 4K+ resolution. It's not just about the bokeh and the aberrations. It's about getting an image that sees exactly twice in the horizontal as it does in the vertical. That's why 2x is a must. Really looking forward to seeing what Brian comes up with for a set of integrated primes. There's a huge gap in the market between the shiny new Cooke/Zeiss/Hawk glass, and the unwashed masses with their projector lenses and rangefinders. Something to supplement and eventually replace all the odd Russian and Japanese glass floating around out there. Kowas are costing more than what they were worth new these days. The Lomo supply is drying up. Where's the workhorse set of anamorphic primes that any rental house can afford to buy? Surely someone can build a decent set of primes with classical characteristics for $10-15K per lens?

This is half the reason why I got a C100 instead of the 4K options in that price bracket (think GH4 or A7S II). I can make it look the way I want it in camera. I don't need labor-intensive color correction beyond basic gamma and RGB tweaks. I certainly don't need to fool around with LUTs. I grew up shooting on film. I'm comfortable working this way. And needless to say, I find HD perfectly usable for my needs. The other half is form factor. So nice to have a proper camera with proper XLRs and an ND filter. I actually just came home from watching The Revenant. Most of it was shot in 2.8K Arriraw on the Alexa M. Some of it was shot in 6K on the new Alexa 65. I couldn't tell which shots were which camera. And that's a massive gap in resolution. In the right hands, resolution is practically irrelevant. That said, I'd rather see what Emmanuel Lubezki could do with a VHS camcorder than what 99% of other DPs can do with a Red Dragon and Master Primes. He's a true wizard.

That's actually brilliant. I can't believe nobody has thought of it before. Ship your film to one central processing center, download your scanned dailies from the cloud. Slices the turnaround in half. I think we have found the future of making movies on good old-fashioned celluloid. Kodak should offer the same service for 16mm and 35mm.

I think that was a pretty successful experiment. You zoomed in and out while maintaining focus and preserved that great anamorphic feel. Don't forget, the few front anamorphic zooms out there from Hawk and Panavision are rare and incredibly expensive. This set-up must've cost what a Hawk 45-90mm costs for a single rental day.

The very early Panavision APO-Panatar 1.25x lenses used a prism to squeeze the image. The later ones used cylindrical glass, just like the rest of Panavision's lenses. You use the later series in the featurette. They look just like C-series anamorphics.

I love how they effusively they credit Panavision in the video with making it happen for Tarantino and Co. And with good reason. From the time I've spent at PV doing preps, they are definitely a cut above other rental houses in terms of flexibility and creative solutions. They can pretty much alter their lenses at will to suit any project or look a filmmaker is going for. I once got my hands on the flare lenses built for Janusz Kaminski and used on Saving Private Ryan. Beautiful stuff. I'm sure the Ultra 65 lenses will continue to be used, maybe not on film, but definitely with the Alexa 65. There's nothing on Earth that will replicate that look.

Anamorphic lenses actually work better when used with older, simpler, smaller optics. It sounds counter-intuitive, but the bigger and shinier the prime lens is, the crapper the anamorphic generally looks. This is why you don't see many people screw a Kowa to, say, a Canon L-series. It would look abysmal. This is why your 50 and your 135 look good, they are old, crappy lenses, whereas the Rokinon is a brand new lens, with a much larger optic. My advice is to get a vintage 85mm. Something tiny, and preferably radioactive. It'll make your anamorphic sing.

Thumbs way up. That's some of the sharpest, crispest anamorphic footage I've seen come from an adapter. It rivals anything I've seen come from a professional anamorphic prime lens, even fancy ones. You don't have any of the weird glitches, glares and uneven bokeh and stretch ratio that usually comes with screwing multiple lenses together. Just clean, crisp 'Scope material. Love it.

I'm sad that CCD sensors have fallen by the wayside. They clearly have a magic that seems to evade CMOS sensors, apart from the Alexa. I wish that the Aaton Penelope made it to market with its Dalsa CCD. That looked like an amazing piece of technology, albeit, a bit over-priced.

That was a pretty poor test. Not much opportunity to see bokeh, flaring or rack focusing. The barrel distortion on that 35mm is pretty bad. I've seen 25mm anamorphics with straighter geometry. Oh well. What do you expect for a $3000 anamorphic prime lens? These ain't no Hawks.

A set of 5 Hawk V-Lites just came on sale online: http://www.fjsinternational.com/lenses.html The price: A mind-melting 335,000 euros. To put that in prospective, that's 67,000 euros each. Or nearly the cost of a brand new Zeiss Master Anamorphic and a new Cooke Anamorphic combined. Clearly, the cost of making lenses with traditional character and modern quality is seriously astronomical.