Bold

retired from modding

@ScottP Sorry I don't visit the forums often these days. Although I don't make the mod anymore I still have a couple of remaining and my website's offline for now. If you're still interested shoot me a PM.

@Cosimo I applaud your work.Thank you for sharing, and contributing. For me and many others, experimentation is the cornerstone of learning about anamorphic. Non-conctructive criticism of other people's work seems petty and antithetical to the anamorphic community. Ignore the haters, and keep doing what you are doing!

@dnyanesh ambhore Finding an original silver Series VII ring replacement for the B&H is extremely rare. I've never seen one on eBay I know of one resource that used to have a couple of these available. If there are any left it probably will cost around $75 I made a mold of my silver ring, and used it to cast some duplicates in polyurethane. Not as durable as the original. But as Tito suggested, you can attach a Series VII step up ring to it - like a SeriesVII-to-52mm for example - then use the 52mm thread for attaching other step up rings to match the various thread sizes of your taking lenses. This eliminates wear and tear on the polyurethane. I'm not sure if I have any left but I can check - lets call it $25 including shipping (U.S. only) You may want to check with Jim Chang at Rapido Technology to see if he has something that will work in its place. He makes really excellent anamorphic accessories. If option 1 or 2 interests you, PM me and I can give you further info.

A large majority of anamorphic shooters seem preoccupied - if not obsessed - with run-and-gun setups. Which is totally fair, who wants to drag a heavy hand-held setup around? But for me it has never been an issue, as my goal is to shoot narratives someday. Narratives with pre-planned camera shots, involving tripods and other supports, where weight is far less of a concern. In the grand scheme of things, a B&L is not that huge. Although an FVD-35A will definitely increase the weight to 5-6 pounds. Still, I bought a couple B&Ls on the cheap a few years ago, and I definitely want an FVD when I can afford it. The 335b is another story. Combining the B&H and the Kalee, we're talking 10-11 pounds of glass. Something for that would be for specific needs, like "I need a 24mm low light shot for this John-Car[enter-style horror film I'm shooting." Vazen is too rich for my blood. If I could afford a Vazen, I could afford to pay a CNC machinist to create a B&L rehousing 🙂

So does that work out to about 43-44mm on full frame? Not bad! 35mm projector lenses generally let you go a wider than 16mm lenses. I've read that big 35mm scopes (Bausch & Lomb, e.g) can go as wide as a 35mm taking lens w/o vignetting (I haven't tested this myself). In this Vimeo below someone followed the 'cooking anamorphic' tutorial (a video which I can no longer find... seems to have disappeared from Vimeo) to achieve a 24mm taking lens on an m43 sensor. Granted there's a LOT of barrel distortion (see the pillars at the 0:45 mark) and edge aberration. My uneducated, wild-ass guess is that unaltered, the 335b might allow for 28-30mm with little or no vignetting, as the the glass is almost 20% bigger in diameter. Using the cooking anamorphic technique of shortening the distance between the front & rear elements would definitely allow for 24mm, in theory with less barrel distortion than the B&L. Of course this would mean it would no longer be 2x anamorphic. But if I could achieve 1.8x it's still enough to produce pronounced oval bokeh. Shooting with M43 in 4:3 at 2x produces a 2.66:1 aspect ratio. If my math is right, shooting with m43 in 4:3 mode at 1.8x would produce an aspect ratio of 2.40:1 Again, this is all compeletely hypothetical, based on my incredibly limited (and probably flawed) understanding of lens optics 🙂

Thanks, I will send him a note. I still fear that his services will be beyond my budget, but it might be worth saving up for. In the meantime I'm still looking for ideas for doing at-home tinkering & testing with this glass. Where do the anamorphic Dr. Frankensteins shop for their parts & equipment? My goal is to achieve a taking lens in low 20s range (24mm, e.g.) on 2x scope with a m43 sensor, without vignetting. (Also the giant glass,100mm diameter, probably means enough light passes through to accomodate even the fastest lens.)

Does anyone have any thoughts/advice on how to re-mount or re-house one of these big Varamorph bastards? I don't think there's any kind of helicoid with a large enough diameter for this glass, and custom maching seems prohibitively expensive. So I'm interested in finding hardware that I could re-purpose (astronomy accessories, or something similar?) to achieve 40-50mm travel distance. My goal would be to combine such a focus unit with the absurdly giant Bell & Howell 335B. It would be the HEAVIEST anamorphic adapter ever created. But I suspect it would also allow for a really wide taking lens without vignetting.

That's awesome Tito! Make sure you copyright that before animorphicstore puts it on his site and claims it as his own :P "Do you hate Communism?" Hilarious!

Leslie, that is the 35mm B&H, which doesn't share any similarities with the 16mm lens in this thread. At 6 pounds, this 35mm beast is the one of the heaviest anamorphics out there. I don't think it would be of practical use unless you were doing tripod-mounted/narrative filmmaking. Extremely heavy and bulky for run and gun. It's one advantage is the enormous diameter glass. I suspect that it would allow you to shoot with a wider taking lens than just about any other 2x anamorphic. But because the front diameter is so big, a single-focus solution would have to be custom made. I imagine it's focus through, but I suspect its minimum focus distance is probably between 10-20 feet. I have a pair of these giant B&Hs, but I haven't figured out how to disassemble them...Unfortunately I don't have any time or money to do anamorphic tinkering any more, and will probably put these and the rest of my anamorphic & camera gear on eBay soon.

I wouldn't recommend buying a thing from that guy under any circumstances. His products are overpriced and in some cases appear to be of poor quality. I'd recommend taking a look at Rapido Technology's clamp selection instead. I have one of his clamps. He doesn't mess around - the quality of workmanship is great and the prices are reasonable.

I've made some tweaks to lower my website's overhead, so for the moment the site is up and running (...fingers crossed).

Hi Leslie, thanks for the heads-up - I'm looking into the bandwidth issue and should have it resolved today. Most projector lens designs are pretty simple and can be disassembled, cleaned, reassembled as long as you have the right tools, a good work space, and lots of patience ? I'm sure other isco Gottengen 2x and NAP32 owners would appreciate posts dedicated to those lenses! Cheers, -Bold

My site is finally live now. If you're interested in my B&H mod, you can see what I offer here. Has anyone else been doing modding or shooting with their B&H? Please post your footage and keep this thread going!

I'd avoid that eBay seller. Overpriced and poor quality.