redimp

So I did re-ajust the lens. I don't think anything have changed from yesterday, really. The only thing that is more pronounced now is vignetting. Pulling that front element out added significant vignette and when shooting agains bright light it lights up too. Here's today's test video. Still thinking about the aspect ratio to use. Tried cropping the image too just to see if there would be any significant quality loss. Can't decide, really. The flares turned out amazing though, blue green and orange, with square-ish edges.

this is exactly what I did, but rushed outside and did not align the anamorphic with the camera, so the flares are not quite horisontal. I was trying to get a clock tower that is around 500m away to be in focus, using pixel2pixel preview on external monitor. Screwed off the front with the name imprint, loosened 6 or 8 screws that are holding front block in place, pulled out the front block and removed a spacing ring behind it, inserted the same ring that was 6mm thicker, put the block back, tightened the screws. Close focus is still there, a pillar on the video was around 80 cm away from the camera sensor. Rangefinder is supposed to focus from 1 meter so I suppose It means that infinity is not yet there on the ISCO yet. It's a brilliant idea to use longer lens to do the adjustment, thank you.

What do you think about this? There is nothing irreversible done to the lens at all, but now infinity is kinda there. My follow focus is a little stiff so it's slightly shaky at times. It is hard to understand if I did hit infinity or not though, or maybe I'm already paranoid.

I have already taken it apart and adjusted the distance between lens. It is too late to test it though, so will do a proper testing tomorrow. You are right about a close focus though, I really like the way it looks. Here it is with Rangefinder screwed on it, hand held But not having infinity turns out to be a great downside for me. We did a test shoot today and the slight blur on the background, especially trees over the skyline just look plain awkward. I hope this adjustment works and I'd be able to preserve close focus character and gain infinity too. Thanks for your advice guys.

So here's my test of how the ISCO is influencing the image. It's degrading everything that is at infinity very drastically. On video it loos as if there is no focus at all. It works OK at closer distances. My ISCO is branded as ANIMEX and side says it is 3m (10ft) to infinity. I guess it is not true and it is focused at 4m indeed. Putting a negative diopter in front or back does not help. The only option is to put the lenses a little further apart. Will try to disassemble the lens and mod it. Sigh.

Sorry for diggint this thread out, but where is the info about fixed @4m come from? Mine looks slightly different and it says 3m-infinity. I am asking because maybe that is the reason I can't get sharp objects on infinity with mine. Also I am using SLR magic Rangefinder and the image I get is pretty soft. Rangefinder requires both lenses to be focused to infinity, so maybe that is the reason all my footage is not sharp enough?

Hey guys. I've been reading this branch of EOSHD for quite a while now. This is how I got sick with anamorphic lens, and to be frank I love my weird new obsession. So I wanted to say a big THANK YOU to Tito, Rich, Bold, Ken, Bioskop and many many other members who posted tons of useful information that kept me busy for so many evenings. But I also felt like for a past month I've created way to many threads with questions. By nature I am not a patient person, and this flaw causes me to behave as if I am obsessed, which I kinda am, but still I felt like I probably should make one thread dedicated to everything that I wanted to ask or tell to this community. So I've got the idea of using anamorphic lens when my band started thinking about a new music video. We have a bmpcc and couple of low-end Canon DSLRs in our possession, and it felt like we just need a decent lens and we can turn the world over. Now that we know we were wrong here's our situation. We have one person who does video production part time and rely on their skills with the camera. We are going to shoot in Carpathian Mountains in early-mid January. The story for the video requires us to shoot two people in a sub zero snowy wilderness. We have currently this gear: BMPCC, Zeiss Distagon 28 2.8, ISCO Animex and Rangefinder all put tightly together with custom made clamps. This setup sits on the TR.EN (no idea if this is going to tell you anything) shoulder rig that has counter-weight and an arm to press against your belly for support and a follow focus. We also have a Neway 7-inch monitor that does only partial de-squeeze (not 2x, but 1.33x) that we bought due to false feature advertisement and can not return. Camera and monitor are supposed to be powered with Sony batteries that we are yet to acquire. Now as we are shooting some test videos to prepare to the actual shooting and get used to the setup we have stumbled upon couple of quirks that we did not foresee. 1. Ratio. While I saw a thread with Taylor Swift's 3,55:1 music video with 250 million views I still feel like people might be thrown away by this super-wide ratio. I actually re-watched Ben Hur after recent post about Super Panavision and Hateful Eight, and even 2,76:1 feels pretty wide. I feel like 2,55:1 would be something that we can go with, but when we try cropping 2x de-squeezed video from BMPCC to 2,55:1 we get awful blurry results. 2. Ratio issues bring us to a next major decision that we have to make – is the tiny ISCO and 2X squeeze ratio a way to go for us? I was thinking about this so much that I've decided to try using 1.33 or 1.5 adapters first, but since we're on a budget I could not afford buying one. So I decided to go DIY. We're in Ukraine and we have access to plenty of soviet glass that is much, much cheaper then those ebay prices that you all see. I have recently bought 3 LOMO NAP2-2 lenses for $8. They are all bet up, but good for a project purposes. What I did was removing front and rear elements in their original metal housings and bring them closer to get 1.33 or 1.5 ratios to test. Because of the fact that I am planning to use Rangefinder in any case I had to somehow achieve infinity that was lost after both elements got closer, so I have bought a cheap -4 diopter glass lens for glasses and fitted it between two anamorphic elements. It is standard 60mm diameter lens and fits inside original rear element housing. Basically I have achieved 1.33x ratio and infinity from the glass that was 2x originally, but I have lost 1 stop too, which kinda bugs me. Here is a link to an unlisted video from 550d and 28 2.8 Canon AF glass. I like the thin blue flares. I like that fact that it covers 550d sensor with 28mm, whereas ISCO only covers BMPCC sensor with 28mm. But the glass that I removed from the beat up lenses is scratched and has fungus damage of the coating (you can see the dots of the flares). I am supposed to receive two pristine LOMO NAP2-3M and NAP2-4 that I got for $25 and try to do the same mod to them too. They are bigger but supposedly capture the same field of view. If I decide to go with this glass for the video then I will have to machine a housing for the lens itself, clamps to taking lens and to Rangefinder. 3. No slomo. While I understand that it is foolish to expect any slomo from a cheap camera like BMPCC I still think that having a little higher frame rate would be nice to soften motion, especially in our case since we're gonna shoot a lot of running, falling and fighting. Currently we have an iPhone 6s in our possession and the soviet glass does not vignette at all, but adapting it to kinda mount it to the phone (or mount the phone to the glass actually) but we are very very uncertain about the results we can get from it. Is it worth all the effort to be a b-cam and shoot 120 or 240 fps? We also are really afraid of not being able to match the results later in post production stage, since iPhone is iPhone and BMPCC is, well, BMPCC. Considering that we already had the BMPCC the rest of the setup (Distagon, Monitor, Rig, ISCO and all the LOMO lens, clamps and Rangefinder and a powering solution for BMPCC) took us to $1200. Adapting those pristine LOMOs (housings and clamps) would be another $100. We also plan to spend around $200 for renting a house in the mountains for around a week and for al lthe transportation. In the end we are facing $1500 for a video, and a thought keeps buggin' me – should I have bought a 1.5x lens right on and saved some money? I guess I'll never know. Guys what would you do if you were us? We have already shot to music videos, in 2010 and in 2014, so we really think that we can pull it off in terms of organizing the process and making our ideas real, but in terms of getting an image of a nice quality we really need your advice and thoughts. I really appreciate if you read the whole thing. Max

Hey guys, I'm sorry to break in like this, but I've just found something that seems like a good deal and need somebody's advice about it. It's LOMO OKC4-28-1 28 f2 lens. It's soviet made, vintage, was used for LANTAN cameras and has OCT-16 (or OCT-18?) Bayonet. I shoot with BMPCC and I am awaiting for a Distagon C/Y 28 2.8 delivery, but this OKC lens has just popped up locally, it's $130 and now I am having second thoughts. There are not that many video on youtube, and even less info if I google it. Is anyone familiar with it? What are your thoughts? Thanks!

I really hope that seller can work it out somehow, but I realize I might end up opening a claim and hoping that Aliexpress can resolve it.

I am looking for exactly 2x lens for this project. I think of access to cheap soviet lens as of granted, as if the universe is making up for every other aspect of crappy life in post USSR republics. Soviet glass here in Ukraine is cheeeeeeeeeeap. Rectimascope does have decent flares indeed. I am also looking at Meopta Anagon at the moment, seems decent.

So I was playing with Russian cheap LOMO NAP lens, bought a set of three for $8 locally. They were pretty beat up, but nice to do some sort of a project. I've took them apart, and managed to get some interesting results. I would like to try to make another DIY project now that I have access to machining aluminum, but this time I want to go for a big and sharp lens. So the question is – what anamorphic lens has a big front and rear lens diameter, is good optically (those NAP lens are kinda cloudy and flares are poor white ones) and is way to huge for normal use and therefore cheap? I saw good reviews of Baush&Lomb lens. Anything else?

It's not that good. "Custom" ratio is not that custom, it cannot de-squeeze 2x, only 1.33 (if you shoot 16:9). It also cannot de-squeeze 1:1 ratio and that is what I was buying it for. Also mine has a glitch and the image is constantly broken. It also smells like plastic. Another quirck is that if you turn it on/off you do not get the image from BMPCC, you need to unplug the micro HDMI cable and plug it back to get the image. I never had a field monitor before, so maybe this is common. Mystic "Extrusion Mode" basically lets you set up start of X and Y coordinates, and X and Y size of image in pixels. Sounds nice but it can only do -80 pixels vertically. That's a really poor de-squeeze. Is it a good cheap monitor? I guess so. Is it worth $389 they ask for it? I would say no. Is it worth $290 that I paid for it? I would say no. If there was somebody who could tell me how those features work exactly I would not buy it. I think I would still pay $150 for it if it had no glitch. Talking to a seller now to see if that can be fixed, no reply yet. Sigh.

It's gonna be here tomorrow. Would you like to see the unboxing too?

I've enjoyed the first and the last videos the most. The first one has this amazing aesthetics that to me (an amateur) look indistinguishable from anamorphic film look. Are you willing to share your post routine? Would like to know how you got that out of 550d.

Yeah I saw that the blades are not working, but that most probably is just a bad spring. Will attempt to clean them myself, that operation went good for me a couple of times with other lens. Is this the "hollywood"? I thought they call the 28 f2 version hollywood, and this is just called MM (with green 22 aperture mark). No matter what it's called, I am super hyped anyways.

Bought this yesterday. Have an adapter with aperture too. I'm having super high hopes that this lens will bring sharpness to my image.

I have decided to go with this on 11.11. $318 sounds fair for completely custom image ratio. Free shipping too.

I am looking at Biogon or Distagon at the moment. Both 28 2.8, both sharp (what my images lack a looot).

Hey guys. So with your help I've managed to get to a point where my setup is making videos. I still shoot hand held, and that sucks, but I'm getting there slowly. Please watch these two videos before you read further. One and Two So I've been working on a little project for the past week or two. I once bought a nifty little camera for $1, it was a half-frame Yashica Half 14. Nothing outstanding about the camera, but the lens is interesting – Yashinon DX, 32mm f1.4. Since it was designed to cover half the 35mm frame I was pretty sure that it will work on BMPCC. In my other topic I was discussing a minimum focal distance that will work on BMPCC with my ISCO Animex S8 2x, and it turned out to be around 28 mil (still needs confirmation), so 32 was definitely going to put me on a safe side. Te camera spent a year and a half (!) in the repair shop. Several people tried to fix it but it was dead for good, so I decided to give the lens a second chance. I will not post a whole bunch of images of the process of adapting the lens to m4/3, I will just say that even though I had nice tools, good motivation and enough time, the lack of experience made the whole thing a pain. But, after a couple of days I took the lens out and it was taking videos. How it looks: One, Two, Three, Four The first video was shot with no clamps, just Yashinon and hand-held ISCO in front of it. The second one is with clamps and SLR Magic Rangefinder that did the focusing. F 1.4 everywhere. I look at these videos and I see that there is no sharpness at all. Flares are chaotic, especially the glow around light sources. Aperture is 2-blade, so I have to shoot wide-open all the time or face super-weird bokeh (no ND filters yet, so I have to shoot at night only). And the conversion that I did is not good. The barrel of the lens was made to host all the parts that I had to remove in order to take it off the camera, and is not holding up well after they were gone. It is tilting in different directions all the time, causing major issues with focus (basically it has a tilt effect all the time). I am pretty sure the example videos above are that soft because of that issue too. I also think that I did not get the true infinity as I did the conversion, and that is not letting Rangefinder to do it's job well. But, there issues are fixable, in theory. I know some nice people that provide aluminum machining services and can make a new housing for the lens. I can design it in a way that it is fixed focus to infinity to work with my setup. But I am not sure if it's worth it at all. I started making anamorphic setup for one particular reason – my band is going to shoot a DIY music video this winter. We are looking for a cinematic, maybe sliiiightly vintage picture. The video will be people and nature shots most of the time. So now I have a big decision to make. Do I invest in this lens more (it is not going to cost more then $50, but will take time for sure), or do I just go and buy myself a Biogon or Distagon 28 2.8, and settle down with that? I really need your opinion to understand if this image is at all usable. These are the first anamorphic videos I could get out of the camera after all this time, and naturally I am happy that the whole thing just works, but I cannot think critically and figure out if they are any good at all. I will appreciate honest opinions. Thanks guys.

There's not much to "do" with the lens. You just strip down some parts for some lens (like focusing rings in some cases) and put a barrel on them. I think there's nothing irreversible done to your anamorphic lens, you just put them inside a bigger tube with variable diopters in it, and you're done. You can check out their site for compatibility and see how much the model that fits your lens costs.

Those are way too pricey for a amateur. Can you change the de-squeeze factor to a custom one? What exact model do you have? It seems like the cheapest option so far and I am thinking about it.

Maybe it's because of the lens that flares so much, but yeah, if you look closely at the sample video you'll see that cars make just 1 or 2 anamorphic streaks and that's it. They are pale, almost white and super thin and short.

So I decided to go with 32mm 1.4 lens and this is the first footage I managed to make. The taking lens flares so much that it's hard to spot the flare from ISCO, plus isco itself flares not that much. No vignetting on 32 mm, so I'm happy. https://www.youtube.com/embed/hYczBnFbfyQ

Hey guys. There are bunch of topics about this on these forums, but all the options discussed there are over my budget. I see a bunch of chinese field monitors and I'm pretty sure there's one that can display image with custom ratio. I'm going to need to shoot 2x anamorphic, also 1:1 ratio from time to time. I don't care about weight or battery type, just ability to use custom ratios with BMPCC and low price. Any brands I should look at?

Thanks. Actually that person told me that two people from this forum contacted them after I posted this thread, offering to buy the lens. He's willing to just cancel it with no negative reviews and it's up to me now. I just really can't make up my mind if it's worth buying and basically waiting for Rich to chime in if it's worth repairing.