My ultimate question and "thank you" thread.

[redimp]

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

 

 

 

[Bioskop.Inc]

What editing program are you using, because when i've cropped anamorphic footage using FCPX it stays exactly the same sharpness.

What you need to do is make a custom timeline & then stretch the footage by 200% - the timeline will cut the edges off for you & you should still have the option to move the image from side to side to re-frame.

Personally, i'd stick with your Animex & the Pocket. If you need slow-mo, then you could always ramp the fps to the max & still achieve something ok. I've tried the slow-mo feature in FCPX with 24fps footage & its not too bad - but i hate slow-mo, its over-used & most of the time it doesn't add that much (its become a gimmick at best).

Anamorphic obsession/curiosity can take you to interesting places & you can spend way too much cash just experimenting on failed projects. You've already got a good set up, so use it - it really isn't going to get better than the BMPCC, with or without an anamorphic lens.

[bzpop]

hey Max,

here are my thoughts, but my thoughts are just my thoughts and nothing more:)

1. Aspect ratio - is an artistic choice, most likely collective, choice of majority of creative team; as of now 285 mill watch that music video and if a few thousands were 'thrown away' by an unusual aspect ratio  of that video who gives a damn. but if you care about that, and you shoot for masses the safest choice would be 16:9 spherical lenses, but this is plain boring and very video-ish. This is sure sounds like a broken record, but the content is a king, always. So, either you know what you doing and unique aspect ratio is a creative choice that helps you to emphasize your vision, or you just want to stand out and be different, aspect ratio is not the major factor of the success or failure of any feature, documentary , or music video.

2. I don's see  big difference between one and two. the only comment i have from my experience is that going from 2x squeeze to 1,5x and further up to 1,33x anamorphic properties become less pronounced, but sure are easier to work with, if that's what you are looking for; Shooting 1,33x on a 16:9 gives you 'instant'  anamorphic ratio without crop; my personal opinion is that 2x squeeze is perfect for anamorphic shooting, either you keep it uncut at 3.55:1 or crop to 2.40:1, but again, this is a creative choice.

3. Slow motion - i personally love it, but, depends on the content, as always; hard to shoot an artistic piece today without it, but it doesn't mean you can't, because you don't have a high frame rate option in your camera. If you really want to add slow motion to your project you can get decent results shooting 29,97 and slowing in down 30% in Twixtor for the 24p timeline.

In any case Max, BMPCC is amazing, i'll repeat myself, AMAZING camera! It has fantastic picture, better then cameras that cost 10x the price, and i wish you all success with your next shoot, and like Ridley Scott replied on one of the interviews when they asked him "what advice would you give to all young cinematographers?"                                  he replied - "Just fuckin do it"