SLR Magic Anamorphot CINE PL Set 35/50/70 - a shoot in London and Brighton with the Sony A7S II and Samsung NX1

[TheRenaissanceMan]

Panavision Anamorphics have only flare subtly. It's enough to show up, but not enough to draw attention. Perfect, IMO.

I don't see these as rentals at all. Maybe VERY low-end rentals, but a lot of owner ops--the types with Amiras and REDs--will probably jump on these. 

[alexcosy]

Strong softness in the corners though... I'd love to see them at 5.6 indeed, because wide open is near unusable unless at night like in this video when you really need the light at the cost of degrading the image.

[Brian Caldwell]

On 3/21/2016 at 4:24 PM, BrooklynDan said:

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.

The Panavision G 25mm does have severe barrel distortion.  I haven't seen the new Cooke 25mm yet - does it have the same weird mix of pincushion and barrel distortion that the other Cooke anamorphics have?

[BrooklynDan]

1 hour ago, Brian Caldwell said:

The Panavision G 25mm does have severe barrel distortion.  I haven't seen the new Cooke 25mm yet - does it have the same weird mix of pincushion and barrel distortion that the other Cooke anamorphics have?

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.

[Brian Caldwell]

56 minutes ago, BrooklynDan said:

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.

Hi Dan:

Thanks for the info!  My only point of reference was the Panavision 25mm, and it definitely seemed like a lot of distortion to me.  Very interesting to learn that Hawk and others are worse.