Through his YouTube channel GxAce, cinematographer Casey Cavanaugh has published a new video showcasing his homemade 'GX-Pan' anamorphic lens adapter used with the $32k Hasselblad H6D-100C medium-format digital camera.
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According to Cavanaugh, Hasselblad saw the video in which he unveiled his DIY anamorphic lens adapter setup and offered to let him test it with the medium-format model. 'I was absolutely blown away by how much my little anamorphic lens resolved on that 100MP sensor,' Cavanaugh says in his video. 'I was honestly worried that it wasn't going to hold up to that scrutiny of 100MP.'
Cavanaugh explains that in addition to being an anamorphic lens created for a Super 16 projection, the unit also has a persistent fungus problem that has proven difficult to eliminate. In light of that, says Cavanaugh, the 'insanely sharp' images produced by the setup were 'honestly very surprising.' The demonstration also includes short video clips shot with the system.
Panasonic GH5 has a special anamorphic setting for when you attach an anamorphic lens. You can shoot anamorphic video in 4K 60p with IBIS and in slo mo: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MfsENgVG1Y
Think Hasselblad X-Pan. The 30-35mm cropped will give the same aspect ratio, but with anamorphic, you have significantly less depth of field. Something closest would be shooting with a full frame 50mm f1.2 wide open and crop, however, you won't get the flairs and the oval bokeh shapes, just the aspect ratio and DoF.
The anamorphic lens was forced on the cinematic industry by the constrained small imaging size of film at the time of their development. 4:3, sized 24mm wide x 18mm high 35mm movie film is in effect, half a 35mm still image frame but running vertically. Now that sensors could be made in different dimensions, could not the video industry use 16:9 or 21:9 ratio sensors and get the wide screen effect without the use of anamorphic lenses. I don't see flare and oval bokeh as particularly desirable features.
I can't believe an anamorphic for Super 16 covers 645, I sold an anamorphic for 65mm motion picture to be adapted to 645 a few months ago, I think it barely covered the frame according to preliminary measurements.
Regarding the etched-in fungus on the old anamorph, in the days before lens coatings were discovered, Cook Lenses in the UK, made some fine lenses, all for large plate cameras, of course, and they would frequently receive some lenses back for fungus removal. One day, someone decided to test a fungus affected lens against a pristine version. To their amazement, the fungus improved the contrast and flare characteristics immeasurably, and reduced sharpness not a jot. The thickness of the fungus, like a modern day coating, is actually thinner than a wavelength of light, allowing it to behave as a coated optic. This led to the development of coated lenses. The fungus on the anamorphic lens won't be affecting the image quality whatsoever. Just my take.
Cool experiment, some of the nastiest rolling shutter Jello I’ve ever seen, but who cares. Can get a similar effect for stills with a phone shooting short panoramas, or stitch a hand-full of vertical 35mm frames together, tho hard to do w moving subjects :) ... & no famous smeared highlights. Reminds me of this video:
I like anamorphic lenses since it is widescreen. Human have 2 eyes so why we have a wide field of vision (not talking focal length). I guess we can crop the image with our regular camera lens combo or go anamorphic stretch in post production ( general technique).
Human vision is circular, though for each eye part of that circle is blocked by the nose.
If you must and want to think in terms of rectilinear shapes, human vision is square, though again, if you unlucky and only have one eye it's actually a vertical rectangle - cropped by the nose.
We pay more attention to the horizontal as that's our main hunting territory, but human vision isn't any wider than its high.
We see as two fisheye lenses. It is our brain that will correct the heavily curved lines to straight.
You can example take a fisheye photo and print it to size of A4. Then look that fisheye image from very very close range (almost nose in it) and you see magic to happen, your brain will automatically correct all the heavily circular lines to straight lines. But our eyes are fisheye lenses, our brains does the magic. And once you actually realize that, you train little bit, you can see uncorrected images with your eyes as you can override the brain correction. Danger is, if you do that too much, you start to see everything uncorrected and you can "flip" over it. Required to train your brain again to see normally. But that is as only about 1.5-2 degree from our FOV is sharp, everything else is extremely blurry (why shallow DOF is gimmick) and at center we see straight lines straight, at edges they have heavy curvature.
No. It is the brain that does it. You have a spherical vision, an fisheye. That you receive as circular projection. And your brain will create you the straight lines as is rapidly when you are scanning the environment and looking around.
Surely he could afford a used XPan if he could spend all that on digital MF...? (joke). Talking of the XPan I remember when it came out I would have loved to have one, were it not for it costing about 6 months wages!
How expensive is X-Pan these days? I bought an X-Pan new in 1998 and sold it last year for about the same as I paid for it. I only had the 45mm and 90mm lens. I couldn’t justify buying the 30mm lens at around $5000 or the centre ND filter at about $500. These days I can get a similar appearance by cropping a 30mp digital image at 2:1 with much more lens and aperture / DOF choice. Eg. using the Sigma 14mm f1.8 Art lens which I bought with some of the proceeds from the X-Pan sale.
one should not confuse sharpness at pixel level with detail. even with a mediocre lens, at 100 mpixel there will likely be more detail resolved than with the best glass on f.e. a 42 mpixel fullframe sensor.
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