Anamorphic w Red One

[sbove]

My first post...to this most excellent and wonderful site...thanks all contributors and founders!!!

I know this is an edge case...but...

I have a passionate love for Panavision C series anamophics...

These only come in Panavision mount (the Red is only PL for the time being)

But, assuming the Red mount could be modified by a good camera tech to take a Panavision lens...

There still appears to be another problem...

Looks like the Red's sensor is NOT big enough to record a full anamorphic image...s35 width is more than enough, but the height of the sensor is only 1:77 ratio to width = not tall enough...need full academy height...

It would be a shame to not be able to use the most cinematic lenses in existence with this otherwise super-cool cam...

Am I missiong something? And if not, can anyone think of a workaround?

[Gibby]

Hey sbove,

Welcome to DVX User RED forum!

I don't believe there has been a thread on this RED forum about anamorphic shooting with RED, but there has been a long thread on that subject on another RED forum that I also moderate. Most people here read multiple RED forums and I've referred many people back and forth between the two forums.

Here's a link to an "Anamorphic with RED" thread on the DV Info Net RED forum. The thread has 37 posts.

Hope this helps you...

Link: http://www.dvinfo.net/conf/showthread.php?t=67447&highlight=anamorphic+RED

Gibby
RED camera #8
www.cut4.tv
www.4umat.com

[sbove]

Thanks Gibby, checked out the link...there is good confirmation over there that this is troublesome:

"because the sensor is 16:9 it is too small vertically to use for anamorphic. Anamorphic lenses are designed to target a frame size of 22x16mm - the Mysterium is 24.4x13.7mm, so with an anamorphic lense you'd end up with a cropped image..." - Stephen C. Webb

"The anamorphic lenses would over shoot the top and bottom of the sensor. Some kind of adapter would be needed..." - Robert Sanders

and

"The maximum vertical dimension of the RED sensor (13.7 mm) is indeed considerably less than the height of a 35mm scope film frame (18.59 mm). As a result, both the horizontal and vertical dimensions of a suitable scope frame on the RED sensor (say 16.1 x 13.7 mm) would be proportionately smaller than a 35mm film frame (22.00 x 18.59 mm)." - Greg Lowry

Based on these cross-observations, I would say: the right solution is to offer a RED-Anamorphic One = a cam with a chip tall enough to capture an academy full-app image. I have no idea whether this is trivial (call up the chip maker and say "extend the height"), or horrifically complex (the chip fab can't make 'em that big, etc.), but given that the width needed would be somewhat less than for s35, the data rates might be ~ the same and therfore not necessitate redesign of downstream components...

[Greg Lowry]

I think it's fair to say that changing the sensor specs at this point isn't trivial. I personally think that a "true" Super 35 format sensor (with the same "full aperture" aspect ratio as the ARRI D20 sensor for example) would have been more flexible, allowing for anamorphic and IMAX aspect ratio capture for example, but RED has gone another direction. As I observed in the post that you quoted above, it is possible to use anamorphic lenses with a standard 2:1 squeeze ratio on the RED sensor, but this involves windowing or cropping the sensor left and right for the proper 2.40:1 (projection) aspect ratio. The alternate approach of shooting spherical, using the full width of the RED sensor, and cropping top and bottom to achieve a 2:40:1 scope aspect ratio actually uses more pixels than the left-right cropped anamorphic solution. I think the "spherical solution" is probably acceptable (and in many ways preferable), although it doesn't satisfy the resolution extremists and anamorphic lens enthusiasts among us.

[sbove]

Interesting tidbit from the Panavision Genesis site... For some reason, even Panavision is using an s35 sensor and thereby making use of their own anamorphic lenses extremely troublesome...

Super 35mm sized sensor
Equivalent to 35mm depth of field
Utilizes all existing spherical 35mm lenses, including PRIMO® Primes and Zooms.