1961 50mm F/2.4 Lomo Anamorphic Lens; the beautiful trainwreck

Ryan Patrick O'Hara

Ryan Patrick O'Hara

Veteran
I bought one of these lenses 'as is' from an auction. It truly is a horrible condition lens. There is dust and funky stuff on the glass, the outside barrel housing is missing, and it's got some other considerable issues... like a PL mount that doesn't like to hold onto the lens build. Also, if you thought Lomo's were notorious for crappy focus barrels, mine is missing the outside of it, so I am literally turning an unmarked internal metal barrel around. No marks, nothing. However, since it arrived today, I took it apart to give it a bit of a dusting and poor man's cleaning, and put it back together again. Although I still think the PL mount is just a tiny bit off, (seems infinity focus is a bit off) I gave it a test run!

It's a really fun lens and I really love the image so far! I would never EVER use it on a real film... but I tossed it on my NEX-5 and had some fun. We had a little poker game going in my living room, so I just took a couple of pictures. I flared the lens with a 1' fluorescent workshop lamp. Since the room was dim lit and poorly lit (75w ceiling lamps of grossness) I had them hold the light in the shot. :P

First a word or two about anamorphic.

This lens opens up to F/2.4.... but I can tell you it's not even near being acceptably sharp until F/4 or more. The bent depth of field is apparent and the lens doesn't perform well even center at F2.4. Also, the thing seems to have little to no coatings. I'm sure it has something, but it sure doesn't act like it.

But that is the reason I love this lens. It flares easily, weirdly, and with unique charm.

I'll post more pictures later, but I get the craziest flares... maybe four different types at a time. Everything that is bring has a glow around it and it's a soft image that is all warm and fuzzy.

This lens is def out of professional commission, but it's a really fun lens to take cool pictures with! I'll post some good daylight stuff tomorrow.

ok... about these pictures... don't judge the lens or me by them. As mentioned, I like a F/5.6 on this lens and it was night-time and very dark. I had my ISO at 3200! I'm also having trouble finding focus sometimes... just because i'll expand focus and forget about curved DoF if I'm wider than a F/4. None of these images are graded outside of basic camera color temp settings.

Also, you will notice a skew. When I put the lens back together I decided to leave it a bit 'loose' so I could play around more. The Anamorphic front of the lens can rotate and causes a skew to the anamorphic image and diagonal flares. While running around, sometimes I'd not notice small amounts of unevenness. I'll probably get that locked down in the future. It's never really an appealing look for me.

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ps: Now that i'm looking at it, I didn't unsqueeze as much as I should have, which I assume is 2x. I wasn't really paying attention when doing the pixel math... it's 6:30am and I need sleep! Close enough for now.
 
Ahh - 1961 - that's vintage :)

My oldest is from '75... newest is '93.

You could probably use the lens for a pop promo - it'll give a nice look.
 
I shot an entire music video with one of those "high def wide angle adapters" from ebay - the kind you screw onto your filter ring. Beautiful mess. $40.

Seriously - reasonably sharp center with a "dreamy" subtle softness... that gets downright misty at the edges. And a WONDERFUL, awesome, gorgeous - but subtle - chromatic aberration as you get closer to the sides, mixed with some distortion. Can't use it often, but it made a spooky look that no AE filter can replicate. ORGANIC rules sometimes.

Dude, I HIGHLY recommend you get a big black card, punch a hole in it, and shoot all kinds of lens flares. Find a way to hold on to a tracking mark in the corner, and pan or slide across, up/down, etc. Hook up your friends with some true, organic anamorphic flare plates, or keep them for your own use.

Check out the flares from the crap wide-angle - just badass.

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You should see the flares from the Duclos 11-16. They are bonkers, yellow, green and blue, but in a faded rainbow, just huge discs of different solid colors.
 
You bast*rd people!!!! You're getting me all excited about shooting with cheap anamorphics. Now I'll be obsessively googling, followed by the spending of money.

Seriously, I've been on an "organic" kick lately (spent the whole summer keying a music video, think I'm wanting more surprises than you get from plugins). Just bought a super 8 camera, a very nice one that shoots manual. Anamorphic + super 8, maybe some cross processing? I'm in!

I miss film....
 
A bit more from today... I didn't spend that much time playing but I got a couple cool shots in day-light.

Uploader is screwing up... says "!" after each attempt after the first three. Hmmmm. I guess i'll host these elsewhere and link in.

Edit: It might be because the unstretched images are over 9,000 pixels wide. Maybe I should reduce the resolution a bit, no? :)

Until DVXuser uploader is working for me, or I'm working for it, here is the FB public link: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.786215670727.2263943.39602619&l=e314ba3763&type=1
 

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Self Portrait

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small sun flare through trees

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Big sun flare through trees

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Lens stopped down. Sharp-ish

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Lens wide open at F2.4... not sharp. All old anamorphics are soft wide open and bent DoF curves makes things difficult too. People always shoot anamorphic at T5.6 or higher... however new anamorphic lenses are not nearly as bad.

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Coffe and Chess... a little closer than minimum focus distance. Minimum focus on almost all anamorphics is really far... even older Panavision ones, which are arguably the best in the world. Just a thing.
 
That lens has probably been remounted several times during it's life. Likely started as a Mitchel mount, then Arri Standard, etc. The PL mount came along in 1980. I'll bet there are lots of screw indents on that original lens mount :)
Stylistically, that "look" would certainly work on certain commercials. Art directors would love it!
Ken
 
I don't know what it started out as. I do now realize, I think, the reason it was buy 'as is'. Someone did the PL conversion wrong. The lens is supposed to focus by rotating the barrel in which the stationary taking lens (spherical 50mm) is in a threaded housing. It would move forward and backward along with the anamorphic element. Someone had fixed this from moving and in turn, when the focus barrel is rotated, everything rotates, including the spherical prime. And since the spherical lens now rotates instead of sitting straight, the aperture is changed as it rotates, since it is coupled with the front element, which does not rotate. Hard to explain, but I've managed to fix the issues with the focus barrel and the anamorphic rear element adjusting... however, the PL mount is still attached to the body of the lens and not the spherical prime back, thus the spherical prime is not really adjusting. I'm able to get sharp focus from about 7-20 feet. After that I have to rely on deep DoF to get sharp-ish infinity (which is never really tack sharp.) I'm going to continue to make some adjustments. Right now the lens looks like Frankenstein... but I am getting some cool photos. I need to leave my house for a meeting at Santa Monica pier. Maybe I'll take some photos later! I'm excited to take this lens outside my house, because thus far, all these tests are around my house. As you can see, all these subjects in my photographs are within 20-25 feet of the camera at most. Infinity is really crap. I think it has to do with the spherical prime not being able to focus.

The solution is really impossible. I'd need the PL mount to 'grip' the back of the spherical prime, which would not give me an acceptable flange depth. The only real solution is to mount the camera and the lens on a rig that would have the correct flange depth and hold the back spherical element steady. Basically everything would be mounted in alignment on some sort of rail system. Then I'd have to black out the gap where the PL mount would be, since everything would just be 'floating' in alignment. Make sense? That is going to require some work. Maybe on a rainy day. For now, I'll just keep my subjects within 7-20 feet of the camera or stop to an F/11 and get a semi-sharp infinity.

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Back from Santa Monica. Took the lens to the beach/pier for about 30min before I had to go to my meeting on 4th St. Got some really cool stuff. None of this was touched up. All of this is just a resized image from the Lomo Anamorphic lens and Sony NEX-5 camera. I was impressed. Even the focus near infinity looks pretty good at T/8.

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Is there any way at this point to pull the Pl mount and use some kind of an adaptor on the original lens rear while holding the correct flange/focal? Been a long time since I've seen one of these, but I do recall the dual housing arrangement, and it seems that there might be a whole part of the rear "mount" missing, hence, no real "internal focus" ability.
Just thinkin'.
Ken
 
kplo said:
Is there any way at this point to pull the Pl mount and use some kind of an adaptor on the original lens rear while holding the correct flange/focal? Been a long time since I've seen one of these, but I do recall the dual housing arrangement, and it seems that there might be a whole part of the rear "mount" missing, hence, no real "internal focus" ability.
Just thinkin'.
Ken
Click to expand...


I think you are right. It seems like a PL conversion gone awry. I think the way to do it would be to make a custom rail system that not only hold the front of the lens in place, as well as the NEX 5 camera, but also holds the rear spherical lens in place, so when the barrel is rotated, the spherical lens does not rotate with the barrel. I would have to shed the PL mount off the camera and have to properly align the distance from rear element to camera sensor very precisely and make sure it's light proof. Lots of custom work. It's working pretty well right now, but it could be LOTS better.
 
These are awesome. Makes me want to grab some old old lenses. If only I had the money....
I would love to see some moving images with that aspect ratio.
 
Ok... so I'll try to stop posting here every day, but I'm addicted to anamorphics. While on set DPing a short comedy, the key grip was playing with my Nex-5 and 50mm Lomo, which I was taking photos with on set. He took a really cool picture of me working that has an awesome lens flare! This lens keeps impressing me.

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Ryan Patrick O'Hara said:
Ok... so I'll try to stop posting here every day, but I'm addicted to anamorphics. While on set DPing a short comedy, the key grip was playing with my Nex-5 and 50mm Lomo, which I was taking photos with on set. He took a really cool picture of me working that has an awesome lens flare! This lens keeps impressing me.
Click to expand...

Be careful of Lomo Addiction... otherwise you'll find yourself with a full shooting set... (I did) LOL.
 
So are those *video frame grabs? I know that on my canon APS-C i could get almost 2.4:1 *aspect ratio when i did stills instead of video(where i had like 3:1 aspect).
 
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