AF100 Crop Factor: 35mm Motion Picture film and Micro 4/3s

[J Davis]

I took time to watch some of these films in the OP that were shot 35mm anamorphic, and it's really amazing that there ARE NOT tons of wide shots.

its because anamorphic perspective distortion is more severe, they rarely go wider than 40mm when shooting x2 squeeze anamorphics.

In my post I described an extreme situation. But you can do the math and see for yourself that with 1920x803 crop for smaller spaces like a INT: Car or a Kitchen or Bathroom you will need 16-18mm just
to get a mid shot.

edit:
On my last few jobs I've hit 18mm with regularity. I try to only go wider when situation forces my hand. (which often happens in NYC sized apartments where I live)
I don't like wider than 15mm unless its speciality shot.

 

[Barry_Green]

Reorganized the OP and added sensor/film sizes for comparison

But it still has the AF100 sensor at the wrong size. Should be 18.9 x 10.63.

 

[J Davis]

Here is a well known scene from No Country For Old Men where our killer enters the hotel room. He enters the frame from the door.

If you wanted a similar establishing shot for your movie and you were shooting in a rented hotel room
(where you can't remove a wall like in a hotel room built in a Hollywood studio)
then unless you had a set of anamorphic lenses you would be cropping your AF100 16x9 1080p frame down to 1920x803 like this

I chose this example because it's pretty easy for all of us to judge how big a hotel room is. You can also see by the size of the figure in the final frame
just how wide you would need to go to get a shot similar to this.

As Reverend said - its personal taste. Maybe you (or your client) is okay with establishing shots which are mid shots or maybe you are staying at 16:9

speaking of interior wides and full figure shots ... here's a shot that I love. It's full of perspective distortion I know.
It's from a very old Japanese classic. Seijun Suzuki's Tokyo Drifter. I love the full figure blocking this director does with his actors for interiors.

 

[Hunter Hampton]

Im 99.9% sure the no country shot there is a 40mm anamorphic.

A 40mm anamorphic on 4-perf will give you ~ 20mm spherical FOV on the same size film. (2x horizontal compression from the anamorphic)

So if you what that shot and your dealing with an AF100 and you plan on cropping to cinemascope as shown, you need some where around a ~14mm lens to get that same FOV.
(14mm f2.5 pancake to the rescue)

 

[J Davis]

Im 99.9% sure the no country shot there is a 40mm anamorphic.

A 40mm anamorphic on 4-perf will give you ~ 20mm spherical FOV on the same size film. (2x horizontal compression from the anamorphic)

So if you what that shot and your dealing with an AF100 and you plan on cropping to cinemascope as shown, you need some where around a ~14mm lens to get that same FOV.
(14mm f2.5 pancake to the rescue)

13-14mm would have been my guess too.

Here's a shot I took at 16mm cropped from 1080p on an aps-c sensor (only slightly larger than AF100)
It's from my latest (a short about vampires). Unfortunately this didn't make it to the final edit so it never got a final grade.
I had my back up against a wall to get this.

 

[TheReverend]

But it still has the AF100 sensor at the wrong size. Should be 18.9 x 10.63.

In the paragraph it is now set to 18.9x10.63. The graph wasn't made by me, so for now I can't adjust it. It'swell explained in the writing. I can make a new one from scratch as well.

 

[TheReverend]

its because anamorphic perspective distortion is more severe, they rarely go wider than 40mm when shooting x2 squeeze anamorphics.

In my post I described an extreme situation. But you can do the math and see for yourself that with 1920x803 crop for smaller spaces like a INT: Car or a Kitchen or Bathroom you will need 16-18mm just
to get a mid shot.

edit:
On my last few jobs I've hit 18mm with regularity. I try to only go wider when situation forces my hand. (which often happens in NYC sized apartments where I live)
I don't like wider than 15mm unless its speciality shot.

Understandably, when 2.4:1 cropping it's gonna be the worst. At 1.85:1 or 16x9, 20mm should do very well in most of these circumstances. I suspect that as this camera releases and gains popularity, I imagine that we'll see more lenses at sub-20mm, and I also imagine it wont be long before someone figures out a way to do 2.4 anamorphic either by a lens, adapter, or set of lenses.

 

[Erik Naso]

rumors or not i doubt any of this stuff will appear any time soon. nor will the red scarlet. the AF100 IS gonna be here and is here to stay. af100 will enjoy months if not a year if not more than a year to 2 years of sheer dominance until these vaporwares come to fruition

Totally agree. Canon will have to make a camera like the AF100 sooner than later.

Could you imagine if the Digic V chip is a FF35 optimized for video? So sweet. All that sweet glass you could use from Canon.

Wake up! Sorry I was dreaming. Hate it when that happens.rogar-BigGrin(DBG)

 

[TheReverend]

TheReverend, the first post is great, but still doesn't manage to paint the picture totally accurately. Your graphic is using the published 4/3 specification of 17.3mm wide, but that is NOT what the AF100 uses. The AF100 uses an oversized sensor that is 18.9mm wide. Could you please update your graphic with the larger size and proper description of it, so that folks will forget about the 17.3, which matters only for "Four Thirds" stills cameras, but has nothing to do with the AF100 (or, for that matter, the GH1 or GH2, as they also use an 18.9mm oversized sensor).

Updated picture of sensor sizes in the OP!

Any other adjustments?

 

[TheReverend]

Another update. Added the B&H cinema chart. It's too good to not have in this thread!

 

[toke lahti]

Except that 65mm was used a little more recently than that; Ron Howard shot "Far and Away" on it in 1992. But yeah, I don't know of a major film that's been shot on 65mm since then, and that's nearly 19 years ago.

Here's a bit newer one:
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0116477/

 

[Berk]

can u make the first post sticky if all infos are accurate?
BTW
Thanks REverend

 

[LoganMackay]

Here's a bit newer one:
http://uk.imdb.com/title/tt0116477/

and another

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1375666/technical

 

[Joshua Provost]

I know this is an old thread, but I thought it would be interesting to the do the format comparison for the top 25 box office films of 2012. Interestingly the industry has really converged around two workflows:

14 films Super 35 (or digital cinema with Super 35 sensor) - 3 Alexa, 4 RED EPIC, 1 Genesis, 7 on actual film
5 films Anamorphic 35
6 films digital animation

Caveat, many of these films used a variety of cameras, some with slightly different format sizes. There were some Canon 5D/7D in the mix for certain VFX or crash cam shots, and TDKR employed IMAX for big chunks of the film.

Overall, productions are shooting Super 35 for max resolution and reframing, doing a DI, and eventually ending up with 2.40:1 or 1.85:1 output for digital distribution and/or film prints. Many are still using Anamorphic 35, which is Standard 35 but uses the whole negative for additional resolution. Anamorphic is now an aesthetic choice, because those films are also going to DI. The rest are digital animation.

It looks like no is one is still shooting films on Standard 35 and cropping for 1.85:1 widescreen, at least for these top box office films, but it still happens in lower budgets.