ANAMORPHIC was created for old school film technology to solve a deficiency of those times, by adding more degrading lenses and optical distortions to visuals.
There, I said it.
So, I would like this to be a FUN discussion, where I politely take the opposing view to pretty much everyone filming these days: anamorphic does more damage to the images then good. My objective? Just make people think about it first.
First and foremost, all the aberrations anamorphic creates are nothing more that "artistic choices", just like shooting with toy lens, or adding filters, or shooting black and white or using plugins in post to alter, smudge, twist, bend, fold, and mutilate the original picture. And there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Artistic choice IS a choice. And if that is your choice, there is nothing wrong with that, and you can stop reading now.
That said, what I purpose is that us striving for anamorphic is A STEP BACKWARD in our advancement of cinema filming. We can move beyond it, and we should be growing, not regressing. This is coming from a guy who was looking forward to shooting anamophic: I can afford it, was looking into it, and just before pulling the trigger, I searched my heart and mind for rationale, and this is what I came up with.
ANAMORPHIC takes a normal camera lens and warps it. Plain and simple. The reason it does so was to fit a wider image and use up more of the film frame back in the day - to fix a problem that doesn't really exist now*. Next, we take another warped lens and uncompact it at the projector. So, for us, we have our lenses, then we tak on more warped lenses on top adding glass and more glass in the way of our amazing, pristine camera images was are now capable of. We all strive for better quality, more accuracy, perfect white balance, proper skin tons, then twist and (ana)morph the image through a virtual obstacle course of optics, losing a notable percentage of quality.
We get oval bokeh that stretches in focus pulls. Not very realistic that one. More like some crazy plugin that manipulates images in some wacky, very not normal way. Our eyes our round, cameras iris are round, lenses are round (well, except anamorphic, of course), most bokeh is round, even in real life with our own eyes. So, oval bokeh is just another distortion. What if I made my bokeh all banana shaped? Just another "ARTISTIC CHOICE" right? And it stretches funny. Ever notice those long distance focus pulls in anamorphic movies? The way the background out of focus image stretches up and down - almost like someone doing that dolly zoom trick where the guy stays the same size and the background grows behind him - the anamorphic background expands up and down and SEEMS to get bigger in the process. VERY unnatural.
Wider view? Usually accompanied by a curvy (distorted) perspective. Many modern wide angle lenses no longer have that curved distortion, but you can still get it in some lenses and fisheye. But, again, curvy look is more of artistic choice for a scene and not really accurate and true.
Lens flares. Camera people spend millions on lens hoods and barn doors or lighting flags to protect the lenses from getting that extra light glazing off the lens, detracting from what is the main object in the image. REALLY GOOD photographers work extra hard to control the image and make it look great, and not have big swashes of light going across the picture that would make you ALWAYS KNOW you are looking at a photo or video from a CAMERA, instead of just drinking in the image presented. SOME lens flares are truly unavoidable. And in anamorphic squish, flares become weird, unrealistic laser beams blocking out the visuals that everyone else worked so hard to create.
Pointing into the sun, or making light bleed and burn is another artistic choice.
Summary: Anamorphic was a bandaid and never designed to create the artist choices it presents now. Those are ALL FLAWS from a dated, and destructive solution. Using it is recreating flaws that our current tech and abilities no longer requires us to HAVE TO film things with all these flaws in them. Our 4K cameras can produce feature film quality AS IS, and using anamophic is simply adding degredation as an artistic choice.
Yes, anamorphic harkens back to the days of big hollywood movies and we, at home, are now able to imitate all those flaws ourselves, yet they ARE flaws. Personally, I have never watched any movie and felt it was BETTER or more PROFESSIONAL because it was shot anamophic. And now that I am filming stuff myself, I am noticing how movies are made and now notice how distracting anamophic flaws are in the presentation of the story.
* The ONE THING I can see Anamophic being beneficial for with modern technology is utilizing MORE pixels on the sensor, should the camera manufactures allow it.... like 2300 squished down to whatever it is inside a 2.40:1 scope. Turns out, on our GH4 they eneded up REDUCING the number of pixels used, rather than expanding it, for the anamophic modes. Which is a shame because I bet they could use more if they so programmed it. I could have really used with ability on my crappy Canon camera, but now with 4K, I have plenty of pixels to use and am none too worried about that anymore.
Remember, this is just one guy's personal perspective, but I would love to hear others here. DISCUSS!
There, I said it.
So, I would like this to be a FUN discussion, where I politely take the opposing view to pretty much everyone filming these days: anamorphic does more damage to the images then good. My objective? Just make people think about it first.First and foremost, all the aberrations anamorphic creates are nothing more that "artistic choices", just like shooting with toy lens, or adding filters, or shooting black and white or using plugins in post to alter, smudge, twist, bend, fold, and mutilate the original picture. And there is NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT. Artistic choice IS a choice. And if that is your choice, there is nothing wrong with that, and you can stop reading now.
That said, what I purpose is that us striving for anamorphic is A STEP BACKWARD in our advancement of cinema filming. We can move beyond it, and we should be growing, not regressing. This is coming from a guy who was looking forward to shooting anamophic: I can afford it, was looking into it, and just before pulling the trigger, I searched my heart and mind for rationale, and this is what I came up with.
ANAMORPHIC takes a normal camera lens and warps it. Plain and simple. The reason it does so was to fit a wider image and use up more of the film frame back in the day - to fix a problem that doesn't really exist now*. Next, we take another warped lens and uncompact it at the projector. So, for us, we have our lenses, then we tak on more warped lenses on top adding glass and more glass in the way of our amazing, pristine camera images was are now capable of. We all strive for better quality, more accuracy, perfect white balance, proper skin tons, then twist and (ana)morph the image through a virtual obstacle course of optics, losing a notable percentage of quality.
We get oval bokeh that stretches in focus pulls. Not very realistic that one. More like some crazy plugin that manipulates images in some wacky, very not normal way. Our eyes our round, cameras iris are round, lenses are round (well, except anamorphic, of course), most bokeh is round, even in real life with our own eyes. So, oval bokeh is just another distortion. What if I made my bokeh all banana shaped? Just another "ARTISTIC CHOICE" right? And it stretches funny. Ever notice those long distance focus pulls in anamorphic movies? The way the background out of focus image stretches up and down - almost like someone doing that dolly zoom trick where the guy stays the same size and the background grows behind him - the anamorphic background expands up and down and SEEMS to get bigger in the process. VERY unnatural.
Wider view? Usually accompanied by a curvy (distorted) perspective. Many modern wide angle lenses no longer have that curved distortion, but you can still get it in some lenses and fisheye. But, again, curvy look is more of artistic choice for a scene and not really accurate and true.
Lens flares. Camera people spend millions on lens hoods and barn doors or lighting flags to protect the lenses from getting that extra light glazing off the lens, detracting from what is the main object in the image. REALLY GOOD photographers work extra hard to control the image and make it look great, and not have big swashes of light going across the picture that would make you ALWAYS KNOW you are looking at a photo or video from a CAMERA, instead of just drinking in the image presented. SOME lens flares are truly unavoidable. And in anamorphic squish, flares become weird, unrealistic laser beams blocking out the visuals that everyone else worked so hard to create.
Pointing into the sun, or making light bleed and burn is another artistic choice.
Summary: Anamorphic was a bandaid and never designed to create the artist choices it presents now. Those are ALL FLAWS from a dated, and destructive solution. Using it is recreating flaws that our current tech and abilities no longer requires us to HAVE TO film things with all these flaws in them. Our 4K cameras can produce feature film quality AS IS, and using anamophic is simply adding degredation as an artistic choice.
Yes, anamorphic harkens back to the days of big hollywood movies and we, at home, are now able to imitate all those flaws ourselves, yet they ARE flaws. Personally, I have never watched any movie and felt it was BETTER or more PROFESSIONAL because it was shot anamophic. And now that I am filming stuff myself, I am noticing how movies are made and now notice how distracting anamophic flaws are in the presentation of the story.
* The ONE THING I can see Anamophic being beneficial for with modern technology is utilizing MORE pixels on the sensor, should the camera manufactures allow it.... like 2300 squished down to whatever it is inside a 2.40:1 scope. Turns out, on our GH4 they eneded up REDUCING the number of pixels used, rather than expanding it, for the anamophic modes. Which is a shame because I bet they could use more if they so programmed it. I could have really used with ability on my crappy Canon camera, but now with 4K, I have plenty of pixels to use and am none too worried about that anymore.
Remember, this is just one guy's personal perspective, but I would love to hear others here. DISCUSS!
