Is the Iscorama worth it? Dispelling the myth... or "Let's Shoot it out!"

Thought I'd post these stills I shot today with the Iscorama here too


Screen grabs from video mode:
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here's some FF stills too:

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It's a 36 2 part, not everybody is aware that it can be unscrewed. It has an M42 mount that works on 35mm cameras not projectors.
 
squig said:
It's a 36 2 part, not everybody is aware that it can be unscrewed. It has an M42 mount that works on 35mm cameras not projectors.
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cheers squig for the info..

I just noticed many LOMOS anamorphic lenses being sold on ebay for around the same price as the iscorama... it seems better to just get a LOMOS anamorphic instead..
 
Love the anamorphic look but can you just shoot with a standard wide lens and put a letterbox on it?

Sure all that horizontal space is nice, with that cinematic aspect ratio...but EUR 1250 for that lens is very expensive when there are so many other wide lenses out there.
 
No, it's not about that. It's about the flares and the Compression. Flares can be faked pretty easily and successfully but the compression can't be faked so easily.
 
I can see the artistic merit of post production techniques, and the needs to NOT use anamorphics and to have an understanding throughout a production of matting/letterboxing...but all these things said one must know the advantages of each.

For the entirety of a project you can spend less and get decent results by cutting off some rez on the back end, and you also have the advantage of seeing where objects will come into frame...a buffer zone if you will....as I said though, you loose resolution.

With anamorphics you get the choice to make amazing flares, you don't loose resolution on the back end, and you have a specific wide look that isn't quite the same as cutting off the tops and bottoms.

To really understand anamorphics you have to realize what is happening. When you zoom in and move camera back, you change the perspective as compared to zooming out and moving the camera forward....we all know, have seen, and have exploited this fact in the name of art.

There is only one way we can do these things: changing lens focal length.
There are however different ways of going about this: Using a different focal length lens, using a wide angle adapter, or using a teleconverter adapter.

When we use an anamorphic we're actually doing something a little odd...we're adding a wide angle converter in only one dimension! this generates far different results then just cropping off the top and bottom.

You can crop to your hearts content, but it doesn't change focal length.
 
I also have to say that I think the beauty of anamorphics really comes into play because of how we as people see the world. our eyes are curved, and also we have two of them...this creates a stunning 3d effect....just walk around with an eye patch on for a couple days and then take it off, and you'll be suprised by the difference....I won't even go into the curvature aspect of our optics, but suffice it to say that anamorphics come that one step closer to how human vision works....although I will say that we as artists tend to over do it most of the time with 50mm lenses. I think something more in the range of a 60-65 with an anamorphic would work out better to approximate our vision on a 2d surface....do a 60-65 3d film with anamorphics on a bent screen, and WOW...I think it'd be pretty cool.

I'm not saying to stick to one focal length, but I think the "standby" focal length needs to be adjusted a tad for anamorphics.
 
The way I see it is...

I think the way a wide 2:35 frame is used with the framing of objects within the scene is very important, and the anamorphic lens gives you a great way to do that by having a very wide field which is never-the-less squashed horizontally, and then having that stretched in post to look 'normal'. Is that right?

But what about a fast 20mm F1.8 lens on a full frame camera in 16:9, cropped to 2.35? FOV can only be so wide and surely a 17mm lens on a full frame 5D is wide enough to make letterboxing the top and bottom acceptable whilst still maintaining the shallow DOF of an anamorphic lens?
 
commanderspike said:
But what about a fast 20mm F1.8 lens on a full frame camera in 16:9, cropped to 2.35? FOV can only be so wide and surely a 17mm lens on a full frame 5D is wide enough to make letterboxing the top and bottom acceptable whilst still maintaining the shallow DOF of an anamorphic lens?
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A wide will give you the focal length in ALL dimensions...this isn't the same as an anamorphic which gives you two different focal lengths.

Edit: This difference in focal lengths isn't always evident, but can be seen most in flares and bokeh...flares will be horizontal in nature, while Bokeh is vertical....it's still evident in the in focus areas, but isn't as highly distorted as flare/bokeh.
 
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