Red in Anamorphic?

A

Alex Fostvedt

Member
Reading the last section of posts on lenses got me thinking about the possibility of Red in anamorphic.

First there are anamorphic lenses in PL mount. I believe that Rodenstock made a series of them, they were used on the 4th Star Wars movie.

If Panavision was able to panavise a Red cam, then it opens up a whole bunch of anamorphic lenses as well. Anyway, back to the question.

If you had an anamorphic lens that would squeeze a 2.35 aspect ratio onto the Reds S35 sensor, would it be possible to unsqueeze the image in post, and retain most of the 4k information, thus getting a full anamorphic frame.

If this is possible, will the Red have an unsqeeze setting on the viewfinder so the operator will be able to see the final frame. Film cameras do this optically in the viewfinder, when equiped with the right viewfinder.

This seems like a possibility, and the images would be so good. Anamorphic films lose so much quality in the stages of getting a squeezed image to an unsqueezed image. Thanks for your time.
 
Sice 35mm anamorph has the negative area of 21.95mm wide and 18.6mm high (may vary with the different tastes of anamorphic) adding the squeeze factor of 2x you get 2.35. The image height of RED is 13.7mm and the with is 24.4mm. There are a hole bunch of anamorphs for PL but i recommend you to let go of that thougt since you if you do not find lenses that covers the whole with of the pickup area (almost 2.5 mm extra) have to crop useful pixels on the sides wihle not using the 5mm in height. IF you use anamorph and crop the sides you will end up with a frame that is something close to 3.2:1 in aspect ratio.

Conculsion: you may use anamorph on the RED but it may give you a result far from the expected.


Johlan
 
From what I understand, it would be much easier to simply frame for 2:35:1 rather than actually film in 2:35:1, as far as digital goes at this point.

The best way to pull this off that I can think of is to use the widest lens you can get and then maybe adding a wide angle lens on top of that. I tried this on a home made 35mm adapter using the Nikon 50mm 1.4 and a Canon WD-58H with a stepping ring and it worked pretty well for framing 16:9 with my GL1, I didn't get the chance to try it on a native 16:9 camera as the adapter was broken accidentally.

But I don't know, I'm no expert. When you get your RED, just use the wise expense to rent some good anamorphic lenses and try it out or wait to see what others say.
 
I wish someone would make an anamorphic lens specifically for 16x9 sensors. Rather than a 2x squeeze it would have a 1.3x squeeze. I want a lens that will give me the same 2.40:1 aspect ratio but also give me some of the same distortions classic anamorphic lenses provide (curvature on the edges, lens flares, breathing and barrelling). I actually like those anomalies in widescreen cinematography and have missed them since the major adoption of Super35 as the preferred format.

I like that Michael Bay still uses anamorphic lenses on his films.

Unfortunately, there's only a handful of filmmakers or cinematographers that could convince a lens manufacturer to make this kind of lens. David Fincher could convince Cooke or Panavision to make a couple lenses like this.

I'm sure RED wouldn't do it as it would be a very very niche lens.
 
Jack_Felis said:
From what I understand, it would be much easier to simply frame for 2:35:1 rather than actually film in 2:35:1, as far as digital goes at this point.
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This is true, and with options to shoot at 4K+, there's no real reason for wanting to having to deal with squeezing/unsqueezing the footage. Anamorphic allows you to get more resolution out of your 35mm frame, but RED already has plenty of resolution. The only difference is you won't get those oblong OOF highlights in the background, but that's a subjective preference and has no effect on quality anyway.

With this in mind, the RED team has stated that there will be a fairly comprehensive guide/overlay system for framing in-camera. I can't wait to see what it looks like!
 
It's not about resolution. It's about recreating some of those great anamorphic "looks" that true anamorphic lenses create. In the past those distortions used to be considered side-effects and "bad" things. Today we look upon them as a part of the widescreen visual language. It's a shame to see them disappear.
 
Robert Sanders said:
I wish someone would make an anamorphic lens specifically for 16x9 sensors. Rather than a 2x squeeze it would have a 1.3x squeeze. I want a lens that will give me the same 2.40:1 aspect ratio but also give me some of the same distortions classic anamorphic lenses provide (curvature on the edges, lens flares, breathing and barrelling). I actually like those anomalies in widescreen cinematography and have missed them since the major adoption of Super35 as the preferred format.

I like that Michael Bay still uses anamorphic lenses on his films.

Unfortunately, there's only a handful of filmmakers or cinematographers that could convince a lens manufacturer to make this kind of lens. David Fincher could convince Cooke or Panavision to make a couple lenses like this.

I'm sure RED wouldn't do it as it would be a very very niche lens.
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David Fincher HATES using anamorphic lenses. He's taken to shooting digitally and adding anamorphic flares in post, which, if you ask me, is just slightly lame. Also the thompson viper that he uses lets you use the full 1:9 chip area for a 2.40:1 squeeze.

And agreed - it was about resolution in the past, but anyone that uses anamorphic lenses does it because of the way they look. And that's still quite a few people. Chris Nolan shoots all his films in Scope (just saw The Prestige today) Ridley Scott does sometimes (Matchstick men was his most recent, and looked great) Half the music videos we see are shot in scope, and quite a few ads. Even ads that end up cropped to 4x3 - it's ALL about the look. So many of my favourite movies were shot this way, and it would be a real shame to see it disappear.

Btw, I know a fair few people that shoot super 16 on anamorphic lenses, and you get something like a 3:1 aspect ratio too. It's not the worst compromise in the world, and if you have 4k to start with, and want to end up at 1080p (or even 2k) would I be correct in saying you still have plenty of resolution to spare...?
 
Robert Sanders said:
In the past those distortions used to be considered side-effects and "bad" things. Today we look upon them as a part of the widescreen visual language.
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I've read similar posts about the lack of grain that RED has on other forums. How easily we are manipulated. :)
 
Ruairi Robinson said:
David Fincher HATES using anamorphic lenses. He's taken to shooting digitally and adding anamorphic flares in post, which, if you ask me, is just slightly lame. Also the thompson viper that he uses lets you use the full 1:9 chip area for a 2.40:1 squeeze.

And agreed - it was about resolution in the past, but anyone that uses anamorphic lenses does it because of the way they look. And that's still quite a few people. Chris Nolan shoots all his films in Scope (just saw The Prestige today) Ridley Scott does sometimes (Matchstick men was his most recent, and looked great) Half the music videos we see are shot in scope, and quite a few ads. Even ads that end up cropped to 4x3 - it's ALL about the look. So many of my favourite movies were shot this way, and it would be a real shame to see it disappear.

Btw, I know a fair few people that shoot super 16 on anamorphic lenses, and you get something like a 3:1 aspect ratio too. It's not the worst compromise in the world, and if you have 4k to start with, and want to end up at 1080p (or even 2k) would I be correct in saying you still have plenty of resolution to spare...?
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I was watching the original DIE HARD the other day on HBO HD and Jan Debont's work on that movie was amazing. It looked like they used older C and E series lenses at full wide on a lot of those shots. There was tons of vignetting, corner distortions and hyper curvature at the edges of the frames. It looked great (ironically). And I thought, "Man, I wish I could still get that look on today's digital cinema cameras."

And the lens flares...oh, the lens flares. Glorious.
 
As a visual perfectionist, I'm a little weirded out by this thread. Could somebody please explain these flaws and why they are supposed to look so good? A sample screen shot or two would be grand too.

Jeremy - RED #68
 
When you shoot with anamorphic lenses, there are certain artifacts which can show up that do not occur when using ordinary (spherical) lenses. One is a kind of lens flare in the frame that has a long horizontal line (usually with a blue tint) and is most often visible when there is a bright light (such as from car headlights) in an otherwise dark scene. It's not necessarily a "problem" but can be undesired. Mostly, it has come to be associated with a certain cinematic look and people sometimes go so far as to emulate it using a special effect filter in scenes that were not shot using anamorphic lenses.

Another common "side effect" of anamorphic lenses is that out of focus elements tend to be blurred vertically. This is most notable in highlights, where reflections appear as tall ovals instead of circles in the background. This is another resulting effect of shooting anamorphically that is completely subjective; many people consider it to be "more appealing" these days, but I think it's just because more "epic" films are shot anamorphically (originally due to the wider aspect ratio and increased resolution gain) and people are therefore conditioned to associating that look with a certain (usually elevated) style. It's somewhat like the phenomenon of DOF, where a shallower range of focus is generally considered more "cinematic" than a wider one. Is one truly "better" than the other? That's up to the individual.

Lastly, wideangle anamorphic lenses less than 40mm produce a cylindrical perspective which, again, can be considered good or bad. Some directors and cinematographers (particularly Wes Anderson) are very fond of the look.

Other disadvantages are that anamorphic lenses tend to be heavier, larger, and slower than spherical lenses (which means lower light situations are more restricted), and there aren't as many of them available.

On the other side of the coin, you can attain more resolution in your frame by shooting anamorphically and in most cases the DOF is reduced even further, which again, most people tend to prefer.
 
Slightly dumb, slightly off topic suggestion...

What about a reverse anamorphic lens for shooting RED in the IMAX format? Why go wide, when you can go narrow and keep your 4.5K image resolution? Probably the IMAX format may need a little more than 4.5K? It would be an intetresting test.
 
Haakon said:
When you shoot with anamorphic lenses, there are certain artifacts which can show up that do not occur when using ordinary (spherical) lenses. One is a kind of lens flare in the frame that has a long horizontal line (usually with a blue tint) and is most often visible when there is a bright light (such as from car headlights) in an otherwise dark scene. It's not necessarily a "problem" but can be undesired. Mostly, it has come to be associated with a certain cinematic look and people sometimes go so far as to emulate it using a special effect filter in scenes that were not shot using anamorphic lenses.

Another common "side effect" of anamorphic lenses is that out of focus elements tend to be blurred vertically. This is most notable in highlights, where reflections appear as tall ovals instead of circles in the background. This is another resulting effect of shooting anamorphically that is completely subjective; many people consider it to be "more appealing" these days, but I think it's just because more "epic" films are shot anamorphically (originally due to the wider aspect ratio and increased resolution gain) and people are therefore conditioned to associating that look with a certain (usually elevated) style. It's somewhat like the phenomenon of DOF, where a shallower range of focus is generally considered more "cinematic" than a wider one. Is one truly "better" than the other? That's up to the individual.

Lastly, wideangle anamorphic lenses less than 40mm produce a cylindrical perspective which, again, can be considered good or bad. Some directors and cinematographers (particularly Wes Anderson) are very fond of the look.

Other disadvantages are that anamorphic lenses tend to be heavier, larger, and slower than spherical lenses (which means lower light situations are more restricted), and there aren't as many of them available.

On the other side of the coin, you can attain more resolution in your frame by shooting anamorphically and in most cases the DOF is reduced even further, which again, most people tend to prefer.
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Well said.
 
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