Scorpiolenses Anamorphics Yeah!

Postmaster

Postmaster

Dark Side of the Camera
Looking forward to shoot my next feature film on those babies in September :-)


Scorpios+for+Insta.jpg


They got the anamorpic ratio, but without the artifacts. Much like shooting spherical but in anamorpic.

Love the look.




 
Interesting

Postmaster said:
Looking forward to shoot my next feature film on those babies in September :-)
They got the anamorpic ratio, but without the artifacts. Much like shooting spherical but in anamorpic.
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What do you mean by that? my guess would have been "anamorphic bokeh and aspect ratio but no crezy flares and no soft sides", but looking at the footage I don't even see the elongated bokeh! (which also means I don't get the point of using them instead of spherical lenses, but I'm pretty sure there must be a reason)
 
Personally, I prefer round bokeh anyway - the only thing I'm interested in, is the anamorphic ratio.
I gonna shoot in very tight spaces, having the magnification of a - lets say - 50mm, but the with of a 25mm at the same time, is what I need/want.
 
Samuel H said:
What do you mean by that? my guess would have been "anamorphic bokeh and aspect ratio but no crezy flares and no soft sides", but looking at the footage I don't even see the elongated bokeh! (which also means I don't get the point of using them instead of spherical lenses, but I'm pretty sure there must be a reason)
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They are rear anamorphics which don't have oval bokeh.

Oval bokeh is caused by front anamorphics because the f stop is constant for both the horizontal and vertical planes. If you had a 50mm f2.8 2x front anamorphic, that means it is 50mm f2.8 vertically, but a 25mm f2.8 horizontally. If you can imagine, the depth of field for a 50mm and a 25mm lens is different, so vertically, the depth of field is going to go out of focus quicker than it is horizontally. Thus, you would see ovals, because horizontally it is not turning into "bokeh balls" as quickly as it is vertically.

A rear anamorphic is just a teleconverter in one direction. That means that the f stop is not constant for both planes. If you had a 50mm f2.8 2x rear anamorphic, you would have 50mm f2.8 vertically, but a 25mm f1.4 horizontally. The depth of field is going to be the same in each direction, so the image is going out of focus at the same rate in both directions, which means you'll see normal circular "bokeh balls".
 
Joshua Cadmium said:
They are rear anamorphics which don't have oval bokeh.

Oval bokeh is caused by front anamorphics because the f stop is constant for both the horizontal and vertical planes. If you had a 50mm f2.8 2x front anamorphic, that means it is 50mm f2.8 vertically, but a 25mm f2.8 horizontally. If you can imagine, the depth of field for a 50mm and a 25mm lens is different, so vertically, the depth of field is going to go out of focus quicker than it is horizontally. Thus, you would see ovals, because horizontally it is not turning into "bokeh balls" as quickly as it is vertically.

A rear anamorphic is just a teleconverter in one direction. That means that the f stop is not constant for both planes. If you had a 50mm f2.8 2x rear anamorphic, you would have 50mm f2.8 vertically, but a 25mm f1.4 horizontally. The depth of field is going to be the same in each direction, so the image is going out of focus at the same rate in both directions, which means you'll see normal circular "bokeh balls".
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Interesting, thanks for the explanation
 
Postmaster said:
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I gonna shoot in very tight spaces, having the magnification of a - lets say - 50mm, but the with of a 25mm at the same time, is what I need/want.
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I'm confused - wouldn't you get the same vertical magnification by just cropping a spherical lens down to 2.39:1?

Also isn't Grug right that if you want to shoot in tight spaces, you will be unable to shoot wides with a 50mm anamorphic on a S35 sensor?
 
ahalpert said:
I'm confused - wouldn't you get the same vertical magnification by just cropping a spherical lens down to 2.39:1?
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An anamorphic lens shifts the relationship between the magnification of the vertical and horizontal axes. Cropping a spherical lens is going to give you a fundamentally different result.

ahalpert said:
Also isn't Grug right that if you want to shoot in tight spaces, you will be unable to shoot wides with a 50mm anamorphic on a S35 sensor?
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Actually, now that I've looked closer, you can see that there's a 25mm up the back of the photo - so wide-angles won't be a big problem (even with a 3-perf S35mm crop)

With scope lenses on smaller sensors, it's the vertical height of the sensor that becomes the limiting element - so you have to calculate your crop-factor from that. The Ursa Mini 12k apparently has a 14.25mm tall sensor (compared to approx 18mm in regular 4-perf S35mm, as you'll find on an Alexa or Red Gemini). That means the crop factor shooting on the Mini 12k will be about 1.26x.

With the widest FF Scorpiolens being 25mm, that'd mean (with the crop) you're looking at the equivalent of a 31.5mm lens - and with a 2x squeeze that gives you effectively the FoV of a 16mm spherical lens (which is plenty wide for the overwhelming majority of things).

Personally, I'd stick with the regular S35mm Scorpiolens anamorphics (if shooting with a S35mm camera) because they have a 20mm S35mm anamorphic (according to their website). And that set would seem a better fit - you'll get a lot more of the funky edges of the glass with the small image circles of the S35mm lenses.
 
Grug said:
An anamorphic lens shifts the relationship between the magnification of the vertical and horizontal axes. Cropping a spherical lens is going to give you a fundamentally different result.
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I'm confused. I understand that you can achieve a 25mm horizontal FOV with 50mm DOF - I'm not sure why, but I assume it has to do with the lens having 50mm focal length and a separate optic drawing in the sides of the field of view.

I'm confused about what you're saying about different vertical and horizontal magnification.

Wouldn't there be distortion if the end image looked any different than it does with a spherical lens?

Also, if you crop in on a 25mm image, you get the exact same shot you would get with a 50mm lens. So, in my mind, shooting with a 50mm anamorphic would be like shooting with a 50mm spherical lens and then expanding the sides of the frame until you see the full width that would be seen with a 25mm lens. Which, I thought, would be the same as shooting with a 25mm lens and cropping out the top and bottom until you see a 50mm vertical FOV.

If you have the time, please explain.
 
ahalpert said:
Which, I thought, would be the same as shooting with a 25mm lens and cropping out the top and bottom until you see a 50mm vertical FOV.
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No. It's not only FOV, it's about magnification and perspective.

Could I shoot that feature with wide spherical lenses (like a 24 or 16)?
Sure, but I get a fundamental different look, when it comes to DOF, and other characteristics.
Way less cinematic, more like shot on a phone, with distorted faces, and wrap-around effects when panning.

 
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I think I get it -

It's not like cropping the top and bottom off a 25mm frame.

It IS like expanding the sides of a 50mm frame...because that's what it's doing.

So, you achieve the horizontal FOV of the 25mm.

But you get the same perspective and compression of foreground and background as with a 50mm, and thus a larger framing of a person standing in the foreground and with a more flattering perspective than the same size framing with a wide-angle.

So, generally, everything feels more telephoto and you've gained that advantage at the expense of the ability to use an ultra wide-angle perspective (and also anamorphics have a long mininum focus distance without diopters and have a number of optical aberrations) - correct?
 
ahalpert said:
I'm confused. I understand that you can achieve a 25mm horizontal FOV with 50mm DOF - I'm not sure why, but I assume it has to do with the lens having 50mm focal length and a separate optic drawing in the sides of the field of view.

I'm confused about what you're saying about different vertical and horizontal magnification.

Wouldn't there be distortion if the end image looked any different than it does with a spherical lens?

Also, if you crop in on a 25mm image, you get the exact same shot you would get with a 50mm lens. So, in my mind, shooting with a 50mm anamorphic would be like shooting with a 50mm spherical lens and then expanding the sides of the frame until you see the full width that would be seen with a 25mm lens. Which, I thought, would be the same as shooting with a 25mm lens and cropping out the top and bottom until you see a 50mm vertical FOV.

If you have the time, please explain.
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Taking the example of 50mm 2x anamorphic lens. Try to completely ignore the notion of a 25mm lens, it isn't a 25mm lens (and never will be), it's a 50mm lens. So the magnification is always going to be that of a 50mm lens.

Perhaps the easiest way to visualise what's going on, is to imagine you're photographing a panoramic image by taking two horizontal shots with a 50mm lens. When perfectly aligned, you have an image that has the magnification of a 50mm lens, but with a FoV that's twice as wide as it would normally be.

That's what an anamorphic lens is essentially doing for you. Normal magnification, but with twice (or 1.8x, or 1.5x, or 1.3x) the FoV that you would usually get from that particular focal length.

Scope lenses also introduce a bunch of weird and wonderful artefacts into the image (like the oval bokeh, and streaking flares) because they're achieving this unique "regular magnification + added FoV" trick by squeezing just the horizontal axis (generally in front of the iris).
 
ahalpert said:
So, generally, everything feels more telephoto and you've gained that advantage at the expense of the ability to use an ultra wide-angle perspective (and also anamorphics have a long mininum focus distance without diopters and have a number of optical aberrations) - correct?
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Yep, that's pretty much it. Though there are ultrawide anamorphic lenses out there (like these Scorpiolens 25mm FF and 20mm S35mm lenses). Minimum focus distance and aberration control are a lot easier for modern anamorphics though, because instead of having their squeezed element right up front, most manufacturers are placing the squeezing elements more in the middle of the lens (in the case of the Scorpios, they put them behind the iris - which in my opinion kills most of the nice artefacts you get from scope glass) which it offers advantages in optical control/performance).

This is how modern anamorphics have been able to get much smaller and lighter (with consistent lens fronts - unlike old scopes, which had HUGE front elements on the wider glass). It's also allowed scope glass to get much faster (T/1.9 for Arri Master Anamorphics) and have much better close-focus abilities.
 
Well, 25mm is hardly an ultrawide. You can get the 12.5mm FOV but you'll never get that perspective. But I understand the advantage. Plus, if you ever really needed that look or a fisheye look, you could sneak in a cropped shot of spherical 12mm rectilinear or fisheye

Interesting what you say about modern anamorphics. $50k/each for those arri master anamorphics - those advances have not come cheaply :)
 
Postmaster said:
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I don't buy any of this. The spherical shot is just A LOT wider, both horizontally and vertically, and the guy is much more to the side (he's almost on top of the sunlit area in the top shot, way to the side in the bottom shot). I think those focal lengths are not measured accurately and are not matched.
 
ahalpert said:
Well, 25mm is hardly an ultrawide. You can get the 12.5mm FOV but you'll never get that perspective. But I understand the advantage. Plus, if you ever really needed that look or a fisheye look, you could sneak in a cropped shot of spherical 12mm rectilinear or fisheye

Interesting what you say about modern anamorphics. $50k/each for those arri master anamorphics - those advances have not come cheaply :)
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At a 2x squeeze it's absolutely an ultrawide. The vertical won't feel quite as pronounced as it would on a 12.5mm spherical lens, but you're certainly getting that same crazy-wide FoV (and extreme perspective distortion anytime you get close to anything).

Indeed I'd almost argue it's more useful for an extremely wide perspective, as you can get up close to a subject with ultrawide scope lens, and the perspective distortion on your subject's face won't be quite as extreme (giving you a more usable shot) whilst still having the extreme perspective of the wide FoV.
 
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