(upbeat urban music)
- So, today we are checking out
some budget anamorphic lenses from Sirui.
I have no idea how to say that
but they tend to launch their lenses on Indiegogo
and they crush it on there,
'cause this first 50 mil,
I think they were trying to get 100,000 bucks
and they got over 1 million.
Then they launched this 35 mil,
and that got almost 2 million.
They just launched a 24, so that's great,
now there's actually a set, 24, 35, 50.
So, let's see how epic our lens works,
while Dylan tells us about our sponsor Story blocks.
(upbeat dramatic music)
- [Dylan] In a world, where your masterpiece
is almost complete, but you forgot to get
that one shot of B-roll.
There's only one place you can turn,
and that's to shoot it again.
That's too expensive and is a pain in the butt,
so instead, go to Storyblocks.
There you will find over 1 million
royalty-free stock assets,
videos, music, sound effects
and even grab a template.
If you don't think this shot
has enough anamorphic lens flares,
Storyblocks extensive library has all the flares you'll need
to fulfill your heart's deepest desires.
Anamorphic lens flares in space?
No problem,
how about a wedding video?
Sure, why not.
Your mom's birthday?
Now, that's what I call epic.
Happy birthday, mom.
The unlimited all-access plan means,
that for just one affordable subscription,
you can get all the lens flares you want
and I mean all of them,
for either personal or commercial use.
Click the link in the description
and get your Storyblocks account today.
- What do you guys think?
- You made Dylan look like this mega star.
- Dude, you look like a Filipino Vin Diesel.
(laughing)
- All we did was take this flashlight
and shined it at the lens,
and this is a normal lens, so this is a typical lens flare.
But, you know, with an anamorphic lens,
it's like (growls)
By the way, thanks to Storyblocks,
we're giving away this 50 mil anamorphic lens.
What do they have to do to win?
Give away boy.
- Share an embarrassing story in the comments.
- Oh, that's gonna be funny.
And, it has to be a true story.
Also, you do have to have an email carer
because this is an email lens.
Now there's a few things
that make shooting anamorphic very appealing.
The most obvious is the lens flares.
You notice them right away,
but two, you get that ultra wide screen look
and sure, you could just take a frame like this
and just slice off the top and bottom
or letter boxing it, which is where you put
those matte black bars on the top and bottom.
But the problem with just slicing that off,
you're just cutting out extra resolution
and also you're losing field of view
and there's also just a cinematic quality about it,
that's pretty tough to describe,
but you definitely feel it.
And for example, the bokeh in the background
instead of a perfect circle,
usually you end up with an oval.
Now this lens isn't quite full frame.
It's APSC, so when you attach it to a camera like this,
a seven S3, which is full frame,
you'll notice that the edges get cut off.
Now, I could jump into the super 35 mode
and I'll clear that area downside is that
this camera can only do that mode in just HD
instead of 4K.
So, instead I could go to the clear image zoom in
right around 1.3 to 1.4 is where I clear it.
So, now I can still shoot 4K with this lens.
So, now that we're familiar with this lens,
let's go and shoot something cool.
[Inaudible].
(motorbike revving)
(upbeat music)
Right.
So, now that I've had a couple of days with this lens,
I think it's nice and sharp.
It's definitely fun and the footage you can get with it
is really cool, but there is one major issue
that I have with it.
So because of that, I personally probably would never use it
on a professional project.
This is a 1.33X anamorphic.
So, basically that means horizontally
the image gets squeezed onto the sensor.
Now, I just have to tell our Adobe Premiere
that this is a 1.33X anamorphic,
and then it will de-squeeze the image.
Everything comes back to the normal proportions
and we get a nice super wide screen,
but take a look at this closeup of Steve here.
It's definitely way overstretched,
even though I put in everything correctly
and it becomes very obvious once you put it next
to my spherical Sienna lens, right?
So, then I was thinking, okay,
maybe this actually isn't a 1.33,
maybe it's closer to a 1.3 or maybe 1.25.
So I de-squeezed it slightly less
and now everything looks better
even if I put steep in the edges,
everything looks nice and proportional again.
Kind of annoying, but whatever.
I just applied that scale to all the clips.
But then, half of the clips seem like it was too squished in
all of a sudden, so now I'm scratching my head thinking,
"Why is this happening?"
What I then realized is that when you pull your focus
to a close-up, it squeezes it less.
So, when you stretch it back out
it over-stretches everything.
So, basically the amount of squeeze that this lens gives you
is very inconsistent and it depends on where your focus.
So, every shot you do,
you might have to slightly tweak
the amount you de-squeeze it.
I mean, for the most part,
I only really notice it
when it's in the first 10 feet or so,
but I guess that's why these lenses are seven,
eight bucks opposed to 5,000, 10,000 or,
and those are the high end ones are fifty grand a pop.
There's a few other technical things
like inconsistent wide balance
and some vignetting around the edges and stuff like that.
But I can get over all that because, you know,
this is a budget lens.
Biggest turnoff for me is definitely
that it's not a consistent 1.33X.
You might also notice that you can't get a great macro shot
with these lenses, but that's more of an anamorphic thing
rather than this lens in particular,
you can always get a diopter slap
that upfront for those macro shots.
Now, this is as close as I can get to Steve
on these two lenses, you can definitely a closeup,
but that's about that.
Put that into perspective.
This is how close my cinema lenses can get.
Now, I do appreciate that these do open up the F1 eight.
So, when it got dark, it was no problem.
I just opened up and I also liked that it didn't flare up
like crazy, really only when the motorcycle headlights
went straight into the lens, which was really cool.
Now they opened up the F1 eight, which is great,
but they only closed down to F 16.
So, if you are shooting in bright daylight,
make sure you bring some ND filters.
There's some threads on the front,
so you can just rotate them on.
I've been avoiding handheld
because there is no stabilization in this lens.
Now, if it's a bigger camera,
it's not going to shake as much.
So, that's not a big deal.
Or I can also try turning on IBIs,
but still it's not going to be nearly as stable as a lens
with image stabilization built in.
All that looks ethic gimbals are of course going
to give you some pretty good results,
but it is tricky running a manual lens on a gimbal.
Now, the 35 mil actually comes with these lens gears
that you can just slide onto here,
which is real nice.
Especially for times like this.
Now, I can go ahead and control the focus from here.
Oh, this is where it's at.
This video should just be titled,
"Making Dylan look epic".
I got to get the sun in the back to get that lens flare.
Oh, that big, epic.
- You're totally gonna want to screen-grab
this for your Tinder.
- Oh, yeah.
Now, one thing you really wanna watch out for is
to make sure that your camera stays nice and level,
especially if there's any flares in the frame,
because usually you could just punch in,
rotate a little bit, fix the problem, right?
But, if there's a flare, when you fix it like that,
it's gonna also rotate the flare.
So, definitely keep an eye on your level
when you're shooting.
There's also ways to fake the anamorphic.
Look, for example, this is a true streak blue filter
made by Schneider.
See, if you take a close look at it,
you could see those blue lines going through there,
but it disappears as soon as you put it up to the lens.
Actually, right now, you can kind of see it still,
which is not good because we're all the way out to 16.
But, once you zoom in, they just kind of disappear.
If you take a light and shine it.
See that.
But, one thing you also have to watch out for is
that you don't want to rotate it the wrong way.
You need it perfectly on there.
I used this on a project a while back
and I didn't really love it
because it just tends to flare too easily.
For example, if there's a blown out window,
this anamorphic lens would kind of maintain that flare,
but this just makes everything just go crazy.
And, the moment even made one for your phone,
which was actually kind of fun to play with.
They also made one for our drone,
which I wouldn't really recommend.
It just messes with the gimbal on the drone too easily.
And, then there was also these adapters
that were kind of popular where you can just throw it on
in front of any lens and it turns into anamorphic,
but I hated those.
I remember I was editing a project
and someone delivered a bunch of footage
where they have the adaptor on the whole time
and it was on just slightly crooked.
All the footage was skewed when I de-squeezed it.
And I remember having such a headache trying to fix it
so everything doesn't look all messed up.
Now, the price of that adapter
is pretty comparable to this 50 mil.
So, I would just much rather shoot on this.
And they say seven, doesn't have an anamorphic setting.
So, I am looking at a squished in version
on the back of the LCD, but it's only 1.33X.
So, I can still kind of get away with it.
If it's 1.8 or 2.0, the is going to be so intense,
you're definitely gonna need to monitor it correctly.
You can always feed over to a monitor.
This is the CN7, and this has anamorphic settings.
A lot of the higher end monitors will do that
and also high-end cameras like the airy red,
black magic, even some Panasonic Mirrorless cameras.
Those have an anamorphic setting just built into the camera.
So, that's very convenient,
but overall, I think it's really cool
that we're seeing some sub $1,000 lenses
come into the market and if you're just try
to get your feet wet with some anamorphic lenses
and enter that world.
I think this is a great way to get started.
Then, if you're trying to shoot some more professional
project and want less of the imperfections,
that definitely recommend looking into renting
some of the bigger and better anamorphic lenses.
But yeah, this has been really fun shooting anamorphic.
I really haven't shot much anamorphic in the past.
So, this was really a cool experience for me.
But yeah, that's all I got for this video.
I am out of things to say.
(upbeat music)