Even if you think you're unfamiliar with anamorphic lenses, I guarantee you've
seen them in use throughout pretty much your entire life. Even though they're
most often associated with movies and TV shows, there's ana-more that meets the
eyes when it comes to anamorphic lenses.
So let me start off by saying, this is not a specific review
about any kind of anamorphic lens.
I have two, which I'm fortunate enough to have.
This is the Sirui 75 millimeter,
and the one that I'm filming on right now, which is the Sirui 50 millimeter.
Both full frame, which is really cool because full frame anamorphic is awesome.
And if you're saying, "Hey Tom, what's so awesome about it?
It looks pretty much the same."
Well, this is an anamorphic shot, but I've just cropped it
in to fill the frame like normal.
And now this is the regular
actual anamorphic aspect ratio.
And there are a lot of different anamorphic lenses out there.
Some more expensive than the Sirui, some less expensive, but a thing
to remember a thing to be aware of before we jump into this video is
that they are highly specialized.
So the best thing to do if you're kind of interested in amorphic lenses might be
to rent one first, see how you like it,
and then you can decide if you want to actually make the purchase.
Now that we have that out of the way, I'm going to tell you how
awesome amorphic lenses are
and you'll probably want one by the end
because they're really cool and super fun.
Anyway, it's probably important to start off by just asking,
"What even is an anamorphic lens?"
They've been around for about a hundred years at this point and where they really
came into popularity was in the mid 20th century because movie studios and
theaters wanted to draw more people to the theaters. To get people into the theater
they needed to do something larger than life,
and one way to do that was to have bigger, wider screens. But in order
to shoot movies that could actually be projected on those bigger and
wider screens, the standard lenses and the standard film wasn't working.
So anamorphic lenses were developed to basically squeeze more of
a field of view onto the regular cameras and film
that the studios were using.
And that was purely a cost-cutting measure.
So anamorphic lenses allowed for different aspect ratios to be
used with existing equipment,
and that's pretty much how they still work.
Whenever you film with an amorphic lens, the footage is squeezed.
So right now I know I look all beautiful and cinematic, but this
is what the footage looks like when I first put it into Final Cut.
It's great if you need to
lose a bit of weight in a hurry, but it also
does not look natural at all.
So you need to
"de-squeeze" the footage
so that way it looks a bit more natural and then you get all of
the great anamorphic quality.
So even though they originally came about as a cost-cutting measure, since
anamorphic lenses have been used in movies and TV shows for so many decades,
at this point their look is something that we tend to heavily associate with
something being movie-like or "cinematic"
to use a buzzword like the kids do. But up until recently,
they were prohibitively expensive
so no mere mortal mere individual like you or I could probably afford one.
And now we can literally just buy one that works with a Sony mirrorless camera.
It's insane. That's pretty exciting.
If you notice the lens element on the front is square and
the lens element on a normal lens is round. Normal lenses are sometimes referred
to as "spherical" lenses and anamorphic lenses are...anamorphic....
I probably should have known where that sentence was going before I started it.
So in addition to just wider aspect ratios, some things you
might notice with an anamorphic lens are the shape of the bokeh.
Instead of being perfectly round, especially near the edge of the frame,
they become a little more oval shaped. Anamorphic lenses tend to be incredibly
sharp near the center, and then a little less sharp towards the edges.
So it gives this very kind of specific look to them.
And of course, if I go over here and turn on this light, one of the most well
known qualities of an anamorphic lens
is the lens flare, which adds some flare to your productions.
Some people love lens flares, and some people really dislike them.
I think they're a cool creative tool that can be in your creative tool kit
and you can use them when necessary.
Right now I like having this light behind me
so when I want to strategically, I can be like, oh what?Just lens flare it out.
And then back to normal.
But the problem is that I think a lot of people are under the misconception
that an anamorphic lens is just to add lens flares to your image.
And there are way easier ways to add flares to something than buying an
entirely new lens or lens lineup.
There's more to anamorphic...
...there's MORE to anaMOREphic than– Because these have become so much
more accessible in recent years.
They're not just for movies anymore.
I've seen them in use on documentaries, on lower budget
productions ,and on YouTube videos.
Sometimes I'll use my anamorphic lenses just for fun when filming a
video, even if I end up cropping in
so you don't even notice necessarily that I'm filming with an anamorphic lens.
And I also really like using them for product b roll because
sometimes it can just really make things look 🔥epic🔥 and 🔥cinematic🔥
I've now checked the list of YouTube buzzwords.
Yes.
In a really cool way.
So actually just to show the difference, here's the same shot
with two 50 millimeter lenses.
One of them is just my normal Sony EF 50 millimeter 1.8 and the other is my
Sirui 50 millimeter anamorphic lens.
So right away what we should notice is that the anamorphic lens
has a much wider field of view.
You can see more on the left and right sides of the frame. But you might be
thinking, "Tom, if I want to see more of a frame, why don't I just use a wider lens?
I don't need an anamorphic lens."
The difference is even though the 50 millimeter anamorphic
shot in this case is wider,
we don't lose the background compression.
So the 50 millimeter background compression, how close the background
looks to the subject and how blurry the background is and all of those awesome
qualities of a 50 millimeter lens,
aren't lost.
Those are still there, but it's just wider.
So there's really no other way to get that level of background
compression and that wide field of view without using an anamorphic lens.
And that's really kind of the superpower of anamorphic.
So now that we've covered kind of the basics of what an anamorphic
lens is, let's talk about how you can use an anamorphic lens.
Few things to note though, anamorphic lenses, as far as I
know, they're all manual focus.
I don't know of an autofocus anamorphic lens.
So you have manual focus and manual aperture.
Pretty much any anamorphic lens you're going to encounter is going to be designed
as a cinema lens, which means it's going to have geared aperture and focus rings.
So that way, if you put it on a camera rig and you have like a focus
motor or focus dial connected to it,
you can use the lens that way, like you would with any other cinema lens.
But of course you can still just turn them by hand as well.
It can be difficult to focus because it's all manual focus
and the image is squished.
So it's sort of hard sometimes to determine if everything is exactly
in focus, depending on your camera.
Like I know a lot of Panasonics have an anamorphic mode where they will de-squeeze
the footage for you inside the camera, and some on camera monitors or recorders
also have anamorphic modes as well.
But if you're like me and you don't have anything that has any of that,
you just have to try your best. 👍
Now a big thing to be aware of is that a normal lens has an aperture that's measured
with f-stop and anamorphic lenses,
and a lot of cinema lenses actually, have apertures that are measured
in t-stops. F-stop refers to how wide the lenses aperture is,
so how much light is coming through the lens. T-stop is actually more accurate,
which is why more cinema cameras or cinema lenses tend to use it,
and that's measuring the amount of light that's actually making it through the lens
onto the camera's sensor, or in the older days onto a piece of film.
So both of my anamorphic lenses are T2.9.
And if you're asking what that is in f-stop, I don't really know.
They seem pretty– you can kind of see what this looks like.
It's 50 millimeters at T2.9 and it looks pretty equivalent to like F2.8-ish
to me.
I had to look up if there's an easy way to convert f-stop to t-stop,
and what I found from expertphotography.com,
it is the t-stop corrected by the actual ratio light transmittance you can
calculate it by dividing the f-stop of the lens by the square root of light
transmittance.
So the only thing I know about transmittens is that they're
what you wear on your hands when it's cold.
I'm terrible at math.
I have an English degree.
In fact, I have my English degree right here.
And you might be asking, "Why do you have that?"
Well, it's to prove that I'm bad at math, but also because mine is
signed by Arnold Schwarzenegger.
He was governor when I graduated from college and now his
signature is on my degree.
So I guess you could say there's only one degree of separation
between me and Arnold Schwarzenegger.
💪
But beyond that, an anamorphic lens is going to work the same as any other lens.
You point it at something, you focus it, you adjust your exposure, and then you film
and hopefully it looks really cool, which is why
I wanted to go to a super cool location with this 75 millimeter
lens to film some anamorphic shots.
But while there are a lot of special things about amorphic lenses,
they are very, very specialized.
And that doesn't mean you need special eyes to use them, but you should realeyes
they can kind of be pricey and it might be something that you're
not going to use all the time.
And I think when an anamorphic lens is used well, it's a feast for the eyes.
And if you're giving your eyes a feast, why not your ears as well?
So speaking of music, thank you to Artlist for sponsoring this video, because when
you're making your amazing project with whatever lens you choose to use,
you might need some music to go along with it.
If you've been around here for a while, you might know
that I've used Artlist
literally since day one of starting my YouTube channel, and Artlist's
royalty free music library is always expanding and their license, as I've
said many times, is second to none.
And there are a few different plans to choose from.
There is a Personal plan with a monthly payment option that will let
use Artlist music on all of your personal accounts and platforms.
But if you want to take it a step further, there is also the Unlimited plan.
That's what I have, where you can use Artlist music on any
platform on any account FOREVER.
So it's great for personal work, client work, and professional work.
And Artlist has always been my number one place to go when I need music
and I don't want to have to worry about whether or not it's going
to be okay to use, or I'm going to have the rights to use it,
I just go straight to Artlist.
So thank you again to Artlist for sponsoring this video,
and if you would like two additional months on your annual
subscription plan, be sure to use my link in the description below.
Now once you have your anamorphic footage captured and you put it into
your editing software, your first question is going to be, "Well, how
do I make this look not terrible?"
The first step is to de-squeeze it, and you really have two options here.
One, you can create a timeline that is an anamorphic aspect ratio.
Now, if you do want to dive more into the like, legit world of anamorphic lenses,
I highly recommend the YouTube channel called Anamorphic on a Budget.
Tito who runs that channel also put together this really cool tool, which is
an anamorphic aspect ratio calculator– because if you're bad at math like me,
or you just find it confusing, you can put in your lens, your camera,
your output resolution, all your settings into the calculator and
it will tell you how to create the correct aspect ratio for the equipment
that you are using specifically.
So I'll put links to both of those things in the description because
they're very helpful resources
if you want to dive a little bit further
and expand your knowledge in the land of anamorphic lenses.
But if you end up doing what I do a lot of the time, which is mixing anamorphic
and non anamorphic footage, then that's just when you end up with letterbox
black bars at the top bottom of your frame. For example, in this project
most of my YouTube videos are 3840 X 1920, which is a 2:1 aspect ratio.
It's a little bit wider than a standard 16 X 9.
But if I put my anamorphic footage in,
it's going to still look really strange.
Normally I have to scale up the footage to fill the 2:1 aspect ratio a little bit,
but in this case, since my lenses are 1.6X squeeze, all I need to do–
that point six is very important.
I just go to the Y axis in Final Cut Pro and change that to 66%
instead of 100%
And that's going to de-squeeze the footage.
And then I can just scale it up until it fills the frame the way that I want it to.
A lot of anamorphic lenses, especially other ones from Sirui are 1.3 times
squeeze factor.
So in that case, you would just change the Y axis to 33% instead of 66%
and it should look pretty good.
I don't know if that's the super technically correct way to do it,
but it works fine for me.
It also means if you're running a camera with an anamorphic lens, into an ATEM Mini,
you can make that same Y axis adjustment within the ATEM software and
then you can stream using an anamorphic lens that's de-squeezed in realtime.
It's pretty cool and super unnecessary, but really cool.
And one thing I should also mention is that anamorphic lenses, as far as I know,
are pretty much always prime lenses.
You're not going to find a zoom anamorphic lens, although it would
be really cool if possible to have a line of Power Zoom anamorphic lenses
because then that line could be the Mighty Anamorphic Power Range™
So we've covered what an anamorphic lens is, how to use it,
why would you want to use it?
And when would you want to use it?
I guess are the next questions you might have. One of the most practical
ways to use an anamorphic lens is if you want more options to reframe
your shot in post production.
So if you take anamorphic footage and you put it on a normal timeline, like right
now, this shot is anamorphic, but it's filling up the whole frame just like this
then gives me a whole bunch of space on either side that I can crop to without
losing a single pixel of resolution.
And this can be super helpful
if you want to play with your framing throughout a video.
For example, if some shots you want to be directly in the center, but other
shots you want to be off to the side
so that way you can put a graphic or a video or something
like over your shoulder.
So it gives you a lot of flexibility when it comes to
reframing your shots using just a
single video file.
It's also really fun to use that anamorphic cinema movielike
quality to emphasize certain things in your video projects.
For example, I've seen a lot of documentaries that are filmed with
normal, kind of like handheld b roll and like out in the world.
But then their sit down.
interviews are filmed with anamorphic lenses and that
quality of going from sort of real world chaos to a beautiful
locked down, anamorphic shot is really captivating and really effective.
And again, like I mentioned earlier, I love using my anamorphic lens for
product b roll shots, because sometimes when I'm talking and it just cuts
to an anamorphic thing, it just really snaps somebody's attention back
to the video and what's happening.
You can emphasize certain things in a really cool way.
Another thing is that anamorphic lenses are really fun for photos.
It's the same thing,
you just put it into a Photoshop or whatever photo editor you're using and
then you just drag it and de-squeeze it pretty much until it looks normal.
And then especially if you have a wide angle monitor like this,
here's an anamorphic photo of Ben our dog, which looks really great
because the lens is so high quality and on an ultra wide monitor
like this, it just fits
perfectly.
So it's a really fun thing to do with just regular photos.
And then if you do vertical anamorphic, that gets weird and super interesting.
I even uploaded a YouTube Short
that was vertical anamorphic.
I think it's probably the only,
at this point, vertical anamorphic Short on YouTube.
So that's an achievement to be proud of.
And again, while this video is not a specific review of my anamorphic
lenses, since I have them, I should tell you a few things about them.
I really like the Sirui lenses because I think they have the perfect balance
between price and functionality.
They are again,
not the cheapest lenses out there, but also not the most expensive.
And what you get is a really high quality lens.
The thing that really blows me away about both these lenses is how sharp they are.
It can sometimes be tricky to nail focus, but once you nail focus, it's
just so unbelievably sharp and crisp.
And I'm really hoping this shot is in focus because otherwise that's
going to just kill my entire point here.
The build quality on these are also like, it feels like a military
grade anamorphic lens over here.
They're built incredibly well.
Another thing that I really like is they don't really flare out of control.
Yes,
if I point a bright light source directly into the lens, it's going to flare.
I can probably even take my phone, turn on the little light here and maybe get some
flares, even that's kind of hard to flare.
So this big, bright light back here that's pointed directly at the lens,
yes, it's creating a flare.
but that's "An Aflare to Remember."
And everything else is not flaring, this tube light over here is not creating any flares,
my key lights and everything are not creating like glows or flares or anything.
I know in some of the previous lenses and some of the pre-release versions, flaring
was kind of crazy and out of control.
And in this case, it seems like the lenses only flare when you really
want them to. If you point it at the sun or directly at a super bright
light, then you'll get a flare.
But otherwise you won't. You're just going to have a really nice looking shot.
They do something kind of strange, which isn't a big deal, but they
shift the color temperature
very warm
in my experience,
so normally when I film in here, I set my white balance to 4200 Kelvin and I
get the color temperature that I like.
But when I put the anamorphic lenses on it, I need to shift all the way down to
3600 Kelvin to get kind of the same color temperature that I would normally get.
It's very easy to work with
something like that
if you just
shift your white balance or you film in RAW where you can adjust it in post,
but definitely something to be aware of.
Ultimately, my goal with this video is to just sell you on the idea
that anamorphic lenses are a thing,
and if you're not aware of them, or you've always been kind of intimidated
or unsure about them, I think that they're a ton of fun and definitely
something that's worth checking out.
And speaking of things that are a ton of fun, thank you to everyone
who helps support my channel through Patreon and YouTube Channel Memberships.
And if you're just itching to focus on more lens videos, there's
ana-more where this came from!