Hi, Carl here for ProAV TV, and today we are look at these: A lovely set of anamorphic
cinema primes from SLR magic which they call their Anamorphot range.
I guess I should start with a brief description of what an anamorphic lens is, for those who
haven't come across them before.
Anamorphic's are a traditional type of lenses which have been used in cinema since the start.
They are designed to capture a wider image than normal and squish that image down onto
the size of your sensor.
This is what gives you that wider aspect ratio that you see in the cinema rather than normal
16:9 video.
Now, normally if you want to shoot anamorphic you have two options.
You can either spend a lot of money buying or renting high end cinema primes from companies
like Cooke, Zeiss, or others.
Or you can find some older lenses at a more reasonable price, but these can often need
a bit of DIY to get them useable.
They can be hard to mount to your camera, and especially hard to focus.
Now these lenses from SLR Magic come in at a more reachable price point than other modern
anamorphic lenses, and give you all you need to get filming.
Theres 3 lenses, a 35, a 50 and a 70mm, they come in either a Micro four thirds mount or
a PL mount like these ones I have here.
SLR magic also make some fantastic PL adapters meaning you can mount these to the camera
you want.
I have here a PL to Sony E mount, Canon EF mount and Micro four thirds as well.
All of them are fantastically built as you'd expect, but more importantly they give you
a fantastic anamorphic image.
Ive done some tests here in the showroom which i’ll show you now, starting with a normal
lens from sigma just to show you what the same shot will look like without shooting
in anamorphic.
One thing thats very obvious from these tests is that the lenses are quite soft wide open.
SLR magic recommend you stop down to T4 or 5.6 for sharper images which definitely seemed
to help.
But technical perfection has never been what shooting in anamorphic is about.
If you want technically perfect crisp images you aren't going to be choosing these lenses,
these are for people who want an image with character, an image that might be a bit rough
around the edges but feels very cinematic.
And I think they really deliver.
One thing you need to remember when shooting with anamorphic lenses, is that the image
when viewed normally is going to be a 16:9 image with the subject squished and distorted.
You need to desqueeze the image to the right aspect ratio for it to look normal.
Once you have finished filming this is very simple in most editing software.
But for on set monitoring its a bit trickier.
Some cameras like the Arri Alexa can desqueeze the image in camera for you which is the best
way to do it.
Or you can use monitors which are able to do it, I used the atomos shogun flame, and
the small HD monitors can also handle it nicely.
One thing I did notice which is a little odd with the set of lenses, is that both the 50mm
and 70mm will cover a full frame sensor which is great.
But the 35mm only works with a super 35mm sensor.
So if your using a normal video camera like the C300 I used, or the FS7 and so on, that
is fine.
But if you want to use a full frame sensor like the a7s or 5D, or even RED’s 8K weapon
camera, you will be limited to the 50 and the 70.
On the whole those these are fantastic lenses which I would definitely consider for any
narrative work or high end corporate.
But what do you think?
Let me know in the comments section and make sure to like the video and subscribe to the
channel, it really does help us out.
Thanks for watching and i’ll see you in the next video.