Sapphire 2020 introduces a new effect - FreeLens.
FreeLens takes its inspiration from the shooting technique called Free Lensing or Lens Whacking.
Here you shoot with the lens detached from the camera.
This gives you a few interesting effects.
You get some light leak as light seeps directly onto the sensor.
You get a sort of tilt/shift effect, as you take all the amazing optical engineering that
went in to constructing your lens to bend the light in a very specific way, and move
it in a way it wasn’t designed for.
And depending on what lens you have, you can also get a bit of lens distortion as you move
the lens around.
The fatter the lens and the more glass in it, the more prone it is to distort.
When used correctly, this effect is interesting, compelling and produces beautiful results.
But it also offers a few challenges.
You have to be a bit brave when running the camera without a lens attached.
It’s difficult to juggle lens and camera and stay aware of your surroundings.
You also run the risk of dust, dirt and rain all slipping in to places where it really
shouldn’t be going, or just damaging your lens connectors.
It can also be amazingly tricky to get the results you want.
Lenses are prone to clacking around just when you have your shot.
To pull it off correctly, be prepared to stick pieces of cardboard to different bits of your
camera and to practice for hours.
In steps FreeLens.
The newest addition to Boris FX Sapphire.
FreeLens gives you free lensing that you can art direct without the risk of dropping your
lens into a canal.
The effect is split into different modules.
This enables you to work on the characteristics you want to use,
and disable the ones you don’t.
The main module is Lens Manipulation.
This is what you’re doing to the virtual lens.
And we can move or tilt this around to help drive the other effects.
We can power the defocus, distortion, vignette and light leaks using this lens movement.
Or we can add manual adjustments to tweak the effect so it’s just right.
A more organic effect can be created by adding a little shake.
Unlike the real world, this shake can be tailored to our effect.
Add twitchy movement for an unsettling look, or settle back for a more dreamy result
by adjusting the shake mode.
There is a huge amount of control here.
Simply set the parameters and watch your effect animate without the need for extensive keyframing.
Find inspiration with the presets that come bundled with the effect.
As in all Sapphire effects, the Preset Browser lets you find a great starting place, or gives
inspiration about what you can achieve.
Boris FX Mocha is built-in to FreeLens too, for powerful motion tracking and masking.
Link the focal point offset to a Mocha track
with the new parameter tracking in Sapphire 2020.
And you can easily keep an area in focus.
Or create a Mocha mask to limit the effect.
FreeLens is a highly flexible effect and finds a home with all types of project.
You could be using it for a dream sequence, travelogue videos, flashback memory, or to
illustrate an unsteady point of view.
But it also works to beef up titles or motion graphics.
FreeLens is there to add that special touch to your footage.
FreeLens is available now in Sapphire 2020 for all Avid, Adobe and supported OFX hosts.
To learn more about FreeLens and all the new features and improvements in Sapphire 2020,
head over to BorisFX.com for all news, product downloads and a host of tutorials
to help get you started.