(modern music)
- So last week I was hanging out with Peter
and the guys at Moment.
Moment's a company that makes super high quality lens,
probably the best lenses actually for phones
and they had a new lens that we got to test out
which is actually an anamorphic lens
and I gotta say, this is the first anamorphic lens
that I've seen for phones.
I haven't seen any other ones, and I gotta say
this is the best lens that I've ever tried for phones.
Now, some of you might be asking,
"What the heck is an anamorphic lens?"
It sounds like something out of transformers.
Well, this would be a good time to talk about
what anamorphic lenses are, and we're gonna look at
three distinct things that anamorphic lenses do.
First off is the black bars, or the crop factor,
the widescreen format.
Now, originally, anamorphic lenses were made for film,
so that instead of just cropping out the top and bottom,
you could actually use the whole film
and then squeeze it down to that widescreen look.
So you're not wasting any of the film,
you're actually using it all and just
squishing it down super high quality.
So instead of just adding the black bars
on top and bottom, an anamorphic lens
kind of stretches out the image
so that it takes up the whole sensor
and then in post, you de-squeeze it
and then it looks proper and it's in the widescreen format.
You're not actually adding black bars on top and bottom,
you're just squishing it down so it's a widescreen format
and that's how it's cropped.
This means you're using the most out of your sensor
and you're getting the most high quality image
out of your camera or phone, in this case.
So the first thing is the widescreen format or black bars.
The second thing that anamorphic lenses are really known for
is their cool lens flares.
Now, different kinds of anamorphic lenses
have different kinds of flares,
but they're usually these kind of cool
sci-fi looking lens flares that you can't get
with a normal spherical lens.
It just looks super cool and really organic,
like this shot that Niles from Moment got is just unreal.
It's probably one of the best iPhone shots
that I've ever seen.
The sun just creates a really nice looking flare
that just makes this whole image look
really nice and organic and cinematic.
Now, the harsher the light, the more pronounced
those lens flares will be, like here
we were shining an iPhone light into the sensor
and so you're getting these really cool,
really pronounced lens flares, and then here
we have a little bit of a bigger source
that's still bright, so it's creating this
softer lens flare action on the bottom here.
Both are really cool looks and these you really can't do
in post, it's super hard to make them this organic
and real looking.
So two, anamorphic lenses have really cool lens flares.
And three, it's the oval bokeh.
So with a normal spherical lens,
you're gonna have circular bokeh.
The background blur is always gonna be circular.
But with anamorphic lenses, it's actually more
of like, an oval shape.
This means that the bokeh's gonna be
really different looking from normal spherical lenses
and it really makes the subject pop
from the background, I find.
It's almost like there's a vertical blur
going on on the background, and it just looks really cool.
A ton of Hollywood films use this look
because it is really cinematic in my opinion.
This is one of the coolest things, I think,
about anamorphic lenses.
Now, because of the small sensor size on the iPhone,
you're not getting very much of this bokeh,
but on a real camera, you would definitely be able
to see the difference between a spherical lens
and an anamorphic lens.
Ah, this makes me wanna get some anamorphic lenses
so bad, so I could show you guys what it looks like
on a real camera.
Side note here, I actually got the Sony A73 to test out,
so, review coming up on that one.
Super curious about this camera,
just picked it up today so I haven't played with it yet.
But I am taking it to Maui so I'll test it out
and give you guys a little review.
But yeah, I really want some anamorphic lenses,
just to even show you guys what it looks like.
Maybe I'll talk to somebody at NAB.
I dunno, they're super expensive
so I don't feel like buying them
but I'd love to just try them out
and maybe borrow them from somebody.
But this little anamorphic lens
actually isn't that expensive for your iPhone.
It's about 100, I think it's $149.
Now, you are gonna need to buy their case
so that's a little bit more, but it's
a fairly affordable price, and I gotta say,
this is the best lens that I've ever tried on an iPhone.
It was really nice getting actual cinematic looking footage
from an iPhone, which is really hard to do.
Anybody that shoots with a phone
can say that it's really hard to get a really nice
cinematic looking image from a phone,
even if you do all the right things with the settings
and everything like that.
Now, this look is baked in and you can't get rid
of the cropped factor, it is gonna be that
widescreen format, so that's the only downside
to using a lens like this.
If you later on decide that I actually don't it to be
this cropped factor, you can't change it.
It is how it is.
It's baked in, you can't change it in post.
So this lens isn't gonna be for every project,
but I do think this is the best iPhone lens right now.
They just launched the Kickstarter
so I'll link it down below and I'm super curious
to see how many of you guys buy it,
and I'm even more curious to see
what kind of results people get with this lens
because I really haven't seen results like this
from a phone before.
Alright, that's it for this one.
I hope you learned something about
anamorphic lenses and please raise your hand
if you wanna see more about anamorphic lenses
in the future.
Alright, hit that like button, subscribe to the channel,
enjoy the film making process
and I'll see you in the next one.
(modern music)