I\'m mostly a lurker these days, but I do have some fun things I\'d love to share regarding alternative lenses.
In my spare time I like to play around by ripping apart antique lenses and what not. It\'s real fun messing around with tubes and making strange patchwork glass.
The first one is pretty standard. It\'s an old 60\'s Canon FD 55mm f/1.2 via optical adapter on a 1Ds Mark II.
You do get a nice blooming effect.
However, it does leave you wanting more in the sharpness department.
This is about a 50mm-ish lens that I made from old Japanese glass, also from the 60\'s.
While I enjoyed the wacky colors it produced, it really lacked sharpness.
Another.
This next one was about a 100mm-ish lens, again late 60\'s Japanese glass.
I liked the slight fisheye effect it produced.
I used that same weird curved element in a 50mm version and got even more fisheye effect.
I like the weird almost spinning out of focus effect. I\'m pretty happy with the sharpness and still have this lens today.
Here\'s an daylight example from the 50mm fishy. Stopping down the lens minimizes pinched out of focus effect.
Okay. On to what\'s kept me occupied the last 3 years or so. I work in feature films and for whatever reason I thought it would be an awesome idea to be able to shoot stills with anamorphic lenses. This led to lots of searching, and I mean lots! I own a whole ton of anamorphic glass at this point and am still tinkering, but these are the most interesting to me.
-bigger
This is from an Iscogen 50mm anamorphic prime adapted to my 1Ds Mark III. This was wide open at f/2.8.
-bigger
Stopped down you actually get fairly impressive and sharp results.
This next one is my baby. It\'s a 100mm f/2-ish 2x anamorphic prime that I had a friend at Panavision machine together for me. -bigger
It\'s a real pain to actually focus because you need to find the happy spot between the vertical and horizontal plains. It\'s also not a small lens at all.
-bigger
Here\'s a daylight example from the Salton Sea.
And just for comparisons sake, here\'s a shot of that same area with a Canon 35mm f/1.4L at a slightly different angle.
Due to the pain of focusing it is difficult to actually shoot people with it, but I gave it a stab.
This is the full stretched frame.
So my next anamorphic nightmare is going to be in the 25mm-35mm range hopefully. To date I haven\'t found a nice combination of elements to produce exceptable results, but I recently recieved some new anamorphic elements that can probably hold up to the wide angle world. I just waiting on some more $$ to come in to play around.
I\'m mostly a lurker these days, but I do have some fun things I\'d love to share regarding alternative lenses.
In my spare time I like to play around by ripping apart antique lenses and what not. It\'s real fun messing around with tubes and making strange patchwork glass.
The first one is pretty standard. It\'s an old 60\'s Canon FD 55mm f/1.2 via optical adapter on a 1Ds Mark II.
You do get a nice blooming effect.
However, it does leave you wanting more in the sharpness department.
This is about a 50mm-ish lens that I made from old Japanese glass, also from the 60\'s.
While I enjoyed the wacky colors it produced, it really lacked sharpness.
Another.
This next one was about a 100mm-ish lens, again late 60\'s Japanese glass.
I liked the slight fisheye effect it produced.
I used that same weird curved element in a 50mm version and got even more fisheye effect.
I like the weird almost spinning out of focus effect. I\'m pretty happy with the sharpness and still have this lens today.
Here\'s an daylight example from the 50mm fishy. Stopping down the lens minimizes pinched out of focus effect.
Okay. On to what\'s kept me occupied the last 3 years or so. I work in feature films and for whatever reason I thought it would be an awesome idea to be able to shoot stills with anamorphic lenses. This led to lots of searching, and I mean lots! I own a whole ton of anamorphic glass at this point and am still tinkering, but these are the most interesting to me.
-bigger
This is from an Iscogen 50mm anamorphic prime adapted to my 1Ds Mark III. This was wide open at f/2.8.
-bigger
Stopped down you actually get fairly impressive and sharp results.
This next one is my baby. It\'s a 100mm f/2-ish 2x anamorphic prime that I had a friend at Panavision machine together for me. -bigger
It\'s a real pain to actually focus because you need to find the happy spot between the vertical and horizontal plains. It\'s also not a small lens at all.
-bigger
Here\'s a daylight example from the Salton Sea.
And just for comparisons sake, here\'s a shot of that same area with a Canon 35mm f/1.4L at a slightly different angle.
Due to the pain of focusing it is difficult to actually shoot people with it, but I gave it a stab.
This is the full stretched frame.
So my next anamorphic nightmare is going to be in the 25mm-35mm range hopefully. To date I haven\'t found a nice combination of elements to produce exceptable results, but I recently recieved some new anamorphic elements that can probably hold up to the wide angle world. I just waiting on some more $$ to come in to play around.
