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Hi Roger, what are your thoughts on the concept of a cleaner anamorphic like an Arri master anamorphic or servicevision Scorpio? Anamorphic lenses that attempt to rectify the technical imperfections of anamorphics of the past like distortion, vignetting, flares, and the like? Do you think there’s a place for this kind of lens? I know some here (like Mullen) are split on it but I wanna know your thoughts on this area of lensing
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The only reason I am “split” on the subject, as you say, is that if you reduce every optical indication that something was shot on anamorphic lenses, then why shoot on anamorphic lenses? In the pre-D.I. days of film prints, a 35mm anamorphic production used a larger negative area than Super-35 cropped for a 2.40 image plus every generation was contacted printed. And there was somewhat less depth of field on average compared to Super-35 due to the longer focal lengths used.
But now with digital and larger format cameras, none of those are issues; even with 4K cinema release, the current digital cinema cameras with spherical lenses deliver enough resolution, and shallow-focus isn’t hard to get with fast spherical lenses. So that leaves using anamorphic lenses for their unusual optical qualities.
A good comparison for the Master Anamorphics vs. older anamorphic lenses is Robert Yeoman’s work with Wes Anderson. The 2.39 scenes in The French Dispatch and Asteroid City are Master Anamorphics. Older films they did together like The Darjeeling Limited, The Life Aquatic, The Royal Tenenbaums, and Rushmore are Panavision. The 2.39 scenes in The Grand Budapest Hotel are Technovision. All of these movies were shot on film and everything from The Life Aquatic onward was a digital intermediate.
It’s not quite as clean a comparison but you could also look at the recent Star Trek movies. Star Trek 2009 and Star Trek Into Darkness were shot on film with Panavision lenses by Dan Mindel, and then Star Trek Beyond was shot on digital with the Master Anamorphics by Stephen Windon.
I mean I do think the master anamorphics still have some anamorphic qualities to their out of focus backgrounds but beyond that I do think there is a practical purpose to shooting 2x anamorphic on these newer sensors, that being data rate. For example on the red vraptors, you save 21% shooting 8k 6:5 (269mb/s) compared to shooting 8k 2.40:1 (340mb/s) natively and you get a 21% wider fov if you use 2x anamorphic lenses in 8k 6:5 (51mm effective width) vs shooting spherical 2.40 image (40mm image width), it’s like shooting techniscope but with 2x anamorphic lenses and a wider fov, which i find ironic. Now that’s not a big difference so whether that matters is debatable but I did want to point that out
Realistically any production that could afford a V-Raptor and a set of Master Anamorphics wouldn’t be so stretched for budget that the data rate would become the deciding factor in something as essential to the look of the film as the choice of lenses. If you wanted to shoot 2.39 but were agnostic on whether or not it should be spherical or anamorphic, would the data rate really be what pushed you toward anamorphic before every other characteristic of the lenses themselves?
The width of the sensor is to some extent arbitrary, you could match the field of view of the Master Anamorphics with spherical lenses by using wider focal lengths. The widest Master Anamorphic is 28mm, the equivalent field of view on Super 35 would be around 14mm. As David said, if you wanted to also match the depth of field there are a number of wide aperture 14mm lenses.
Realistically any production that could afford a V-Raptor and a set of Master Anamorphics wouldn’t be so stretched for budget that the data rate would become the deciding factor in something as essential to the look of the film as the choice of lenses. If you wanted to shoot 2.39 but were agnostic on whether or not it should be spherical or anamorphic, would the data rate really be what pushed you toward anamorphic before every other characteristic of the lenses themselves? The width of the sensor is to some extent arbitrary, you could match the field of view of the Master Anamorphics with spherical lenses by using wider focal lengths. The widest Master Anamorphic is 28mm, the equivalent field of view on Super 35 would be around 14mm. As David said, if you wanted to also match the depth of field there are a number of wide aperture 14mm lenses.
hence, debatable.
I’m not saying it’s of tantamount importance but I’m just saying it’s there as a theoretical technicality (an ironic one at that) and it doesn’t have to be the master anamorphics, it could be any 2x anamorphic really.
Of course everything is on a spectrum, it’s not like the choice is between anamorphic lenses with zero anamorphic artifacts versus the funkiest, oldest, more flarey and distorted anamorphic lenses ever made. But it seems to me that one would want some anamorphic artifacts, even if subtle, if you were going to pick anamorphic — if all you want is a 2.40 frame, there are easier, simpler, cheaper ways of getting there.
I’m not saying it’s of tantamount importance but I’m just saying it’s there as a theoretical technicality (an ironic one at that) and it doesn’t have to be the master anamorphics, it could be any 2x anamorphic really.
What I was trying to say is that it’s worth considering these questions as part of a holistic system (the desired end result, the limitations of the production itself) and assigning relative weights to them in deciding what you want to prioritize. For instance, if the data rate of the 8K anamorphic mode is less than that of the 8K spherical mode, how and when does that become important and what is it more important than? If I asked that question and found out that the data rate was of extreme importance to the production, my next question would be why we were shooting in 8K with an extreme paucity of recording media and letting this be the deciding factor in whether or not to go anamorphic or spherical. Why couldn’t I just shoot 2.39 spherical in a lower resolution instead? And then maybe the director would tell me that the distributor had an 8K mandate, and that would open up a new question, and so on.
Realistically any production that could afford a V-Raptor and a set of Master Anamorphics wouldn’t be so stretched for budget that the data rate would become the deciding factor in something as essential to the look of the film as the choice of lenses.
I know I’m leaving the main subject of discussion. But data management and postproduction dpt requirements have, at least in my experience, mandate many times how we need to film something. Even on crazy cases as the one you exposed.
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