This may (or may not! 
) be of use or interest to some here.
Shooting a film mid-June and am currently looking into lens choices. I think the film really lends itself to anamorphic lenses, but our budget doesn't really extend to Hawk primes.
So, we're stuck with the decisions of choosing the lesser of two evils: Lomo's or Zeiss Ultrascopes. Or, simply shoot spherical and crop in post. I'd never used the Lomos or the Ultrascopes, so was unsure how they performed and what they looked like. I know the tell-tale signs of anamorphic lenses (oval bokeh, flares etc.), but how apparent they are in these lenses I wasn't too sure.
So we went along to Cameraquip, a local rental house, to test the lenses. I tested the Lomo's and Ultrascopes against the equivalent Zeiss Superspeed (spherical lens) focal length. I wanted to test wide open to see how each lens performed, as well as stopped down to T5.6 or so, as this is generally where anamorphic lenses, and indeed any lens are best utilised. I've used the Superspeeds many times and know that they're a little softer wide open than they are at T4 or T5.6, but in general you can get away with it, and I find I often like a slightly softer lens (or soft filter) on digital cameras anyway to take that sharpness out of it.
I cut this together in Avid Media Composer, exported an EDL to RedCine-X Pro, did a quick grade to get everything to look relatively similar (I pulled a lot of the green from overhead fluros out, and pulled the ISO of the T1.3 stuff down to match closer with the T2+ of the anarmophics) and exported into DNxHD, from which I created an H.264 for YouTube.
Shot on RED Epic, 5K anamorphic mode for the anamorphic lenses (you end up with ~3.8k) and 5K HD cropped down to 2.4:1 for the sphericals. REDCine conformed these down to 1080p for me.
What we found:
The anamorphics are, generally, awful wide open. I expected this, but wasn't sure how bad they'd be. There's a huge amount of horizontal distortion and breathing in the Lomo square fronts, though the 35mm performs better wide open than the round front.
Anamorphics have a curved plane of focus (think of a curved movie screen) which is clearly visible in a lot of the lenses when they're wide open. One or two of the lenses are so soft wide open that things are barely in focus. The Ultrascopes are really soft, and in some cases when stopped down to T5.6 perform as well as some of the Lomos wide open.
Some of the lenses don't have proper focus rings and so are really difficult to focus with as you physically have to turn a large disc to bring things into focus.
Ultrascopes, though soft, seem to perform perhaps more uniformly across the set, but the Lomos have the edge in terms of sharpness, at least when stopped down. I like the look of the Ultrascopes over the Lomos, but like the sharpness of the Lomos over the Scopes. The square front Lomos have pretty bad distortion (the 30mm is also a square front), though this can lend itself - the Director seems pretty keen on using the super-distorted 22mm (at the end) in a few shots.
I think we'll probably end up going for the 40mm and 75mm Ultrascope plus the 22mm Lomo, but we haven't decided 100% yet.
Check it out for yourself, it's available in HD on YouTube. There's nothing overly amazing about the shots (you won't be wowed by the cinematography - they're lens tests) but they might be of some use or interest to you.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rw9bbXaYIw
We also shot a promo on the RED 18-85 T2.9 zoom; 5K HD cropped to 2.4:1. I was relatively happy with the image, but I won't be considering shooting the film on it.
) be of use or interest to some here. Shooting a film mid-June and am currently looking into lens choices. I think the film really lends itself to anamorphic lenses, but our budget doesn't really extend to Hawk primes.
So, we're stuck with the decisions of choosing the lesser of two evils: Lomo's or Zeiss Ultrascopes. Or, simply shoot spherical and crop in post. I'd never used the Lomos or the Ultrascopes, so was unsure how they performed and what they looked like. I know the tell-tale signs of anamorphic lenses (oval bokeh, flares etc.), but how apparent they are in these lenses I wasn't too sure.
So we went along to Cameraquip, a local rental house, to test the lenses. I tested the Lomo's and Ultrascopes against the equivalent Zeiss Superspeed (spherical lens) focal length. I wanted to test wide open to see how each lens performed, as well as stopped down to T5.6 or so, as this is generally where anamorphic lenses, and indeed any lens are best utilised. I've used the Superspeeds many times and know that they're a little softer wide open than they are at T4 or T5.6, but in general you can get away with it, and I find I often like a slightly softer lens (or soft filter) on digital cameras anyway to take that sharpness out of it.
I cut this together in Avid Media Composer, exported an EDL to RedCine-X Pro, did a quick grade to get everything to look relatively similar (I pulled a lot of the green from overhead fluros out, and pulled the ISO of the T1.3 stuff down to match closer with the T2+ of the anarmophics) and exported into DNxHD, from which I created an H.264 for YouTube.
Shot on RED Epic, 5K anamorphic mode for the anamorphic lenses (you end up with ~3.8k) and 5K HD cropped down to 2.4:1 for the sphericals. REDCine conformed these down to 1080p for me.
What we found:
The anamorphics are, generally, awful wide open. I expected this, but wasn't sure how bad they'd be. There's a huge amount of horizontal distortion and breathing in the Lomo square fronts, though the 35mm performs better wide open than the round front.
Anamorphics have a curved plane of focus (think of a curved movie screen) which is clearly visible in a lot of the lenses when they're wide open. One or two of the lenses are so soft wide open that things are barely in focus. The Ultrascopes are really soft, and in some cases when stopped down to T5.6 perform as well as some of the Lomos wide open.
Some of the lenses don't have proper focus rings and so are really difficult to focus with as you physically have to turn a large disc to bring things into focus.
Ultrascopes, though soft, seem to perform perhaps more uniformly across the set, but the Lomos have the edge in terms of sharpness, at least when stopped down. I like the look of the Ultrascopes over the Lomos, but like the sharpness of the Lomos over the Scopes. The square front Lomos have pretty bad distortion (the 30mm is also a square front), though this can lend itself - the Director seems pretty keen on using the super-distorted 22mm (at the end) in a few shots.
I think we'll probably end up going for the 40mm and 75mm Ultrascope plus the 22mm Lomo, but we haven't decided 100% yet.
Check it out for yourself, it's available in HD on YouTube. There's nothing overly amazing about the shots (you won't be wowed by the cinematography - they're lens tests
) but they might be of some use or interest to you.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rw9bbXaYIw
We also shot a promo on the RED 18-85 T2.9 zoom; 5K HD cropped to 2.4:1. I was relatively happy with the image, but I won't be considering shooting the film on it.