Konvas anamorphic advice....ZOOMS! etc.

[Ilya Stone]

Hello all,

 

This is a copy of an email posting I sent to the Konvas newsgroup. I check this site out often, so I thought I'd include it here.

 

 

 

Here's an embarrasing question from a serious newbie (of FETAL proportion!).

 

Raf camera seems to be getting new anamorphics each week. I'm getting confused about all these zoom lenses. I hope to get a 2M soon, and am considering getting a zoom with a rear anamorphic attatchment for it. Does anyone have any advice (other than the obvious -"save your money and buy a super8 first"- ha, ha!). I want the best and most useful lens I can get (priced within reason, of course). If anyone has advice on what I should consider, I'd appreciate it. Round fronts.....square fronts.....rear attatchments.......its driving me.....MADDDDD!!!! If I could hear from anyone whose actually used one of these zooms (or any other anamorphic), I'd be grateful.

 

The money is burning a hole in my pocket, but I don't want to make a serious error.

 

I'd like to try some outdoor photography at dusk, and also lit indoor spaces.

 

For some sort of idea of the shot's I'd like to get.....the film "Rushmore" is about the limit of what I'd like to see, as far as a wide angle-look goes. I'm not too fond of anything with more of a close-up and/or distorted effect. Although I like the almost "fisheye" look in "City of Lost Children" (which I realize is not anamorphic), it really is too much for my taste. The images always verge on giving me a headache....AND its too much like a David Lee Roth video, or the shots in "Bonfire of the Vanities". For a while, I was conviced that any film with this type of wide-angle look was the doomed mark of a truly bad film!! Obscure references aside, as much as I'm tempted by the look of extreme wide-angle (as I want to do some cramped indoor shots), it really has a somewhat amatuerish/immaturish quality that I'd like to avoid.

 

"Chinatown" is often referenced as one of the best examples of anamorphic photography, and I'd agree (who here wouldn't!?). THAT would be the film I'd most like to emulate photography-wise (and yes....I know there's much MUCH MUUUUCH more to that end-result than buying the "right" lens). Still, that was supposedly using a 42mm lens, right? Well how does that compare with these rear anamorphic zooms? Also, I need a pretty decent zoom for some outdoor shots of mildly distant buildings.

 

Northfork was another impressive work, but I'm not here to fawn in order to get advice. I can never view the photography in that film "objectively", being that I particularly wanted to film several shots of a damn (and other impressive landscapes with deco-esque buildings) in the Columbia gorge in Oregon. As a result, I'm too pissed off at David Mullen to begin sucking up....but I digress. [Mr. Mullen...if you're out there...please realize I'm just kidding around, OK?]

 

Arrgh!! This would be so much easier if I could get my hands on this junk!! Trying to venture into the world of experience is difficult when all the equipment you are interested in comes from Moscow and Belarus! Help!!

Sincerely, Ilya Stone

 

Here are some of the zoom lenses I've seen on ebay.

 

 

Zoom lens "35OPF25-2"

25-250mm, f/3.2, T/3.8

50-500 with rear anamorphic)

for Konvas (OCT-19 mount)

 

Zoom lens "35OPF17-1"

20-100mm, f/2.5, T/3.2 (40-200mm with rear anamorphic)

This lens is very similar to 35OPF18-1 except of upper focal length (100mm instead of 120mm).

 

Zoom lens "35OPF15-1A"

25-250mm, f/4.5, T/6.2.

50-500mm with rear anamorphic)

Konvas (OCT-19 mount)

[Adam Frisch FSF]

Rear-of-zoom-anamorphic-adapters are an inexpensive way to

get into cinemascope. And the russians OPF's are pretty good. But all

ROZA's have a couple of problems: They're in effect extenders or

doublers, making them steal a lot of light. Usually around 2 stops.

Factored in with the fact that the zoom you're sticking it to probably

is pretty slow, you'll end up with a seriously slow lens. Often in the

T5,5-T8 region. Ouch! Secondly, and this is the clincher for me,

they don't have those beautiful oval out of focus rings since the

anamorphization happens in collimated light at the back. But hey,

Apocalypse Now was shot with lots of anamorphic zooms, so who knows...

[David Mullen ASC]

Once you put a rear anamorphic adaptor on a 20-100mm zoom, for example, it becomes a 40-200mm anamorphic zoom. At the 40mm end, it will have the same field of view as a 40mm anamorphic prime lens.

 

"Chinatown" and "Rushmore" were mostly shot with a 40mm anamorphic prime lens. In terms of distortion, the subject matter and how close you get the lens to the subject can affect how well you sense that wide-angle barrel distortion (which the anamorphic format tends to exaggerate).

 

A rear-mounted anamorphic element won't get you the oval out-of-focus lights and the blue horizontal flare lines. You also won't get as much breathing when you rack compared to a large front anamorphic element -- but on the other hand, the zoom lens will probably breathe more when you rack than a prime... so ultimately, you'll still have breathing problems, just not the stretchy change in compression breathing of anamorphic prime lenses. Instead you get the normal slight change in focal length breathing problem of zooms.

 

Anamorphic zooms tend to be very slow. I just used a Cooke 20-100mm converted to anamorphic by Panavision and it was T/4.5 wide-open, basically a T/5.6 lens for all practical purposes. And since I was often shooting at 48 fps, I had to light to T/8 if I planned on using the zoom. So obviously I didn't use the zoom much unless I had to.

 

However, some people swear by anamorphic zooms, like Vilmos Zsigmond and John Seale. Although nowadays they get to use the newest Primo anamorphic zooms. But much of Zsigmond's work for Altman in the 1970's was with anamorphic zooms (probably the same Cooke/Panavision anamorphic zoom I was using...)

 

In general, a 5:1 zoom will be sharper than a 10:1 zoom because it needs fewer elements although this is not so true with the newest zooms (some of the 11:1 Primo zooms these days seem just as sharp as their 7:1 zoom and the sharpest Digital Primo zoom has a longer range of focal lengths than some of the others. It partially depends on how large they build them.) But in terms of older zoom lenses, I'd feel more comfortable with a 20-100mm over a 25-250mm in terms of sharpness.

[Max Jacoby]

However, some people swear by anamorphic zooms, like Vilmos Zsigmond and John Seale.  Although nowadays they get to use the newest Primo anamorphic zooms.  But much of Zsigmond's work for Altman in the 1970's was with anamorphic zooms (probably the same Cooke/Panavision anamorphic zoom I was using...)

I am not a big fan of that approach. Personally I thought that 'The Perfect Storm' didn't look very sharp, and that was shot on Primo Anamorphic Zooms.

 

I shot with Hawks last year and after having seen the result on the big screen, there is definitely a sharpness difference between the primes (V-Series) and the 46-230mm Zoom. I would probably not use the zoom unless I wanted a slow zoom-in or for exteriors where one can get at least an T5.6 1/2 or T8. And then I would still only use it for closer shots.