Panavision G series

[John Holland]

Does anyone have any experience of the Panavision "G" series anamorphic lenses ?

[Mike Panczenko]

I just did a few days on a job with them, and while I can't speak for their aesthetics, I can speak from an assistant's perspective. They are not big- bigger than the "C" series, but very manageable. Each one is about the size of an Ultra Prime. All the barrels are the same diameter, so you don't need a new ring with each lens change. The focus scale is extremely large and well defined, and labeled on both the dumb side and operator side. They were used quite a bit (we also had "C" series and some "E," so I am sure they are nice looking lenses, although I can't speak in specifics. But for the assistant, they are very user friendly compared to some other anamorphic series.

[John Holland]

Thanks Mike for that very helpful . Out of interest any idea why C and E were also used ?

[Mike Panczenko]

I was just a dayplayer on the job, so I didn't have a lowdown on the artistic reasoning behind the lens selection, but from what I could tell, the reason seemed to be that it was very big with many cameras simultaneously- 4 or more for entire days. I think it was just to accommodate the need for a large amount of lenses. There was one shot though where we switched to get a shorter minimum focus, but, by and large, I believe it was just to get enough lenses to cover the large amount of cameras.

[Mike Panczenko]

I can't edit the post, wanted to add one thing:

 

I was just a dayplayer on the job, so I didn't have a lowdown on the artistic reasoning behind the lens selection, but from what I could tell, the reason seemed to be that it was very big with many cameras simultaneously- 4 or more for entire days. A few instances where we had to go to longer focal lengths that I don't believe the "G" series had, so we'd switch to the longer "E" series primes, but I think it was mostly just to accommodate the need for a large amount of lenses. There was one shot though where we switched to get a shorter minimum focus (just an extra inch or two), but, by and large, I believe it was just to get enough lenses to cover the large amount of cameras, with a few extra longer lenses from other series to fill out the set.