Rob Webster Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 Does anyone if rental houses in the UK have started to stock these lenses yet? Seen them online in a few places, but most the major houses seem to steering well clear. Any information would be much appreciated. Regards, Rob Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Holland Posted October 20, 2009 Share Posted October 20, 2009 I would try ArriMedia or have you already ? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rob Webster Posted October 21, 2009 Author Share Posted October 21, 2009 I would try ArriMedia or have you already ? No luck from Arri. I'm looking for Super16mm version by the way. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
John Holland Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 Rob , i dont think there is a Super 16 version ! They do Anamorphics for D21 digital camera , but think you are out of luck for S16 !! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Stephen Murphy Posted October 21, 2009 Share Posted October 21, 2009 Rob , i dont think there is a Super 16 version ! They do Anamorphics for D21 digital camera , but think you are out of luck for S16 !! You'd be better off contacting Vantage directly for the Super 16mm anamorphics Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matti Eerikainen Posted November 1, 2009 Share Posted November 1, 2009 Does anyone if rental houses in the UK have started to stock these lenses yet? Seen them online in a few places, but most the major houses seem to steering well clear. Any information would be much appreciated. Regards, Rob I think the best idea is to contact Vantage Film straight. We just wrapped our short film's principal photography last weekend here in Finland. I was using Hawk's V-Lite 1.3X lenses on Arri416 with Vantage Film's anamorphic viewfinder. When the idea of using anamorphic lenses came I contacted Vantage and asked some reference material and brochures. They were very nice and helpful and sent some material (for some reason I couldn't find the brochures about V-Lite 1.3X Super16mm on their website, so they sent it to me. If you'd like to have it, I can send it to you). Later when our producer contacted them, they made a subrental deal via our local camera rental company here in Helsinki. Because of the budget reasons (it was our school project) I used only 18mm and 35mm. I wanted to shoot with 14mm but it later cleared up that they hadn't manufactured it yet although that was printed in the brochure. So when the tighter lenses arrived, I shot some tests only two days before our shootings started. I was pretty amazed about their quality - it was just mind blowing shaprness and the 35mm looks great on close-ups. Also the nice flares (yes, that was one of the desired features we were looking for) were there although I was little sceptical because of the 1.3X squeeze. We are going to telecine tomorrow so it's getting little exiciting. Hope everything is fine and we have great pictures waiting to be cut together. If you have any further questions or would like to hear about my experiences with Hawk's, just ask. I'll try to help as best I can. Cheers, Matti Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matt Garrett Posted November 5, 2009 Share Posted November 5, 2009 We are going to telecine tomorrow so it's getting little exiciting. Hope everything is fine and we have great pictures waiting to be cut together. If you have any further questions or would like to hear about my experiences with Hawk's, just ask. I'll try to help as best I can. Cheers, Matti Post some stills if you can. Would love to see. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matti Eerikainen Posted November 7, 2009 Share Posted November 7, 2009 (edited) Post some stills if you can. Would love to see. Yes, of course. I'll post some as soon as I get one of our hard drives home. :) Before that I have to say I was quite disappointed about the anamorphic flares: there were no such! I don't know what I did wrong because I got them on our test by simply pointing my mini maglite towards lens. Also some house lights at the rental shop created nice blue flares. So I was very confident about creating them easily. Well, I tried to get them in the shootings with bare bulbs and even though I saw some reflections/flares through view finder there were none of them on film. Except when I shot against sun. I think the haze we used maybe softened the light peak too much or the bulbs were dimmed too low. I'm not sure. Or the lenses were too modern! -M Edited November 7, 2009 by Matti Eerikainen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Kar Wai Ng Posted November 7, 2009 Share Posted November 7, 2009 Because the anamorphic element on Hawk lenses are in the centre of the lens, not at the front, the blue streak artifact is far less pronounced. If you want to accentuate it, you could cheat a little and use the streak filter that Vantage also makes. Before that I have to say I was quite disappointed about the anamorphic flares: there were no such! I don't know what I did wrong because I got them on our test by simply pointing my mini maglite towards lens. Also some house lights at the rental shop created nice blue flares. So I was very confident about creating them easily. Well, I tried to get them in the shootings with bare bulbs and even though I saw some reflections/flares through view finder there were none of them on film. Except when I shot against sun. I think the haze we used maybe softened the light peak too much or the bulbs were dimmed too low. I'm not sure. Or the lenses were too modern! -M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matti Eerikainen Posted November 9, 2009 Share Posted November 9, 2009 Because the anamorphic element on Hawk lenses are in the centre of the lens, not at the front, the blue streak artifact is far less pronounced. If you want to accentuate it, you could cheat a little and use the streak filter that Vantage also makes. Actually I knew that but because the tests gave such an positive result, I didn't worry about it. Seems now that maybe I should have.. or at least spend little more time trying to aim some extra lights to lens. But here are few stills. Film went through Spirit 2K best-light scan. As you can see, I made some color correction with Photoshop. The story is set to some sort of fantasy world where our main characters are travelling in a train through the darkness. The car is divided in three sections: warehouse, street bar and restaurant. We shot it on real restaurant car from the forties because of the regulations considering school's practice movies (this was our first - next time we are able to use our studio too). It was quite tricky, sweaty and narrow, but somehow we managed to shoot there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
R Walker Posted November 11, 2009 Share Posted November 11, 2009 Matti- your stills look great! i was doing some research on using Hawks with Super16 for a feature I'm shooting in a few months and i came across this thread. I have been warned against using anamorphic lenses with Super16 especially for the final blow up/projection. I would love your thoughts on your experience with the Hawks- while in production (how much light did they cut?) and also with the final product- was there any graininess/softness? I read about your experience with the flares, so I'm aware of that... thanks very much! r. walker Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Premium Member Adam Frisch FSF Posted November 14, 2009 Premium Member Share Posted November 14, 2009 Take 2 Films has the whole V-lite series in London. The new 1.5x series are so expensive that no one has bought them yet, but I'm sure they will. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Matti Eerikainen Posted November 17, 2009 Share Posted November 17, 2009 Matti- your stills look great! i was doing some research on using Hawks with Super16 for a feature I'm shooting in a few months and i came across this thread. I have been warned against using anamorphic lenses with Super16 especially for the final blow up/projection. I would love your thoughts on your experience with the Hawks- while in production (how much light did they cut?) and also with the final product- was there any graininess/softness? I read about your experience with the flares, so I'm aware of that... thanks very much! r. walker Thanks for the compliment, Walker. When we chose to shoot with anamorphic lenses I heard some warnings about possible focus issues and lack of light intensity. Because our final format was going to be a squeezed anamorphic 16:9 HD file (maybe HDCAM SR) I never thought about issues considering blow up film print. As I mentioned above I had two lenses: 18mm (T1.5, V-Lite) and 35mm (T2.2, V-Series). Originally I had reserved two lenses from V-Lite series (14mm T1.5 and 35mm T1.5) but because of some sort of communication/delivery problems I got the lenses first mentioned. It was later cleared up that there is no 14mm manufactured yet. So, I was little shocked when the lenses arrived three days before our filming started. I was little worried because we really had the need for the wide angle lens because the narrow space we had in the train. But, as it was a school project and I was happy enough to shoot with anamorphic we just changed some parts of the story board and hoped for the best. I think this was the first time somebody even got a chance to shoot anamorphic in our school so we really wanted to hold on that. When the lenses arrived I shot short tests with both lenses and got telecine one day before our filming started. I also tested if we could have shot the movie with our school's old Aaton XTR S16, but somehow lenses didn't quite fit: image was little twisted from the upper left corner. I was planned that I could’ve lived with the 1.3X image squeeze but when we realized the bigger problem we fortunately got a chance to shoot with Arri416 with anamorphic viewfinder. After changed to 416, it was like a different world I was seeing through the view finder. Afterwards I think I was too optimistic thinking I could’ve shot the movie with Aaton. Lesson learned. After telecine I was very happy with the results. The image was sharp and the grain (Vision3 500T) was really no issue. It was very fine-grained. I didn't notice difference between the lenses. I think the 35mm looked very good on close-ups. Our telecine transferer said he hadn't seen as sharp S16mm film before. I shot the whole movie keeping the aperture between 2 1/2 and 2.8 1/2. Unfortunately I hadn't time or resources to do a complete test (only 30 meters (~100 feet) of film was allowed to use in the test) so I thought that stopping one or two f-stops would give me a better image quality and I would avoid most of optical distortions. I think I lost some depth but I got sharpness. I didn’t notice any chromatic aberration or vignetting. I had a really positive experience with Hawk’s and I really look forward to use them again. I think we didn’t quite get the best of them because shooting in such a narrow space and not to be able to use longer lenses to achieve the anamorphic feeling. That’s of course partly because of the 1.3x squeeze. Next time I would like to try the normal 2x squeeze and see the difference. However I think we achieved considerably better image quality and feel of something different than if we had just cropped the frame. -M Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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