Delivery aspect ratio for shooting anamorphic on dslr?

Brandon Arandt · September 23, 2012

Hello there,

I'm hoping I can get some clarification on aspect ratios with my setup. I'm shooting a micro budget project on either a 5Dmkii or 7D because I don't have the cash to shoot on RED. I do have a Lomo Zoom 20-120 with both 1.5 and 2.1 rear anamorphic that I would like to shoot on. I love the anamorphic look and think that it will give me a more cinematic look, despite the fact that Im shooting on a DSLR. I'm getting a little confused though about desqeezing and what aspect ratio the final output will be and if that output will be OK for distribution in the case that it gets sold for DVD and or on demand rights. Does it even matter? If I use the 5D with the 1.5 anamorphic, do I just shoot in 16x9 mode and desqueeze in post? What aspect ratio will that give me? Will I have to crop the sides? Also, will it be a problem mixing footage with the anamorphic shots 60% of the time and cutting it with non anamorphic lenses on the really tight shots? (Cropped to the same aspect ratio for those shots in post?) Please help this young jedi understand all this stuff.

Thanks

Edited September 23, 2012 by Brandon Arandt

David Mullen ASC · September 23, 2012

This is simple math. A 16x9 HD recording is 1.78 : 1 (divide 16 by 9), so with a 1.5X optical squeeze on the lens, the unsqueezed final image would be 1.78 x 1.5, so 2.67 : 1.

That's a rather heavily letterboxed image on TV but it's not unheard of, the Ultra Panavision 70 movies like "Ben Hur" are in that range. But it would probably be better to compose for cropping the sides back down (after unsqueezing) to a standard 2.40 : 1.

You'd have to unsqueeze the image in post of course, along with the cropping, to create a letterboxed HD recording. Don't ask me how that is done. Once you have a 16x9 recording that is letterboxed to 2.40, it's not hard to cut in spherical lensed footage also letterboxed to 2.40.

Brandon Arandt · September 24, 2012

David,

Thank you for explaining this to me, it is very straight forward, I have never had anyone break it down so that I could understand it. So, with that said...I should probably shoot for the 2.35 or 2.40 aspect ratio. I guess I will have to figure out how much of the sides I would need to crop off. Maybe a better way would be to take the squeezed footage, keep the same codec and put a guide on the footage and bring it back into camera and throw on the old tape guide!

Edited September 24, 2012 by Brandon Arandt

David Mullen ASC · September 24, 2012

David,

Thank you for explaining this to me, it is very straight forward, I have never had anyone break it down so that I could understand it. So, with that said...I should probably shoot for the 2.35 or 2.40 aspect ratio. I guess I will have to figure out how much of the sides I would need to crop off. Maybe a better way would be to take the squeezed footage, keep the same codec and put a guide on the footage and bring it back into camera and throw on the old tape guide!

2.40 ÷ 1.5 = 1.6, so you just need to draw a 1.6 : 1 square on your computer, print it out and line up the top & bottom of 1.78 : 1 (16x9) if your camera has a spherical lens on it. Then mark the sides of the 1.6 : 1 frame on your monitor, which with a 1.5X anamorphic lens now used would give you a 2.40 image unsqueezed once cropped.

Or just draw a 2.40 rectangle on your computer, print it out and line it up top & bottom with your camera's 1.5X anamorphic lens on, then mark the sides of the monitor.