Anamorphic Viewfinder for Aaton or Arri cameras.

[Marz Miller]

Does anyone know if using anamorphic lenses on S16mm was common before the release of the Hawk V-Lite16 lenses? I'm looking to shoot a project on these lenses soon and am hoping to use an Aaton XTR, just wondering if it will be easy to find an anamorphic viewfinder attachment for the camera. Or if it would be better to go with a SR camera.

A 416 seems to be out of the question for now due to budget reasons. I believe this camera shares the viewfinder design with the SR cameras anyway. (the 416 I used just had SR ground glass in it.)

 

Alternatively what other (if any) Anamorphic 16mm lenses are available in Los Angeles.

 

- M

[Tyler Purcell]

Ohh and BTW... 1.3x squeeze isn't too bad without an decoder. It's not like 2x where everything is crazy distorted.

[Dom Jaeger]

Outside of some custom 16mm anamorphic lenses Joe Dunton made I don't think there were any real anamorphic options for 16mm before the Hawks. People just used 35mm anamorphics, or projection lenses fitted in front of a taking lens.

 

With S16, cropping top and bottom to achieve a widescreen aspect ratio is easier and uses about the same film real estate as a 2x anamorphic image cropped on the sides, so anamorphic made less sense in that format than with 4 perf 35mm.

 

As far as I know the 416 is the only 16mm camera that Vantage supplies with a 1.3x de squeeze viewfinder. None of the 35mm Arri anamorphic extension viewfinders are compatible with SR3s without modification, and they're 2x anyway. I imagine it's the same with Aatons.

 

The 416 uses SR fibre screens, but shares its viewfinder design with the 235.

 

As Tyler mentioned, a 1.3x squeeze is not so extreme, but if necessary an onboard monitor from the split might be the best way to unsqueeze the image on something other than a 416.

[Tyler Purcell]

As Tyler mentioned, a 1.3x squeeze is not so extreme, but if necessary an onboard monitor from the split might be the best way to unsqueeze the image on something other than a 416.

Hey Dom, do you think an old SD monitor with the unsqueeze button for 16:9 would do the trick?

[Dom Jaeger]

Hey Dom, do you think an old SD monitor with the unsqueeze button for 16:9 would do the trick?

To be honest I don't know what monitor could work, it would take some research. Might need a HD monitor with an analogue converter.