Duclos 2x Anamorphic rear adapter and Ang. 25-250 Install direction

[Jay Young]

Greetings,

 

I have an Angenieux HR 25-250mm and a Duclos 2x Anamorphic adapter.

 

Which way does it go on? I'm a bit confused. There are no indicators or marks on the adapter.

 

If I install it the way I think it should go, with the oval pointing north south, like all other front anamorphics, it looks fine. However, if I flip it so that the oval points point east/west, the image looks more like the anamorphic primes set we have, which may be the correct direction, but I'm not sure.

 

I'd love to know optically how the thing works correctly installed what I consider 90-degrees off axis?

 

 

Secondly, the Cooke 20-100 I requested was dropped and destroyed, so the rental house gave me this Angenieux, which I've never used, and I think I'm in love.

[Dom Jaeger]

It should go on with the window horizontal, and the image looking stretched vertically.

 

Rear adapters work differently from anamorphic primes in that rather than compressing the horizontal axis, they stretch the vertical axis (and crop the top and bottom).

 

In theory a properly adjusted adapter should be interchangeable between zooms, but just check that the image stays sharp from the long end all the way to the wide end.

[Jay Young]

So in theory, if I blast light into the lens then it should streak vertically, is that correct?

[AJ Young]

So in theory, if I blast light into the lens then it should streak vertically, is that correct?

 

Yes. The anamorphic lens is trying to squish the image to fit onto a 4:3 4perf piece of 35mm film.

 

Of course, you're using digital, so how much of the sensor will be covered is another story.

 

Do you have test footage of the lens? Would love to see the results with the adapter on.

[Jay Young]

 

Yes. The anamorphic lens is trying to squish the image to fit onto a 4:3 4perf piece of 35mm film.

 

Of course, you're using digital, so how much of the sensor will be covered is another story.

 

Do you have test footage of the lens? Would love to see the results with the adapter on.

 

 

Sure, I'm shooting a feature on it right now! Let me find a dailies clip I can post and I'll forward your way.

 

I still don't understand why rear anamorphic adapters have to squish the image vertically... I need some optical explanations.

 

Although before we wrap, I'm going to flip it 90-degrees and shoot a clip with it just to see the difference!

[Dom Jaeger]

A rear anamorphic adapter doesn't squish, it stretches. Basically it's a spherical image cropped to a widescreen aspect ratio that then gets stretched vertically to fill the sensor or film frame height and match the compression of the raw anamorphic footage. You could just as easily shoot without an adapter and crop to 2.40, but having it match the anamorphic footage means you can unsqueeze everything rather than having to mix anamorphic with spherical, and you also keep the recording medium resolution stable.

 

The adapter isn't giving you a wider field of view than the lens itself can normally produce, the end result is exactly like a cropped spherical image, only the full height of the sensor or film is being utilised.

[AJ Young]

Ah, my mistake. Thank you for correcting it, Dom.