1.85 ratio with anamorphic lenses

[Jaxon Bridge]

I had a fellow tell me recently:

 

It is not an unusual practice to shoot an 1:1.85 film with anamorphic lenses to get a better image resolution: it's a gain of about 50% more vertical resolution.

 

This really surprised me. While I recently noticed that the 1.85:1 movie Babel had anamorphic scenes due to a multi-format production, I can't imagine there are actually too many movies shooting Scope for 1.85:1 distribution. Can anyone name a few?

 

This guy is in Berlin, and I know European formats do differ somewhat.

 

Jaxon

[David Mullen ASC]

It's extremely unusual to use 2X anamorphic lenses for 1.85 -- afterall, despite the fact that you use the full negative height, you now have to crop the sides a lot to get 2.39 back to 1.85, negating any grain benefits. This guy has no idea what he's talking about.

[Jaxon Bridge]

It's extremely unusual to use 2X anamorphic lenses for 1.85 -- afterall, despite the fact that you use the full negative height, you now have to crop the sides a lot to get 2.39 back to 1.85, negating any grain benefits. This guy has no idea what he's talking about.

 

That's what I thought. Thanks for clearing it up!

[Guest Stephen Murphy]

That's what I thought. Thanks for clearing it up!

 

The guy could have been referring to European commercials. It's not uncommon to shoot a commercial with anamorphics composing only for 16x9 when a director/DP wants anamorphic artifacts but the agency/client dont want a 2.35:1 image.

[Leo Anthony Vale]

I had a fellow tell me recently:

 

It is not an unusual practice to shoot an 1:1.85 film with anamorphic lenses to get a better image resolution: it's a gain of about 50% more vertical resolution.

 

This really surprised me. While I recently noticed that the 1.85:1 movie Babel had anamorphic scenes due to a multi-format production, I can't imagine there are actually too many movies shooting Scope for 1.85:1 distribution. Can anyone name a few?

 

This guy is in Berlin, and I know European formats do differ somewhat.

 

VantageFilm has ground glasses for anamorphic marked with side lines for 1.85/1 nd 1.77/1.

 

Though every so often Isco tries to push asystem, Iscovision, with 1.5x squeeze for 1.85/1 projection.

The neg gives a 1.77/1 image which is slightly cropped to 1.85/1.

 

Here's a letter from Johm Pytlak about it:

 

http://palimpsest.stanford.edu/byform/mail...9/msg00042.html

[David Mullen ASC]

Yes, I forgot about the exception -- the use of anamorphic lenses for music videos and some commercials, sometimes cropped to 16x9, sometimes letterboxed to 2.35.

[Sebastian Andexer]

Wasnt parts of Babel shot in 2.35 and then scanned at 1.85?

[David Mullen ASC]

Wasnt parts of Babel shot in 2.35 and then scanned at 1.85?

 

Yes, that's one of the exceptions. It wasn't for any improvement in picture quality, but to get the anamorphic lens distortions and lower depth of field.