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New Hawk V-Lite Anamorphic Lenses


Max Jacoby

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Fredrik Bäckar and myself just visited Vantage Film in Weiden where Peter Märtin and Wolfgang Bäumler were so kind to give us a tour of their facility and show us their new line of anamorphic prime lenses.

 

It is a set of 6 lightweight lenses (28mm, 35mm, 45mm, 55mm, 80mm all T2.2 and a 110mm T3) that are incredibly small for anamorphic lenses. They are about the size of a Cooke S4 lens and weigh around 2 kilos, which makes them ideal for handheld and steadicam use. Vantage say that they give you pretty much the same quality as the V-plus Series. The smaller size was achieved by having a close-focus that is at 1m (3 feet 3 inches), instead of 60cm on the V-plus.

 

The 45mm, 55mm, 80mm and 110mm were there for us to play with (the 28mm and 35mm will get released in a little while) and I was very impressed with what I could see through the viewfinder. I´ve always felt that with the Vs the 50mm lens was as wide as I would personally go for most interiors, because otherwise the barrel-distortion would become too distracting for my taste. But it turns out that the new 45mm actually is very useable for these kinds of shots also as it really does not distort too much. This is a lens that I definitely would love to shoot with as it gives me more options for my staging. The other lenses were very interesting too because they are focal lenghts that did not exist previously and as such present additional creative options.

 

I definitely would love to shoot some tests to put these lenses through their paces and find out how they perform in a real life shooting situation and what look they give.

 

I was also interested to learn that Vantage has some more very interesting upcoming products that will make a lot of people happy, but I am not allowed to talk about that yet.

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Awesome, thanks for the report, Max!

 

Interesting that both Panavision and Vantage are introducing smaller, lighter 'scope lenses. Do you suppose that the new focal lengths came about because as you say, the 40mm was too wide for interiors and the 50mm was not quite wide enough?

 

Also, have you had a chance to see Panavision's G-Series lenses yet? (I guess they're still mostly under wraps). I wonder what design compromises they made to achieve the smaller form.

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They thought it would be a good idea to have intermediate focal lenghts, instead of just doubling existing ones, which I agree with. That way you can have more choice when you select your lenses. Like I said, if I had the choice, I'd probably use the 45mm and 55m V-Lite and then go with V-PLus for the longer lenses.

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