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Sideways anamorphic


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This is probably an odd question but has anyone ever shot anamorphic sideways?

I’ve thought about experimenting by mounting a 2x anamorphic lens to a camera at a 90 degree angle then turning the camera on its side so that when unsqueezed you’d get a 9:8 aspect ratio (assuming you were shooting with a 16:9 sensor).

I think I’ve got most of the logistics figured out but is anybody aware of a way I could monitor this properly? I’d presumably need an hdmi or sdi monitor that could turn the image on its side and de-squeeze.

 Thoughts are welcome. And yes, it certainly does seem like an absurd idea, it’s just something I’m curious about, probably no real world application.

 

Edited by Jeff Hammond
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I don't quite get the logic. When you mount an anamorphic lens to a camera, the angle of the camera doesn't make any difference to the squeeze of the image. All you would get from turning the camera sideways is a sideways view squeezed.

 

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2 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

I don't quite get the logic. When you mount an anamorphic lens to a camera, the angle of the camera doesn't make any difference to the squeeze of the image. All you would get from turning the camera sideways is a sideways view squeezed.

 

True. However, the orientation of the camera and lens matter based on what is being shot. So if I wanted to shoot in a 9:8 aspect ratio vs 8:9 I would need to rotate the camera while keeping the lens level.

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There's an interesting article in the December 2018 AC about this being done, on a short called "Last Taxi Dance". The DP, Chapin Hall, used Franscopes on an Alexa Mini that was rotated 90 degrees, so that he could get the 1.78 ratio that the director wanted while still shooting anamorphic and not having to crop the sides in post.

Edited by Shawn Martin
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1 hour ago, Shawn Martin said:

There's an interesting article in the December 2018 AC about this being done, on a short called "Last Taxi Dance". The DP, Chapin Hall, used Franscopes on an Alexa Mini that was rotated 90 degrees, so that he could get the 1.78 ratio that the director wanted while still shooting anamorphic and not having to crop the sides in post.

Interesting. I’ll look into that.

 

3 hours ago, Uli Meyer said:

Meaning that you would rotate the image in post?

Yes.

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8 hours ago, M Joel W said:

There's a video where someone did this with Cooke anamorphics. I couldn't find it, but it's part of Cooke's showcase.

I prefer it to most Cooke anamorphic footage...

That'd be cool. When you say it's part of Cooke's showcase, do you mean on YouTube?

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  • 2 weeks later...

On TvLogics you can set custom aspects to squash and stretch the image however you like. Little bit of testing and some prep you could set up several onset monitors for this. The eyepiece would be somewhat unusable though.

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Also, from a frame size perspective. Shooting on an Arri LF or Sony Venice in open gate mode and cropping would give you the same "effective" sensor size if shooting spherical. This may be an easier way of achieving certain parts of the look but obviously you don't get the anamorphic aspect

Mini 3.2k is 26.4mm x 14.85mm so with the anamorphic going vertically that is "effectively" now 29.7mm tall.
Flipping that sideways gives you 29.7mm x 26.4mm, compare that to the LF sensor OG is 36.7mm x 25.54mm (or two OG mini sensors stacked together). 35mm 4 perf Anamorphic was to some extent a cheaper way of doing wide screen as it gave you similar DOF and FOV of Vistavision 8 perf

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