Anamorphic

Anamorphic on a Budget – DSO Ep 03 – Optical Attachments

November 1, 2015

On the last (for now) installment of the DogSchidt Optiks produtcs I talk about their optical attachments (aka TRUMP 38 and 88), which make a full standard prime set with its core in the TRUMP 58. More customizing options to what was already great. I also went a little crazy on the test video because I felt the TRUMP one was a little too simple for its capabilities.

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Tito Ferradans here, back for (what seems to be) the last episode about DogSchidt Optiks gear. Last week we talked about the TRUMP, the week before was the FlareFactory58, all of it provided by my associate at Creative Camera Rentals, Rob Bannister, so if you like these babies – or if you like any of the other anamorphics I talked about so far, there’s a great chance you’re able to rent them from us!

For this video the subjects are DSO’s optical attachments, both the wide-angle and the telephoto. These kinds of adapters were quite common during the DV era and were kind of forgotten afterwards – mainly because their resolving power sucked! The difference between those adapters and these ones here are: first, original optical design and freshly ground glass so there’s no loss of quality or light on the resulting image, second, their power (0.66x for the wide angle and 1.55x for the telephoto) when combined with the Helios 44 core inside the FlareFactory or the TRUMP results in the field of view of a 38mm and an 88mm respectively.


The attachments have different price tags if you’re buying them for the TRUMP – £700 for the 38mm and £820 for the 88 – or the FlareFactory – £300 for the 38mm and £340 for the 88mm. A lot more expensive than the standard ebay wide angle and telephoto attachments made by Century Optics, Panasonic, Sony and many others. The ones by DSO are also HEAVY, weighting around 600 grams each (the 38 is a little lighter) and big. The glass inside is large and beautiful and “characterless” so it’s like it doesn’t exist, not adding any artifacts, ghosts, haze or whatever – same principle as the Rectilux, it’s meant to be invisible.

The ingenious part, to me, comes from the fact that now you can have a single TRUMP, plus the optical attachments and that gives you a full optical matching standard prime kit (35, 50, 85) with fast apertures, or crazy apertures, and tints and whatever else you got there. You don’t need to modify three different lenses and pray to god that they all create similar looking footage. You’ll be using the same lens so everything will match every time. Again, the simplicity of the TRUMP is key, just screw in or remove the elements to switch between different focal lengths, quick and easy.

Rear threads are 52mm and front threads are large 86mm. As mentioned before, you’re likely to use an 86-82mm step down ring for vari-NDs and other filters. The cool thing about these guys is that you can pick a few step rings and use them on various different lenses, with apertures as fast as f/1.7 with no light loss. You also have a stripe with the aperture values marked so you can easily control the iris.

Just for the sake of “why the hell not?”, here are a few shots comparing the TRUMP 38 to the Mir 1B (37mm), and the TRUMP 88 against the Jupiter 9, the most common lenses used to match with the Helios 44.




Another interesting thing achieved with DSO’s optical attachments is the increased separation between subject and background, which is also a strong element in play when using anamorphic adapters. By using the 38, you get the wide angle, but your depth of field is shifted towards the 58mm taking lens, enhancing the bokeh.

I tried to define the 88 module, but I’m lacking words, I just realized that I must have a thing for eighty-something millimeters. I hope the footage is enough to prove my point here.


That’s it for this week, folks. We’ve reached the end of DSO’s reviews, covering the FlareFactory58, the TRUMP and now the optical attachments. If you like these lenses, you can rent them from us at Creative Camera Rentals! As of this time, this channel still doesn’t pay my bills or anything, so if you wanna help me growing the available content online for free, be sure to subscribe and help me spreading the word about the reviews and lenses. You can also check the entire Anamorphic on a Budget guide at my blog, entirely for free! See you next week.