Anamorphic

Anamorphic on a Budget - Iscorama 36

November 8, 2015

The Holy Grail of anamorphic adapters. I mean, really. Everyone wants these and they're paying top dollar for a reason. For several reasons, actually!

USEFUL LINKS:

All the RED links on this post are part of eBay's Partner Network, so if you purchase anything through them, you're helping me to keep this project going.

You can support this project on Patreon. Make your contribution and help the Anamorphic Cookbook!

Day-to-Day

Paranormal Activity: The Ghost Dimension

November 4, 2015

Ever since the first Paranormal Activity movie came out, there was an element that I really liked about it: the fact that it absorbs the viewer into a story that's told by the camera - I wrote about this a while ago, calling it Diegetic Cinematography - plus, it was a horror movie. The problem is, doesn't matter how much I want to like Paranormal Activity, I simply can't. I tried with the first movie, it bored me to death, with less than five minutes of actual cool stuff going on. It should've been a short. I admire its budget/box office ratio, very much like Blair Witch Project.

Its concept of how to tell a horror story was something I liked so much that I forced myself to watch all the other movies in the franchise, as they came out. They just got more and more predictable and boring, leaving aside the true horror of its nature, making everything more and more explicit and resorting almost exclusively to jump scares. Yesterday I watched what's supposed to be the conclusion of the series, "The Ghost Dimension". You don't even need to guess what I thought of it. It was one of the worst disappointments ever - I watched it right after Crimson Peak. Individually, Crimson Peak was incredibly boring, but at least had very cool looking effects, even though lacking the whole 'foreplay' you expect from horror movies, where most of the time you don't actually see the ghost - or whatever supernatural creature the movie features. In Crimson Peak you have long shots and close ups of the ghosts, which is cool for some reasons and anti-climatic for some others. The characters are also incredibly stupid and take forever to unravel the plot. Overall, a weak movie, not worth watching again. Compared to Ghost Dimension, though, Crimson Peak is an amazingly well written and shot horror movie.

It feels like in the previous movies they depleted completely all the possibilities of jump scares imaginable and the only way of trying to add any depth to such a flat story (pun intended) was to make it 3D, with jump scares that fly onto your face combined with footage processed to look like old VHS, on a supernatural camera that can "see this other realm". Well, the image looks like crap, and I admire that, the problem is whenever the spirits appear, they show an incredible amount of detail that isn't present anywhere else in the shot. It's like taking a very low-quality photograph and inserting a super sharp and amazing 3D model into it. It just doesn't match.

My rule of thumb regarding the Paranormal Activity series still applies: watch the trailer and be done with it. 95% of the good scenes are there, as well as the - lack of - story. Save yourself some time and watch a better movie.

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.

USEFUL LINKS:

All the RED links on this post are part of eBay's Partner Network, so if you purchase anything through them, you're helping me to keep this project going.

You can support this project on Patreon. Make your contribution and help the Anamorphic Cookbook!

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.



Day-to-Day

<em>"If bad things happen on good TV</em>

October 25, 2015

They could make a movie out of you an me".

This has been definitely a crazy week, full of unexpected surprises and events that will bounce back in the future. Actually, not just this week, but October in its entirety. I've been trying to sit down and write something for several days and everything sort of vanishes when I sit down and start typing. Since the subject of this post isn't clearly defined yet, I'll proceed with the more "real world" events and try to dive into their metaphysical meaning later on.

Starting with "I've-lived-for-two-weeks-in-a-living-room-of-someone-I-barely-knew" and that quickly escalated into "you-know-what?-the-four-of-us-should-find-a-place-to-live-together". So we (Bruno, Nati, Ariana and I) are looking for three-bedroom apartments and houses that aren't so far from work/college and that won't break our finances, which usually leads to scouting craigslist and biking around nearby neighborhoods hunting for rent signs.

Speaking of biking, I've mentioned the new bike before, but I'm really pushing it to new levels. Wednesday I biked back from the airport, after leaving May for her trip home. Monday I was finishing the most addictive book I've read in months (Ready Player One), when I found out one of the fictional characters' (Art3mis) home was here in Vancouver. The book had the full address so I just threw that in Google Maps and headed out to North (West?) Vancouver. It was one hell of a hillish ride and I wasn't all that sure if I was gonna be able to make it back on my own legs. It didn't rain, but I was soaking wet by the time I got home.

I also spent some time shooting a bunch of reviews and anamorphic videos for my Youtube channel using Rob's gear (FlareFactory, TRUMP, Iscorama and other pretty toys). I really gotta put some effort into spreading the word about this content. I know I'm a little lazy regarding that, kind of waiting to be picked up by a major website... I'll work on that later.

Last Sunday Matt sent me a message asking if I would be interested in shooting some stuff with him this Friday. What kind of person would I be to say no? Specially craving a set like I was... So this Friday I met him and his friend Corey around 11am at the studio and we spent the next twelve hours shooting a LOT of stuff with Hedley. I'm officially adicted to their latest single, Hello, which is also where the quote for this post's title comes from. It's nearly impossible to describe how it feels to be on a set where everyone is great.

Now seems one of those times when a bunch of things start happening at the same time and being organized is key to get as many of these as I can. After Effects is up and motion graphics is coming back to the limelight. Time to master all those expressions and try to learn some Python and Russian on the side. I'm saying this here to kind of encourage myself towards it.

Besides all that, I spent some time putting together all the documents I need for Langara and my new study permit. I think I got everything I need, now is just a matter of time until everything is sorted out. Classes start in January, so I have a very clear mark in my timeline of when my free time is gonna become sparser and sparser.

For today I woke up super early and super bored, so I went biking as usual. The big difference this time is since we're getting into Fall Land, the sun rises around 7h30, so it was dark when I left home and I got to watch the sunrise along the seawall. Pretty neat view, I'll tell ya. Sadly I didn't have my camera on me this time. Maybe tomorrow?

Anamorphic

Anamorphic on a Budget - DSO Ep 02 - TRUMP System

October 25, 2015

The second video about the custom made lenses by DogSchidt Optiks is about the TRUMP 58. A customizing dream with endless possibilities of different looks by changing bits and pieces quickly on set, while also built to last, with high quality materials and an amazing feel.

Thanks a lot to Rob Bannister for providing me with the lenses for these videos.

USEFUL LINKS:

All the RED links on this post are part of eBay's Partner Network, so if you purchase anything through them, you're helping me to keep this project going.

You can support this project on Patreon. Make your contribution and help the Anamorphic Cookbook!

Tito Ferradans here, picking up from where we left off last week, continuing about the DSO stuff. Again a reminder, if you like these, rent them from us at Creative Camera Rentals. Ok, I'll hold off on the advertising, but, you know, these videos don't pay my bills, they don't pay even for my bus passes, so if you want to support this channel somehow, this is one way of doing it!

On the last video we talked about the FlareFactory58, DSO's debut product. After that they decided to let people go crazy with customizing options. Came the TRUMP, a larger lens, still all built around the Helios 44, so it's a 58mm focal length, but a lot sturdier than the default Helios, something much more in the lines of real production ready gear than the FlareFactories. While building your FF58, you pick your things and you're done, your lens is that and will always be like that. With the TRUMP you're able to change things on the fly. You can take out the rear elements as a single block, the optical module, and replace with a different one, with different tints or contrast, or artifacts. Removing the optical module gives you full access to the aperture disc. If we had 5 options of apertures for the FF58, I'm not even gonna bother counting the ones available for the TRUMP - and I hear there are even more being developed! Seriously, there are no limits to how crazy you can go with this.

Now you have a "core" body and front optics, and the possibility of swapping apertures and optical module. You also get the option of changing the mounts without a hitch. This one has a Nikon mount, and I've adapted it to EF, but we can also take out this entire back part, put on a PL mount and throw it on a RED camera, or Alexa, or whatever you dream about! Focus has the same measurements as the Helios, and it already comes geared for follow focus. The one issue I find about it is not having any distance marks for focus. Front thread is 86mm, and I'll tell you now, it's hard to get a decent vari-ND that big, so you'll probably stick with an 86-82mm step down, no risk of vignetting.

About the lens construction, this thing is solid. If you drop it on a tiled floor, I think there's more risk of damaging the tiles than the lens. It has this massive "hood", which is also how you control your regular aperture blades, by simply rotating it. The values are shown on the outer ring. I'm still not fully accustomed to it and end up closing the iris when I just mean to pull focus, since the "aperture ring" is now massive. I know you're probably thinking this is too big and bulky and "what's the point of it, since it blocks light and flares?", well, if you're not thinking that, I surely was, until I was shown their 38 and 88 optical attachments, but I'm not gonna get ahead of myself and talk about them, because that's for another video.

The advantages of the TRUMP over a regular Helios, besides all the housing and build quality is that it becomes a reliable lens. You might not be able to always hit the same note with your regular Helios, but with this, as soon as you get the gist of it, you can make it flare when you want, you can control the amount of flaring, hell, you can even choose the color of the damn flare! Being able to quickly swap the tint and aperture modules so quickly won my heart because I'm down for custom, and I'm down for simplicity. The only obstacle you might find about this is the price tag, at £1050 for the lens.

Besides all that crazy stuff I just mentioned, if you have an original Iscorama 36 or pre36 (not the Van Diemen version, which is too big thanks to the alignment lock), it does fit perfectly inside the body of the TRUMP. Setting alignment is a little tricky, but can be done, and the focus ring of the Iscorama sticks out just the perfect amount. The inner small thread, once you unscrew the removable part of the hood, with the aperture numbers, is 52mm threaded.

This video isn't nearly enough to explain the endless combinations and different looks you can achieve with a single TRUMP and several different optical modules and aperture discs, but that will have to do, because I can't translate it any better than that! Subscribe to the channel for upcoming anamorphic content, check my blog for tons of extra material and also check Creative Camera Rentals to check what interests you! I'm Tito Ferradans and I'll see you next week.



Anamorphic

Anamorphic on a Budget - DSO Ep 01 - FlareFactory58

October 18, 2015

On the tenth episode of the reviews, I'm starting a series of videos about the custom made lenses by DogSchidt Optiks. This one is about the FlareFactory58, a turbo version of the Helios 44, with even more character and a ton of possible modifications.

USEFUL LINKS:

All the RED links on this post are part of eBay's Partner Network, so if you purchase anything through them, you're helping me to keep this project going.

You can support this project on Patreon. Make your contribution and help the Anamorphic Cookbook!

Long time no see, my anamorphic friends! Tito Ferradans reporting in for the first of a series of videos about Dog Schidt Optiks. I was one of the first people to order a FlareFactory, once they were announced, in early 2013, and - fortunately for me - my friend and associate Rob Bannister is obsessed with DSO lenses so I could take them for a spin. If you like what you see in these videos and you wanna try it out for yourself, all our gear is for rent at Creative Camera Rentals. We're located in Vancouver, but also starting to consider shipping out to the States and beyond.

If you liked my last video, about modding the Helios 44, you'll probably like the FlareFactory58, which is a more extreme version (that's putting it lightly) of the aperture mod.

Why are these lenses in an anamorphic review, if they're not anamorphic? Well, they were originally meant to enhance the anamorphic look and add even more character to the footage shot with 1.33x squeeze adapters. The cornerstone for DSO lenses is the Helios 44. Starting with the FlareFactory, Richard and James worked their way into tweaking the original Helios 44 lens, adding a ton of optional custom mods. You can choose how contrasty you want it, choose the color it'll flare, aperture shape and size, mount (EF, PL or Nikon), artifacts and damage, and the outside finish. All of these have several options underneath - like the tint, you can pick from Red, Green, Blue, Magenta, Cyan, Amber, Bronze, Gold, Purple or not-tinted at all - which amounts to 28350 possibilities of different lenses (yes, I did the math, three mount types, five different apertures, three contrast options, ten tints, seven different artifacts combinations and 9 outside finishes). Picking one from thirty thousand options, I have to say there's a huge chance that your lens is yours alone and no one in the world has something identical, which leads to unique visuals - and yes, I mean UNIQUE.


They also offer an optimized version to be used with Iscoramas, which has the focus locked on the best position to render the Isco's images onto the sensor, and a tubing in front that brings the back of the Iscorama as close as possible to the front of the FlareFactory, ensuring no vignetting and no measurable light loss which are usually a consequence of adapters and step rings' constraints. You can also add focus gears and make it as pretty as this one here! The front filter thread has also been increased, from 49mm to 55mm.

The advantages of using a FlareFactory in combination with an anamorphic or without any anamorphic at all is the look that you get. Using oval apertures (either 1.5x, 2x or 3x!!!) gives you beautiful oval bokeh minus the limitations of close focusing that is usually associated with anamorphics. No need for diopters, triple checking focus or any of the quirks we develop shooting with adapters or projection lenses. Shooting with a FlareFactory is simple, straightforward and the results won't let you down. If you combine them with a flare filter, you're golden for an anamorfake look at a fraction of the cost of shooting real anamorphic and even less worrying about the post-processing workflow.

I've been trying to figure out any sort of drawbacks and the only one I can think of is when you compare the price of a regular Helios 44 to the FlareFactory - but that totally takes out of the equation all the modding and fine tuning done by the guys at DSO, so it kind of defeats the purpose of the comparison. You can order yours at richardgaleoptics.uk, for £265 in PL mount or £180 in EF mount. I always imagine them going like "everything everyone loves in the Helios 44 is kind of an artifact, originally undesired. Hmm... what if we get these artifacts and make them stronger, easier to achieve, like really pushing the look? And what if we let people choose how they want their lenses? Jeez, dude, imagine the amount of work that would be...". I guess it paid off, since they're sold out of EF mounts while fulfilling back orders.

The one I'm gonna use for these tests is an Amber tinted FlareFactory with a 2x oval aperture and a lower contrast level. I can't say about the artifacts, Rob's the one who picked them. While I shot the tests there was this dreamy feel that I couldn't quite shake off, no matter what I tried. I guess I just missed the simplicity of shooting like this.


Well, this was it for this episode. We're now diving deeper into faking the anamorphic look, or anamorfake, as I'm starting to call it. Next up is the TRUMP, and then DSO's Optical Attachments and who knows, maybe some more. If you haven't subscribed yet, this is the perfect moment for that. You can also check a shitload of extra content at my blog and rent all these amazing lenses at Creative Camera Rentals. Tito Ferradans signing out.



Day-to-Day

Post-Apoc Rant.

October 16, 2015

Fallout 4 is just around the corner and I was talking to a friend about Last of Us when I stopped to think about how the post-apocalyptic genre is way overused nowadays.

Yeah, it seems we do have a thing for going into "simpler" times, when survival is the most important element. In the past ten years we had an absurd amount of movies (The Road, The Book of Eli, Mad Max, 28 Days Later, Oblivion, Terminator Salvation - not to delve into the zombie flood), TV shows (Walking Dead, Fear the Walking Dead, The Last Man on Earth, Revolution, The 100), games (The Last of Us, Fallout - 3, New Vegas and 4 -, Wasteland 2, Crysis 2, Metro 2033, Rage, S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Tom Clancy's The Division, Left 4 Dead and all the zombie games - it's a genre on its own), books and comics (I'll not list these because it's getting boring already). As a 26 year-old dude, most of my teenage years and early 20s were immersed in this reality, which means I do like the genre and that's one of the main reasons I'm writing. If I randomly come across something post-apoc online, I'll most certainly take some time to see if it brings anything new into the genre or if it's just repeating what is already out there.

Now that it's clear I love the setting comes the time to point out some of the main problems. When we get back to the basics - I mean survival - things become pretty intense, because it's always life or death, but also they can become very shallow by simplifying character development down to the point where every decision is based on the "will I live longer?" question. Since most post-apocalyptic universes are based on the here-and-now it's easy to fall on the trap of no medium or long term plans. Relationships are only relevant as they are fundamental to survival, which ends up depriving us of deeper characters and bonds while resulting in a large number of badasses.

Even larger is the number of "quests to save the world", to restore how things were, to cure an infection/virus/plague, fix society. In Fallout 2 you leave your village looking for a G.E.C.K (Garden of Eden Creation Kit) which, of course, is not something that exists, as you discover while the game advances, Terminator has Skynet as the villain, Revolution's world can get power back at any moment, . One of the most interesting things I got from watching The Walking Dead is to see how the group goes from having lots of hope in finding a cure to accepting this new world as something that will last. Last of Us does the reverse way, from no hope at all to an almost certainty of a cure and having this kind of transition is great for character development and character development is most definitely what makes a few of the titles listed above stand out from the rest. That or massive interactivity towards the world like the Fallout series.

I'm loosing track of what I'm saying here so, I just wish we stopped setting anything in post-apocalyptic worlds just because it's cool.

This post started with some great potential and then I killed it, just to see how does a post-apocalyptic post looks. Now that I bashed the genre check my graduation work, a post-apoc webseries pilot mixing up most of the good titles above and a little bit of Brazilian politics.