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Hi, this is Jay P. Morgan. Today on The Slanted Lens I want to talk about shooting with anamorphic lenses. First time I’ve ever shot with anamorphic lenses. It was a great experience. I have Sirui lenses here. I got a 35mm and a 75mm. I’ve seen anamorphic lenses forever.
I’ve seen movies, I’ve always loved the look. It’s just something you always think that is so cinematic and so beautiful. And as anamorphic lenses have become available for full-frame cameras I just thought, “Man, I want to have that experience.” I want to shoot, I mean, I shoot a ton of video. But this kind of moves video to a new level. 
It moves it to a real cinematic level that is so fun to do. I love really having to compose and work with that long frame. It’s a different experience. It allows you to do different things. But it just makes it so compositionally you have to work with a different frame and that was a lot of fun.
I went out and shot a video about a blacksmith and his process of making a knife. And so it really lent itself to these. These Sirui lenses are very warm but they have a blue flare. Which was perfect for the situation we were in because it was very warm because of the fire and things going on there, but we got that beautiful blue flare.
So I just made, I layered it like that warm in the front and cool in the back so we get that blue flare coming out of the back with the lights we put back there. But we got that beautiful warmth up front and these have kind of a warm tint to them and then that beautiful blue flare. 
So it worked out really well. It was fun to be able to play with this kind of rocking and rolling over different parts of the process as I’m looking at it. And just with that long kind of, as it morphs around things, was super fun to do.
It is funny though, I mean, I’ve heard people talk about the fact that these lenses are really sharp. Like it’s a bad thing? I know, I get it, anamorphic lenses people want to be soft and bad you know. 
Anyway the Sirui lenses are very sharp. If they’re too sharp you can put a little diffusion on it. Put a little black mist on there or something to be able to bring it back a little bit, which I actually love that look as well. Or in post there’s a lot of things you can do in post to just kind of just take the edge off just a little bit. But it’s nice to start with a platform, at least photographically, I’m looking and thinking that it’s just wonderful that these are so sharp and work so well.
It’s nice the way they’re kind of set up. I was using the two different lenses and all of the gears as far as your focus and your zoom are set up exactly the same distance from the back of the camera. 
So if you’re putting these on a rig or something and bouncing in between different lenses it lines right up with your focus pull. Or if you’re zooming it lines right up with that immediately. You don’t have to change all of that. So it makes it easy to switch the lenses out.
So shooting with these was a lot of fun. I like the way they’re set up. The lenses are set up so that your aperture ring is at the back and your zoom ring is at the front. And they’re the same distance apart so you get these exactly the same. 
They will swap out on any kind of camera rig. So if you’re set up with a, you know, pulling the focus from the front and you’re using your aperture from the back, when you slide it onto a rig your focus pull is going to pop right into the same gears. It’s going to be ready to go. And so that really makes them really easy to switch back and forth. And I switched back and forth a lot. I was shooting on both of them. Both lenses on a single camera. But it just gave me the ability to switch back and forth and was very easy.
So both of these lenses are T2.9 – 16. I found it really enjoyable to shoot with that 35mm just because it was wider. It just gave me a beautiful wide image.
So right now these Sirui lenses are on sale for $999 each. That’s an incredible deal. They’re usually $1499. So that’s a major discount. There’s a whole set of these there, a 35mm, 50mm, 75mm and 100mm. I chose to shoot on a 35mm and the 75mm which I loved a lot.
So they’re extremely well built. It’s all metal housing. They’re tight. They are not weather tight at the camera but they are built, they’re built to last. And they really truly are. So I really wanted to shoot on a 35mm. 
I really wanted this because it gives you a wide beautiful view. It’s a point of view of about 22mm spherical lens equivalent. So that gives you a beautiful wide view.
This lens weighs about 2 pounds or 930 grams. It has a long focus pull. It has a 120 degree focus pull which is quite a ways. So if you’re turning a handle you start to feel like you got to turn it a couple of times to make that happen if you’re on a focus pull. So that was sometimes a little bit of a difficulty. 
But I just learned to get it to where I wanted and to find that. And it just slid in very nicely which made it really nice to work with. So it really is a lens that is set up to be able to give you that wide view.
You don’t get great bokeh with a 35mm T2.9. That’s really not what that lens is about. It’s about the vista. It’s about the view. And I love that ability to not just see the wideness of the room but the wideness of the blade he’s working on. Or looking at the blade on the bottom and up to him. That composition working in that long format was really super exciting to me. I thought that was really interesting.
So the 75mm T2.9, this lens has about a 90 degree focus pull which was perfect. I thought that was beautiful. It weighs about 3 pounds so it’s a little heavier than the 35mm.
You would expect that. Again, same build quality. You got a heavy duty build quality here. It’s going to last forever. Which a lot of this, you’re going to want this on a tripod for some things. You know, it’s not going to be an easy lens to hand hold. Although I did do some hand holding with it and that was interesting. 
The one thing I loved about the 75mm was the close focusing distance, about 33 inches. And that meant I could, with that longer lens, I could get in pretty close. And it gave me some closeup, kind of close-up options. 
Using the 35mm was a little more of a challenge because the 35 was about 35.4 inches and on a wide lens like that I couldn’t really get in closer. I’ve seen people saying they use diopters. I’ve never used a lot of diopters. I’m certainly going to try it. And you know what, if you put a cheap diopter on here, do you know what it’ll do? It won’t be so sharp anymore, it won’t. So those of you who don’t want a sharp lens, well stick a diopter on there. How’s that not going to help you? I’m curious to play with that thought to be able to get in closer. 
Because a wide lens you can get in and focus close is a really useful lens. It allows you to get in close and to be able to point to your subject matter and to get your audience to see what you want them to see. But at the same time see it in context of the area, the city, the you know, the buildings, everything around it. So those two, you get a closeup and a contextual lens in one lens. And I love that about a 35mm that you can get close with. So a diopter would be an interesting thing to play with. 
So consequently, the 35mm I’m seeing the more wide shots in this piece that we shot. Whereas with the 75mm I’m in tighter. I’m getting more tight shots with that 75mm. The bokeh on the 75mm is beautiful. It really is. You’re getting bokeh now and especially if you open up to T2.9 you’re getting just beautiful bokeh in the background. It just blooms and looks fabulous. It’s that oval shape that you get.
It was nice shooting on the Panasonic because you can see the de-squeezed image on the back. Both these have a 1.6x squeeze. I think I said that earlier. But they both have a 1.6x squeeze. 
You can put this little adapter on this, a 1.25x adapter, and this is going to take your 1.6x anamorphic squeeze and you’re going to get a 2X squeeze now. Which that was really interesting and fun to look at. 
That was an interesting kind of comparison to look at those two. I chose to shoot everything on this piece that we did without that. But I could see a lot of times when this would really be useful and helpful. That wider vista, you know, if you’re shooting any kind of outdoor scenic kind of stuff you would definitely want that.
So the aspect ratio on most cameras with this lens is going to be 2.8:1. Whereas if you’re shooting this on, (I just learned this, I mean I’m figuring this stuff out as I’m going here when it comes to anamorphic lenses) but because I’ve got open gate on the Panasonic S52 it gave me a 2.4:1. 
And so it’s just a little longer. It’s just a little nicer. It just is, it makes it a little nicer to work with. And I love that open gate process on this camera, it’s fabulous.
So this series of Sirui lenses comes in four different mounts. You’ve got RF, L, E and Z. So they really can adapt to any of the different cameras that you may be using. You can get a version that will work for your camera.
So they have a 10 blade Iris that produces that oval bokeh that looks very, very beautiful. And like you say, they’re super cinematically sharp from T2.9 up to 16. Just very sharp all the way through.
So the lenses come with a 1/4 20 on the bottom which allows you to put a plate on there and you can attach this to a tripod. I mean I would much rather have my weight sitting right there. (Watch me drop my camera.) Than trying to back here. All the weight is on that mount there. And so I love that thought, especially with the longer lenses. The 35mm is not near as critical. But on the 75mm it’s much more critical. So they have that 1/4 20 on the bottom of each of the lenses you can amount to. They’re also 82mm, so 82mm thread. 
That gives you the ability, I like larger, 82mm is beautiful. Most of my filters are 82mm. The reason I buy 82mm is because if I do 82mm I can now step that down to all the way down to 67mm. I think I have one lens of 62mm. So it just gives me a range down. And so I start with 82mm and then I can go down from there. So my lenses all work perfectly on this. It was nice.
One thing about these lenses is they do not breathe. At least these two do not. As you move you’re kind of going back and forth with your focus. It’s just not breathing. And that’s an aspect of anamorphic lenses that’s kind of fun. 
You see that breathing as you go back and forth. That’s a sign, true sign that you’re shooting on anamorphic lenses. But these don’t breathe. They are very clean as they rack the focus forward and backwards. They don’t really vignette in the corners either. Maybe a tiny bit on the 75mm. But overall they’re pretty clean.
Look for the video where we use these anamorphic lenses. Cody, his company’s called The Outlaw Blacksmith.
So let’s wrap this up. I just really had a great time shooting on these. Would I shoot them on everything I do? No, but I would shoot them on a lot of things because they just have a beautiful look. It was fun to see the color. I love to see, I love the warmth with the blue in the background. I love that kind of mix on these lenses. I felt like the lenses were easy to work with. They’re very sharp. Which for me from a photographic background I liked in a lot of ways. It gives me options later in post if I want to bring that back a little bit. It just was another great creative outlet, something new. I heard a story of somebody who’s working for you know, a sports team, and they said, “You know what, I started shooting stuff on anamorphic lenses of these sports stars…” You know and that, and they’re going, “It was incredible, people loved it! It was something new. They thought it was cool.” I don’t think people even know why they love it because they’ve seen it for so long. It just looks high end and it looks right, you know. And that’s what I loved about it. So anyway, there’s a look at the Sirui 1.6x anamorphic lenses. That’s the 35mm and the 75mm. Great combination there. I would like to shoot with the 100mm and just play with that. I think that would be fun to work with and just get an idea of how that looks. That just gives you a little tighter which I do love that thought. Thanks to Sirui for sending us the lenses. I enjoyed the experience thoroughly. Can’t wait to shoot again. So keep those cameras rollin’ and keep on clickin’!
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