I hope you enjoy that little movie trailerish thing that I just did at the beginning of this video. So if you haven't figured out by now this video is about anamorphic lenses particularly the one that I'm using on this camera which is the Sirui 35 millimeter anamorphic lens for full frame cameras. Personally I wanted to go out and use the lens and actually put it through test and just get out in the field and actually use the lens instead of sitting here and talking more about it than using it.
What Anamorphic Lenses Are
This is Sirui 35 millimeter 1.6 X squeeze full frame anamorphic lens that was a mouthful pause but yeah as mentioned many times before this is an anamorphic lens. If you don't know what anamorphic lenses are, they're basically lenses just designed with additional glass elements that squeeze the image horizontally which allows us as filmmakers to capture a wider field of view than the film or digital sensor would normally allow. Which is super dope we all see the movies and they're like super widescreen that is because most of the time they're shot with an amorphic lenses and that is because we are able to have a wider horizontal field of view when using anamorphic lenses compared to its non-anamorphic counterpart. Like this 35 millimeter has a 22 millimeter horizontal field of view which is really wide.
Some of my favorite movies ever were shot with anamorphic lenses like THE HATEFUL EIGHT, PULP FICTION, MOONLIGHT, PUNCH DRUNK LOVE and so many other great inspiring movies.
Price
So I was super excited to use this lens because this is a budget friendly anamorphic lenses. If you are in the filmmaking business you know that anamorphic lenses are very very very very expensive and being able to go out and shoot with an anamorphic lens on a budget is pretty incredible and insane. This anamorphic lens coming in at about 1200 to 1300 is definitely not extremely cheap but at the same time compared to what anamorphics cost it is an amazing price.
And it's just something about watching a movie or film that was shot on anamorphic lenses that kind of you know hits the brain with this kick of dopamine that's just not easy to explain why it's so amazing. Anamorphic lenses definitely gives a unique look and approach to filmmaking that's just uncomparable to anything else.
1.6 X Squeeze
Now also as mentioned before this lens is a 1.6 X squeeze which I personally like because I feel like the higher the squeeze the more anamorphic your film is going to look or video is going to look. Also something to mention is that I got the blue flare. Anamorphic which in hindsight I should have just got the neutral flare because I feel like the blue flare is kind of overdone in a little bit distracting and I also like my images to feel a little bit warmer but at the same time I do feel like the blue flare is a distinct element of anamorphic lenses.
A lot of people like to talk about the flares that anamorphic produces but I don't think that's the most intriguing thing about anamorphic lenses. For me I'd rather talk about the bokeh pattern that these lenses produce. Because of the squeeze Factor this anamorphic lens in general produce oval-shaped bokeh which is super unique and just like an automatic sign that something is being shot with anamorphic lens.
I'd also rather talk about the image fall off from what's in focus to what's not in focus is always super beautiful on anamorphic lenses. To me they just give off a soft and filmmaking just Airy kind of feel to the video shot with anamorphic lenses.
Distortion
And to me the biggest talking point is probably the distortion these lenses cause. If you take a look at somebody saying shot using anamorphic lenses you can noticeably see that the image looks warped like the the walls look like they're caved in or like they're folding and I feel like that's just like an amazing distinct quality about anamorphic lenses. Some people may not like it but to me I love it. The bokeh just looks swirly and nice and just really not easy to explain but when you see it and you know that's an anamorphic lamp. If anybody is familiar with the Netflix series you you can tell immediately from watching that show that is a hundred percent shot with an anamorphic lens. If you look at the bokeh, you look at the the image fall off, you look at the flares when light is pointed at the camera you can a hundred percent see that it was shot with an anamorphic lens.
Minimum Focus Distance
So first and foremost I love this lens. It is amazing lens. I love the colors it produces. I love the fact that it's an anamorphic and you get those anamorphic qualities out of this lens but I will say the one thing that I do not like at all about this lens. I don't even think it's a characteristic of just this lens but in anamorphics in general but the focal distance is just not something that I'm liking at all. For example right now I have a close Focus filter on this lens and I'm not sitting too far away from the camera but if I was to take this close Focus filter off, you can see that I am no longer in focus and I'm not too close to the camera at all. And it's at its minimum Focus distance.
That's probably my only complaint about this but again if you just get close focus filters then you can solve that but when you just squeeze those images in whatever program you use you're going to have to calculate for a lot more things and that's kind of annoying. But anyway that's gonna wrap it up for me. I hope you guys enjoyed it got something out of it. If you're not subscribed to the Channel please do me a favor hit the subscribe button it would truly and greatly be appreciated.