The New Sirui 35mm Anamorphic Lens is Fantastic

This is Sirui 35mm anamorphic lens and in this video we're going to see if this puppy is worth your pre order money and we'll also compare it to the original 50 millimeter also from SIRUI. If you just want to see a straight up comparison of this 35 to the original 50 from SIRUI jumped to this point in the video and you can check that out. But first a full disclosure. SIRUI did send me this 35 millimeter. They won't be seen this video before it goes up and I'm not being paid by them to say anything in particular.

So here's the scoop on this lens right now you can pick it up for $600 on Indiegogo have that information in the description. When it is fully available across the internet the price I believe will be around $750.

What is this thing?

Well, it is very similar to the 50 millimeter that SIRUI also announced. It’s a 1.33 times anamorphic lens which means is going to take a 16x9 aspect ratio and convert it to a 2.4:1 aspect ratio. While it's a 35 millimeter lens you're actually going to gain information and more image on the width so the height will remain the same as a 35 millimeter lens. But when it comes to the width, you're actually going to get significantly wider.

The lens covers Super 35 millimeter sensors and is available in several different mounts that will actually ship as a micro four thirds lens but you can purchase rear adapters that will convert it to mounts like the Sony E Canon EFM and the Nikon Z mount. 

Along with the lens SIRUI also sent along these little rubber focus rings. There's two in the box one for the aperture ring and one for the focus ring, which is really a nice addition to this lens.

Build quality of this lens is actually outstanding. Considering what you're spending on it.

The dampening and the friction of both the aperture and focus ring are just right. And overall it just feels like a more fine tuned version of the original 15 millimeter lens.

By the way, I've done a review of this so you can check that out in the cards or down in the description. And that brings us to the comparison of this new 35 with the original 50.

Overall the design when it comes to the body and style is very, very similar. I like this kind of theme that SIRUI is going with making kind of a lens set is really cool. Same filter thread size of 67 millimeters.

Image quality

When it comes to image quality, the lens feels and looks very similar to the 50 with a couple exceptions.

The first thing I noticed right away is that the bokeh on the 35 millimeter is much shorter. So even though it's an anamorphic lens, it's not a full 2x which I talked about in my 50 millimeter review so you're not going to get that really tall oval bokeh. It seems even less oval, which is a little unfortunate. Of course is going to look smaller at the same distance from your subject because it's a wider lens.

Color

Another interesting thing I found at least with my 35 millimeter is that it looks significantly warmer than the 50 millimeter. If you look at a side by side, the kind of leans more toward blue and magenta, whereas this guy is a little warmer which I definitely prefer, I think is a little more accurate. It doesn't shift color toward blue as much as the 50 does.

Also known as the 35 is a little softer wide open compared to the 50. This is a pretty insignificant difference. And again because of the focal length 35 millimeter I think that's kind of the reason it's easier to get a sharper 50 than the 35. But even with that this 35 is so much sharper than my other anamorphic adapters which is blows my mind. It completely smokes everything else I have.

Distortion

And for a 35 millimeter anamorphic lens. I thought their distortion was pretty doggone low. So no complaints there either. And here's an image comparison between the two different lenses. You can see kind of the difference between the 50 and the 35. Obviously the 35 is wider.

Minimum focus distance

But one thing these two lenses share is the minimum focus distance of 2.8 feet. Unfortunately, this is pretty long and I found often that I just wanted to move the camera closer but I couldn't because that minimum focus distance really kept me further back.

So if you're filming smaller objects, this could be kind of a deal breaker. We'll talk about this a little bit later.

Flares

When it comes to overall characteristics and flares in particular, I noticed the two lenses are very similar with kind of one exception. The 35 has more kind of blue to teal flares, whereas the 50 millimeter has you know, very vibrant blue. Again, we talked about color earlier how it's kind of a cooler lens overall. So something to keep in mind if you're only going to buy one of these.

Conclusion

At the end. I think there's pretty much nothing to hate about this lens given the price especially that pre order cost of 600 bucks for a 35 millimeter F1.8 anamorphic lens.

However, there are a couple of things I would love to see improved or I wish that this lens did better.

The first and biggest one for me is going to be the minimum focus distance. I don't hold this against SIRUI or the lens however, because finding an anamorphic lens with a really close focus is almost impossible.

One solution is to use what are called diopters that thread to the front of your lens and they're essentially glass elements that allow you to get closer to your subject.

So here's a shot with the 35 as close as I can get to my subject and here are some examples shots using diopters to get closer to my subject. The only thing to keep in mind with these is that you're going to start losing infinity and further out focus as you stack those onto your lens. So just keep that in mind. You may have to take these diopters on and off, depending on what kind of shot you're going for.

The other thing I would like to see SIRUI do over time is try to keep their optics looking the same when it comes to color. It could be just model to model. I don't know how consistent these lenses are from each batch. But definitely color is warmer on the 35. I liked the look of the 35. I just wish the 50 and the two of them just were the same.

Overall, I'm really thrilled to see SIRUI making such incredible optics and lenses for filmmakers at this price point. To think even a couple years ago that someday someone is going to produce a under $1,000 anamorphic lens for Super 35. It's just bonkers. And now we have two of them. And I think together they make a really interesting filmmaker option if you're going to be going out capturing something, you don't want the hassle of 2x anamorphic lenses and you just want to throw something on your camera and have a lot of fun.

So hats off to SIRUI for making something so affordable for filmmakers. I'm really excited to see what they do in the future as well if they expand this line, or if we get kind of new models and even Pro models would be kind of interesting to see. You know they double triple the costs what could they make for us with a few extra features.