Nikon Z8 with Sirui Saturn 50mm T2.9 FF Anamorphic at 1/750 sec, ~f/9.5, ISO 500.
Decades ago I had copies of The Joy of Photography and More Joy of Photography, both published by the Eastman Kodak company. One of those two books—I suspect it was the latter—had a spread about photographing with an anamorphic lens. I remember a picture of soccer players that looked like models for African folk art that features tall, skinny human figures. That odd image is the only one I still remember from those books.
Anamorphic lenses are traditionally used for making movies, where the film is made using an anamorphic lens that squeezes the image left-to-right and is then projected in the theater using one that dequeezes it to make it look normal again. The on-screen result is a wide format. There are other secondary rendering effects like distinct lens flares and oval bokeh, but since none of that is obvious in the images in this post I won’t elaborate on those here.
In recent times, now that still cameras can also record high-quality video, more and more anamorphic lenses that easily mount on normal cameras have appeared on the market for modest prices. (Real anamorphic cinema lenses are extremely expensive.) You can even get them for an iPhone. When I recently saw what seemed like a good one for a price I was willing to gamble, I picked it up.
The image resulting from an anamorphic lens in a camera, as captured, looks like this:
In the days of film, it was not easy to unsquish this. But today, it is:
Nikon Z8 with Sirui Saturn 50mm T2.9 FF Anamorphic at 1/500 sec, ~f/9.5, ISO 500.
The resulting near-panorama image has an aspect ratio of 12:5 (or 2.4:1, if you prefer). This is a lot wider than the usual 3:2 that the camera captures, and quite a bit wider than the 16:9 (or 1.78:1) of the average computer monitor. The camera, unfortunately, does not show the desqueezed image, so composition is a little tricky and will take some practice.
Nikon Z8 with Sirui Saturn 50mm T2.9 FF Anamorphic at 1/750 sec, ~f/9.5, ISO 500.
One of the things I was concerned about was the optical quality. Video is more forgiving than still photography when it comes to lens sharpness because the image is moving, so a video-oriented lens might disappoint in that regard. Based on this one outing, it seems pretty good. I’m looking forward to trying it out on a tripod.
Nikon Z8 with Sirui Saturn 50mm T2.9 FF Anamorphic at 1/750 sec, ~f/9.5, ISO 500.
The next question, of course, is “why bother?” While my initial impressions are good, one key question is whether the image quality of a 50mm anamorphic lens’ 45.4 megapixel image (stretched to 72.7 megapixels) is better (when printed large) than a spherical 31mm lens’ image cropped down to 28.4 megapixels. Information-wise, it is 45.4 megapixels vs 28.4 megapixels, but this is in terms of area. In terms of linear optical resolution, the break-even point requires 1.26 times better resolution out of the normal spherical (i.e., non-anamorphic) lens. Is my 24-120 zoom at 31mm 26% sharper than the anamorphic? I’m not sure. I’ll have to get them on a tripod and see. If the result is close to a tie, then the convenience of the zoom and autofocus certainly is a vote for just cropping a normal image.
I also need to try squishing the as-captured image vertically (which will result in improved vertical resolution) instead of stretching it horizontally (which results in degraded horizontal resolution). The information content is the same, but the files will be smaller and likely easier to compare apples-to-apples with a normal cropped image.
There are probably also scenes that lack a compelling need to desqueeze the image. Something else to play with.
Nikon Z8 with Sirui Saturn 50mm T2.9 FF Anamorphic at 1/500 sec, ~f/9.5, ISO 500.
Once I do some comparisons with a tripod, it will be interesting to see how the images compare. I suspect that I will want to do this with different types of scenes so I can compare how the zoom and the anamorphic render, especially when I look at shallow depth of field, which I did not do here. I don’t have any other lenses that are close to matching the 31mm effective width of this lens. Someday I hope to pick up a 35mm prime which would be an interesting comparison, too.
Nikon Z8 with Sirui Saturn 50mm T2.9 FF Anamorphic at 1/350 sec, ~f/9.5, ISO 500.
I really want to see what this lens does in more urban scenes with lights and buildings. The flare and bokeh will probably be the best features of this lens, and I am hoping that the distortions are mild. One of the reasons that I went for the 50mm anamorphic rather than a 35mm is because 35mm is as wide as anyone seems to make because it is starting to get optically challenging. So I figured that the 50mm would likely be sharper and have less distortion. Without buying another one, I’m not likely to know for sure.
In the end, this lens might be the most fun in those urban scenes because of its character, much like my too-often-neglected 55mm Petzval.
More to come.
4 responses to “An Anamorphic Outing”
Fascinating introduction to issues concerning a type of lens which is new to me, perhaps because I never set out to make videos. (Any need I do stumble across is adequately catered for by an iPhone.)
Pleased you added the Why bother? paragraph even if the answer left me perplexed. Is your key goal to be able to go large when printing panorama-type images? (If so, would the comparison with a ‘normal’ lens shift a little towards stitched multiple exposures?)
I’m intrigued by what you use to desquish/desqueeze your files. Is this a specific option in your software?
Having said all that, I really like your first and latest images.
Thanks for commenting, Rob! I’ll start with the answer to the easy question: I use Affinity Photo to desqueeze the image. Under the “Document” menu there is a “Resize Document” option. This is the option that you would use to resample the image to change the resolution. So, if you have a 6000 x 4000 pixel image and want to make a smaller 1500 x 1000 pixel image, you could use the dialog box that appears to do this. Or, you can increase the resolution to 9000 x 6000 using the same option. There are other ways to do that, for example when exporting from Lightroom. The trick here, though, is that you can unclick the (usually-clicked by default) option to keep the proportions the same and you can then resize each axis independently. In my case, images start as 8256 x 5504 and I resize them into 13210 x 5504. (And, as mentioned, I will probably try 8256 x 3440 in the future.) Photoshop can do the same thing in a similar manner.
As for “Why Bother?” there are a few reasons. The key thing, I think, is that it lets me capture a panorama in a single click. (It admittedly remains to be seen whether it is actually a higher-quality panorama.) Yes, I can stitch, but nothing can be moving, so that certainly wouldn’t work well for a field of flowers blowing in the wind or people walking around in a street scene or waves at the beach or a thousand other situations. The second thing, which also remains to be seen, is whether the unique rendering (horizontal streaking flare and oval bokeh) will make it special. I’m looking forward to trying it out in Tokyo in a few months for that reason. And, finally, it is kind of fun.
Many thanks, Jim, for a very full response.
I now understand fully the ‘expansion’ process, and you are absolutely right about moving items in a panorama (or pixel-shifted high res image). I have got caught out by the latter more often than I should.
I get bit during focus stacking a lot. Same problem.