@stonebat Thanks! I shoot anamorphic lenses myself, but many shooters will appreciate the cost savings and ease of use of cropping. Also, we all have times when we have to mix cropped and squeezed footage. Soft and hard-mattes were discussed at http://www.personal-view.com/talks/discussion/comment/10478#Comment_10478

@stonebat, This is a great resource. Many anamorphic shooters end up intercutting some cropped clips with the anamorphic footage. Extreme closeups, lowlight situations or special visual effects like fisheye shots call for non-anamorphic adapters. I have been too lazy to get this table done. Now i have it printed and laminated ready for the battles.

That fake anamorphic flare filter... Wow

Prolly 20mm f1.7 would be the weakest link, but it's the cheapest option at the focal length at f1.7.

I'm hopeful. One day Samyang or somebody will make 19mm f1.4 lens for m43... at cheap price.

@shian how do you make the fake anamorpic flare to give different color streaks?

got it, thank you, very nice work by the way

@fatpig - the details are on the vimeo page, but yes, except for 'Love or War' which is a feature I shot on the GH2 which is in post right now.

People are blown away by the GH2. So I buy a GH2, and shoot one short with it, someone from that set raves about it to a friend, who calls me and asks to see footage, then I get hired to shoot their film, and then the cycle continues, until you get a call to shoot a feature, and then the next thing you know you're shooting the opening titles to a studio film on the RED, and so on. The budgets on the shorts are always very small, otherwise I would shoot with a RED, only because it's so much easier to do so. I'm constantly fighting the limitations of the GH2, which is an extra battle I'd like to not have. BUT it sure beats shooting on a fixed lens video cam. The more I use it, the more I'm aware of it's limitations in what I'm trying to do, but it's still the best camera I've ever OWNED, and the best DSLR I've ever shot with.

There should be more imdb credits going live soon from "Seeing Other People", "Love or War", and "What Lies Between Us", and as one of the producers I just worked with put it, I'm quite possibly creating a new production crossbreed - the Cinematographer/Colorist, as the credits that I will getting on all of those projects will be for both shooting and grading the project. So the look of my footage is a combination of factors, the camera, my lighting, and the grading.

At 16:9, I like 14mm, 25mm, and 50mm. At 2.35:1 cropping without using anamorphic lens, I like 11mm, 17.5mm, and 35mm. There are a couple of drawbacks or characteristics to this approach.

The wider lenses would give deeper DOF. If the lenses are fast, it wouldn't be a showstopper. But fast lense ain't cheap. E.g. crazy fast 0.95.

Usually camera lenses have short throw toward infinity. Using wider lens implies focusing closer to infinity which requires more precision control.

Thanks for the info. That was written before 12mm 1.6 was available ;)

BTW some Chinese company is working on 35mm 0.95. Does m43 need such lens? Sure why not.

I like taking 4:3 photos from GH2. It helps capturing more vertical framing for candid style. I mean... who would like headless portraits? Getting familiar with 4:3 photo helps this anamorphic cropping trick.

Let's say one likes Vimeo videos taken by GH1/2 + 35mm + 1.33x anamorphic lens. Simply dividing the focal length by 1.33 gives 26.3mm that is just a tad bit longer than 25mm.

First draw the anamorphic horizontal lines on GH1/2's LCD protector. Have 25mm lens on the camera. Without pointing the camera, eyeball the imaginary 4:3 frame as if using 35mm lens. Then use the camera and do the real framing from the same standing place. The anamorphic box on the camera's LCD would look very close to 33% wider than the imaginary frame. Easy huh?

Here's a list of such mapping. Divide by 1.33 then make a bit wider to accomodate the difference between 4:3 ratio's 2x crop and 16:9 ratio's 1.83 crop.

• 85mm -> 58mm
• 50mm -> 35mm
• 35mm -> 25mm
• 24mm -> 17.5mm
• 18mm -> 12mm

Isn’t it looking pretty?

Simply dividing focal length by anamorphic ratios isn't quite right though. It only changes the horizontal FOV. When dealing with subjects, the vertical ratio is still the same, it's not like switching to a lens with a shorter focal length.

When I approach anamorphic shooting, which usually includes people in the shot, I'm still the same distance away from the subject, attachment or not, as they still need to physically fill the vertical frame the same. However, I do have a different composition.

To me anamorphics are more compositional tools than focal length adjusters. Although I do appreciate if you're comparing larger sensor (FF/APSC) matte cropping to mFT anamorphics the similarities start to converge.

@stonebat might it be possible to add "some" distortion" by changing away from square pixcels? It would stretch uniformly, but it might bring some similarities to the anamorphic footage? I don't know if there are any plugins or techniques that can distort footage in a way that would more closely approximate anamorphic glass?

Oval bokeh with DIY paper cutout and cropping in post works rather well with my 50 1.4. I rather add flares in post to control them better.