I always wanted such a system. I was always asking myself why nobody did a higher quality anamorphic adapter as the Panasonic la7200. I have given up on the anamorphic look because the different solution had gone way out of price, or they were completely impractical. It was more like, hey look I have dome one shot that looks like a movie shot. The La7200 adapter was done in the days of SD, but people were getting some good result on apsc sensor camera. I don't have the money to buy a new set of lens, but a good adapter at a good price, sure I will be very interested.

@apefos Good luck and I really hope it works out! I will buy one for sure if the IQ is at least equal to LA7200.

Hi all, thanks for following the project and encouraging me!

i got my hands in first batch of lenses (14 units), tests will start tomorrow, now it is night and i am a little tired, my mind did not stop thinking about lenses and body design these last days.

first tests will be: will the squeeze works? will i get the 1.33x? will i get focus? will focus be something about 1 meter to infinite? will i get oval bokeh? will i get horizontal flare? will the image quality be good? will i make it work with all the important focal length lenses?

there is a photo showing the lenses (as you can see i erased some informations at the side of the lenses):

@apefos

Here is a tip you might find useful, I have not tried it but it should work and besides won't cost you much.

It is vital to align the cylindrical lenses very precisely to avoid distortion and lack of sharpness. A cheap pointing laser (< $10) shining through a cylinder lens will form a straight line so if you make simple rig with clamps and a screen you can mark the projected line on the screen for each lens, then you will know the positions for precise alignment.

Good Luck

I was on tests from early morning until now.

I started with the cheap single element adapter. I found the squeeze factor for HV20 camcorder. it works and it is possible to do the 1.33x The chromatic aberration is very small and can be easily corrected in computer in most editing softwares, if the adapter works i will do a tutorial about this. The problem is i did not get good focus yet. i did some new lenses design keeping the squeeze factor and pursuing focus. i will let the drafts mature this weekend and monday i will go to the optical lab again. Image Quality and sharpness will emerge when i get focus. There is a chance the focus not work, so the cheap version can shutdown, but i will do my best to make it work.

I found some rules in the behavior of the horizontal flare, i could see it larger and smaller, but it needs more tests.

I did not found the behavior of oval bokeh yet, i could see it, not so much pronounced, but it was there, needs more tests.

Probably the horizontal flares and oval bokeh will be a result from the 1.33x squeeze design when it get focus and good IQ. This squeeze factor can be done with different designs but the problem is some designs needs larger glass and the difficult in grinding increases and the risks of glass breaking become an issue. i will try to improve these artifacts only if i can keep the cheap route, but it seems the oval bokeh and horizontal flare will be a result from the best 1.33x squeeze design when it reaches the good IQ.

i could do some zoom in and out in the camcorder, but zoom range decreases, after finishing design i can say the possible zoom range.

I did some tests with some strong backlight and probably the cheap adapter will need multicoating. this will increase the price a little. When i was talking in the @slrmagic topic my expectation was to do this cheap version spending 50 usd. slrmagic did an analises and they found it would be 80 usd considering my worktime. If multicoating become a must this will increase to 110 usd for manufacturing costs without making any money.

But remember: all can go wrong if i cannot find good focus, so lets wait to see the behavior of new lenses design in next week.

as i said making anamorphic is easy but quality is tricky : ) even if your cheap system had of worked i still think it is crazy that you become a charity. why would you want to loose money making and selling unless you are very rich. if you work hard you need to be paid. it is very nice if people think you are fantastic human being and very generous but you still need to eat food and pay the electric bills : )

With 100 self cost, you's sell it at best at $300. :-)

@Ralph_B I can consider think about it, but only after finish developing the anamorphic adapter. The principle is the same, the only difference is the anamorphic adapter is cilindrical and the wide angle adapter is spherical. Probably they can share the same optical system formula.

But i have a question: why people would buy a wide angle adapter for the 20mm pancake instead of buying another prime? there are the 14mm 2.5, 12mm 1.6, 17mm 1.8, 10mm 2.8, 17.5mm 0.95, 14mm 2.0 and also the APS and M4/3 ultra wide zoom lenses...

I think if i can do the wide angle adapter it would not be so cheap to make it a better option just considering the price. The 14mm 2.5 is selling for 167 usd on ebay, the big manufacturers can make prime lenses in lots and lots of units and sell large volume and they have all the machines and tools and professionals working for them, so they can make things cheaper.

sometimes i start thinking this Anamorphic Adapter Development is a high risk work, similar to 35mm dof adapter because the big manufacturers can come with a cheaper solution. But i think the anamorphic adapter will survive in the market longer than 35mm adapters because they will not be replaced as 35mm adapters was replaced by dslr.

What motivates me most is some kind of diy virus. My intuition and knowledge keep saying: you can do that and i cant get stop until end with all possibilities.

@Ralph_B

Ok, I understood. As you can read on my previous posts i am trying to improve the IQ in corners and cancel the chromatic aberration. I am testing different lens power, lens curves, lens positions. the main optical formula i am using is F1V1+F2V2=0 If the anamorphic adapter works i can turn it into a wide angle adapter. But there is an issue probably i cannot avoid. When you add some glass in front of a photo lens you need to stop down a little to avoid blooming, glow and low contrast. Even if the adapter reach a perfect optical system, maybe it will need to stop down one or two fstops to get rid of that things. For the anamorphic adapter, work with f2.0 or f2.8 will be great, but it would not make sense for the wide angle adapter. Lets wait to see how the project will end.

@RRRR @Ralph_B What i can do is after finish the anamorphic adapter, do a wide angle version of it, because if it works good in the cilindrical way it will be ok in the spherical way also. but there is some issues in the wide angle adapter we just would see if it get made: the barrel/pincushion distortion.

ok, i finished the draft for the achromatic anamorphic adapter for dslr in some aspects, others needs tests. lens positions and lens curves are ok, i found the best optimization for increase image quality in corners and to minimize the chromatic aberration.

now i just need to try different lens power to find a good focus range and to find the 1.33x squeeze for dslr. the experiments i did until now narrowed the possibilities to a smaller range in lenses power and it helps a lot. what i need to do is a best balance between focus range and corner quality, because they have a relationship. the squeeze factor have a relationship with the horizontal chromatic aberration so it needs some attention also. Maybe the squeeze design can be done in different ways to try to improve the corner quality also, this answer will come with the new tests.

Money and worktime started to become a problem. I will need to do more 18 lenses to try the dslr adapter so i did an important and difficult decision. If i continue developing the dslr adapter i cannot make camcorder adapter units to sell. So I will put my efforts in the cheap camcorder adapter first. i already found the 1.33x squeeze factor for it and i just need to find a good focus. it will be more easy and less expensive to do. And also to manufacture some units to sell will be possible if i stop developing the dslr adapter for a while. If it sell i can use the money to continue developing the dslr adapter.

As you can feel in my words i strongly believe these adapters will work. But there are chances everything shutdown. Time will tell.

@Vitaliy_Kiselev I am thinking about the final price. Your sugestion shows i deserve something. i dont want it to be expensive, but to make money will be very important to the project survive and find the best quality for dslr. An idea i got is to double the manufacturing price and include ebay/paypal fees and shipping charge. This way i can sell one and build two (if it works!).

@ apefos

Thanks for your efforts. Look forward to seeing some footage shot with your adapters!

@RRRR ok, so i will wait to see if it works and also the final manufacturing cost to fix the price.

@RRRR @Ralph_B the wide angle adapter will take more time, please do not wait for it by now, i will delay it until everything become ok in this first project. also i need to test if the optical system will increase the focal lenght a little bit or not, because if it increase, the wide angle adapter will not make sense. to get focus maybe the focal length will narrow a little, needs tests.

last experimentation reports: i found the optical system resultant power that allows the good focus range in photo lenses which have the minimum focus distance below 0.3m / one foot. lots of great lenses can focus this distance. Its a very interesting behavior, the adapter optical power causes some kind of compression in the focus and the photo lens ring focus from one meter to infinite just rotating from 0.3 meter to 0.4 meter in the focus ring.