Angie & Cooke, Anamorphic Announcements for the Pubescent

Yes, it is true! After IBC 2012, in the fashion of a gossipy 14 year old girl, Angeniuex launched a vague yet attention grabbing tweet deep into the twitter-sphere, ensuring a tease to any glass head. Angeniuex announced an announcement at NAB 2013 regarding anamorphic zooms. I am going to take this time to announce that when they make their announcement, I will be announcing how I feel about said announcement on this blog.

This was so like that time when Jessica tweeted about how she was thinking about possibly considering going with Hunter to the spring formal.

Not to be outdone in the uninformative, vague, yet buzz-building category, Cooke took the more traditional approach to making their anamorphic intentions known. They sent a friend. According to Cooke/ZGC friend, author, and self-publisher Jon Fauer, A.S.C., reliable sources have told him Cooke is developing their own line of Anamorphic prime lenses.

This is even better than that time Jessica sent her friend Beth to tell David that Jessica wanted to know if Hunter was going to ask her to the spring formal. 


Despite lack of photographs, prototypes, 3D renderings, artist sketches, or even just a list of technical specs or timeline, it's good to know anamorphics are on the mind of these lens making masters.

Either way, the anamorphic market has long been dominated by Panavision, Hawk and other vintage sets. It's good to see some options coming from Cooke, Angie, and Zeiss. And despite being a HUGE Cooke fan, I am perhaps more excited to hear about anamorphic zooms. If there has ever been just one class of lenses that has been completely under serviced, it would be anamorphic zooms.
 

Oliver Wood: Anamorphic Close Focus

From ICG Magazine, Watership Down by Pauline Rogers (May 2000)

With most of U-571 planned for two cameras-- handheld, with occasional use of Steadicam-- Wood opted for Cooke S4 lenses and Arri cameras...

... Although known as an ardent supporter of filming features in the anamorphic format, Wood quickly realized that Super 35 would better serve this waterbound picture. "It was logical," he proclaims. "When it says 'close focus' in anamorphic you are usually at two or three feet-- try that in a submarine. We needed the one-foot distance for the confinements of the subs."

Karl Walter Lindenlaub: Deeeep DoF

From American Cinematographer, This Old House by David E. Williams (August 1999)

The filmmakers did draw inspiration from another ghostly classic of the same era: The Innocents (1961), which was shot by Freddie Francis, BSC.

"It was beautifully photographed in black-and-white anamorphic, and has amazing depth of field. They lit everything very hard, shooting at T11, so they didn’t often have to use diopters. We couldn’t do that today, because of the way we use soft light. I later spoke to Freddie Francis’s operator on that film, Ronnie Taylor [BSC], who was our B-camera operator when we shot our exteriors in England. He explained how Freddie had used graduated filters on both sides of the frame to keep the walls dark, and how the actors even wore sunglasses between takes"

- Karl Walter Lindenlaub, ASC, BVK

John Toll: Super35 vs Anamorphic

From American Cinematographer, The War Within by Stephen Pizzello (February 1999)

"We chose straight anamorphic over Super 35 because I don't really like the idea of having an optical step at the end of the answer-print process. I want to know that what we're seeing during dailies is definitely what we're going to get in our original neg prints. Terry and I had always planned that this would be a widescreen picture because we wanted to see the characters within their environments; after all, that's the major focus of the story. "

- John Toll, ASC

John Schwartzman: Anamorphic Lens Flares

From American Cinematographer, When Worlds Collide by David E. Williams (July 1998)

Interestingly, anamorphic's inherent lens-flare effect which some argue is a prime reason not to use the format actually became an encouraged style element on Armageddon.

"Some people hate flares and some people love them. I tend to fall into the Jan De Bont [ASC] school: I find them interesting and beautiful depending on the source of light giving you the flare. A fluorescent light burn obviously isn't as interesting as a very small, hot specular kick, but I like to use flares to transition in or out of a scene, or to heighten the sense of energy in a shot. It's something to be used as a tool, and either added or taken away depending on your needs."

- John Schwartzman, ASC

"Flares are so cool that we even imitated them in some of our visual effects sequences, like when the shuttles fly past the camera on their way to the asteroid. There are lights flaring out all over the place in those shots."

- Micheal Bay

John Schwartzman: Custom Anamorphic Lenses

From American Cinematographer, When Worlds Collide by David E. Williams (July 1998)

Optics engineer Dan Sasaki, who works at Panavision's corporate headquarters located in Woodland Hills, California, modified Schwartzman's E- and C-series anamorphic lenses to focus much closer than they normally would.

"Many American Cinematographer readers probably don't realize that you can't just put any lens on any camera and expect it to work flawlessly at all focus distances and f-stops. Each one has its own sweet spot, and you not only have to know where that spot is, but that you can move it around; it's not set in stone. Richard Mosier, my first A.C., spent three weeks with Dan working on the astigmatizers and the front anamorphasizers on these lenses, optimizing each and every lens for our use. For example, we thought we'd be generally using our 135mm E-series lens at about 8 feet, so why not maximize the performance of the lens at that distance with a stop of T4.5? Dan is a genius with lenses, and he kept us up and running throughout the shoot."

- John Schwartzman, ASC

David Mullen: Anamorphic & Resolving Latitude

A Written Response to a Question Regarding A Quote by John Schwartzman, ASC on Anamorphic Negative Size and Shadow Detail Latitude (May 2009)

The Question (written by Ryan Patrick O'Hara):

Hello, David Mullen.

We've met briefly on a few occasions, such as the ASC open house and etc. I always try to save my questions for the good ones, and today I think I've found a good one for ya.

I was recently reading the July 1998 issue of American Cinematographer, and I came upon the article for the best film ever, Armageddon... haha! Despite the film, the article by David E. Williams was quite good and a wonderful read! In the article, Micheal Bay and DP John Schwartzman, ASC discussed using Super 35 on The Rock, and how they were not happy with the process, liking true anamorphic widescreen better. This made me very happy as I am in love with true anamorphic origination.

However, in their brief dissertation on the anamorphic medium, Schwartzman made a comment regarding an advantage of anamorphic which I was unaware. According to Schwartzman, the larger negative improves latitude in the shadow detail. I am a very young cinematographer, so I apologize if this is a well known fact, but for me, I was completely unaware, and confused on how this happens.

Besides the differences in lens characteristics, I thought shooting the same cut of film stock whether it be in 8mm, 16mm or 35mm had the same characteristics such as latitude, speed ASA/ISO, color rendition, grain structure, etc. The only major difference being, when projected
the resolution and apparent size of the grain structure is obviously lacking, the smaller the negative.

To make a long winded thought process come to an end, does a larger negative size increase latitude of a film stock? The only thing I can think of is that Anamorphic is known to have monster flares... perhaps it is the bouncing and refracting of light inside anamorphic lenses which cause a slight "flash" effect (around 10%?), raising the latitude in shadow detail?

Here is the quote:

Quote:

From American Cinematographer, When Worlds Collide by David E. Williams (July 1998) Though Schwartzman and Bay expressed enthusiasm for the Super 35 process while shooting The Rock, the theatrical prints were a bit of a letdown for both men. "The drag about Super 35 is the grain and its 'optical' feeling. We did about 30 ENR-treated prints on The Rock to keep some of the contrast. Those were shown in major cities, but the other prints lost a lot of snap. The film looked good for Super 35, but we were still working with this tiny negative." - Micheal Bay "What became very apparent to me was that Super 35 is not just an optical process that makes the grain more apparent; the grain is also bigger because it's enlarged so much during projection. You're getting boned on both ends. The beauty of anamorphic is that there is no intermediate optical process. If you like your dailies, you're going to love your release print. The larger negative also gives you greater shadow detail and greater latitude, so even though I was shooting deeper stops in 'Scope, I felt I was using [relatively] less light to get more image. On Conspiracy Theory, I was doing very large night exteriors in New York City, and I needed to be working at least a T4 or 4.5 for them to look good. But that didn't mean I had to light everything to that exposure. If I could get the lenses to that range, I found that the level of shadow detail I could get in the darker areas was quite extraordinary. One of the things I explained to Michael on Armageddon was that for shuttle interior scenes, I was going to be shooting at a T4.5. I might only have a T2.8 on the actors' faces, but he'd be able to read them beautifully even though they would be underexposed by a stop-and-a-half. The faces wouldn't be muddy, just dark. I was able to do that simply because of the resolving power you get with anamorphic's big negative." - John Schwartzman, ASC

So can shooting 5219 on anamorphic yield greater shadow latitude then shooting the same scene with the same stats (shutter, lighting, T-stop, etc) on Spherical lenses? Does shooting 5219 yield greater shadow latitude then shooting 7219?

Thanks for your time!

Best,
- Ryan


The Answer by David Mullen, ASC:

"Depends on how you define "latitude" -- larger negatives capture more fine detail with less grain, so you have more flexibility in making corrections before grain kicks in, and in softer muddier light, the larger negative still resolves detail. Plus a larger negative will differentiate between an area made up of tiny bits of color, like a field of flowers or even fleshtones -- smaller negatives, because they capture less information, tend to reduce fine gradations of color into a single color. I remember seeing a 70mm print of "Far and Away" (shot in 65mm) and there were subtle shades of pinks and golds in warm colors, colors I hadn't quite seen before in 35mm.

But in terms of actual dynamic range and contrast, technically the size of the negative doesn't matter, but again, by dint of capturing more fine detail and subtle variations, you preserve information with a larger negative that may drop away or blur in a smaller negative, giving the impression of more depth to the shadows. Plus if you shot in Super-16 or Super-35 and did the conversion to a 35mm sound format using an optical printer, as was done until recently, you did have contrast build-up from duping, which did lose dynamic range.

So it's sort of a yes and no answer -- if your recording format has more resolution, it picks up more texture and variation in detail, contrast, and color, then dark and bright areas near going black or white will appear to have more "life" to them and thus give the impression of containing more dynamic range.

Plus you have to factor in that both film and digital pick up shadow information in the bottom end, the noise floor or murky grainy level, and if that noise/grain is reduced because you used a larger negative (or a sensor with less noise) then more of that low-end information is usable in the final color-correction. So less noise/grain can give the impression of creating more dynamic range because more of the range is actually usable."

- David Mullen, ASC

John Schwartzman: Anamorphic & Resolving Latitude?

From American Cinematographer, When Worlds Collide by David E. Williams (July 1998)

Though Schwartzman and Bay expressed enthusiasm for the Super 35 process while shooting The Rock, the theatrical prints were a bit of a letdown for both men.

"The drag about Super 35 is the grain and its 'optical' feeling. We did about 30 ENR-treated prints on The Rock to keep some of the contrast. Those were shown in major cities, but the other prints lost a lot of snap. The film looked good for Super 35, but we were still working with this tiny negative."

- Micheal Bay

"What became very apparent to me was that Super 35 is not just an optical process that makes the grain more apparent; the grain is also bigger because it's enlarged so much during projection. You're getting boned on both ends. The beauty of anamorphic is that there is no intermediate optical process. If you like your dailies, you're going to love your release print. The larger negative also gives you greater shadow detail and greater latitude, so even though I was shooting deeper stops in 'Scope, I felt I was using [relatively] less light to get more image.

On Conspiracy Theory, I was doing very large night exteriors in New York City, and I needed to be working at least a T4 or 4.5 for them to look good. But that didn't mean I had to light everything to that exposure. If I could get the lenses to that range, I found that the level of shadow detail I could get in the darker areas was quite extraordinary. One of the things I explained to Michael on Armageddon was that for shuttle interior scenes, I was going to be shooting at a T4.5. I might only have a T2.8 on the actors' faces, but he'd be able to read them beautifully even though they would be underexposed by a stop-and-a-half. The faces wouldn't be muddy, just dark. I was able to do that simply because of the resolving power you get with anamorphic's big negative."

- John Schwartzman, ASC

"You just have so much more resolution in anamorphic, and the dupes look great. That's why I wanted to use it even though I had to give something up in the lenses. I like the depth and close-focus effects you can get with spherical lenses, but the sacrifice was well worth it."

- Micheal Bay

Schwartzman points out, however, that Bay's definition of "close-focus" is an extreme one:

"What he means is that he can't take a 75mm anamorphic lens and focus it down to 11 inches. He considers the 17.5mm close-focus Primo to be a 'normal' lens. On The Rock, when Ed Harris was giving his speeches, the camera was literally 11 inches from his face. Most cinematographers would consider the 180mm anamorphic lens at seven feet to be close we were routinely working where there were no more measurement markings, at about 4¹/2 to 5 feet. And that is where camera assistants do not want to live."

- John Schwartzman, ASC

Peter Menzies Jr: Anamorphic Lens Flares

From American Cinematographer, A Few Bad Men by Jay Holben (July 1999)

"Some people think of lens flares as a photographic fault, but we used them as a motif. There are a lot of shots in General's Daughter that have huge flares running through them. I love the way that light bounces around in anamorphic lenses. When a point of light is out of focus, you get these wonderful soft oval blobs in the background, and when it's sharp, you get these amazing long flares running through the frame. If someone walks in front of the light, the flare disappears and then pops back on again. It's very interesting to me to watch that kind of imagery-- it's very real and intense."

- Peter Menzies Jr., ASC

Matthew Leonetti: Telephoto Lenses

Discussing Panavision's anamorphic C-series lenses used on Star Trek Insurrection:

"For scenes set on Ba'ku, we used some really long lenses-- up to 600mm and 800mm--because they give everything a bit more sparkle and the images are prettier. Just to do a closeup in anamorphic, you have to use a 180mm to get in tighter, but most of the movie was shot with 50mm, 75mm, 180mm, and 400mm lenses."