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.
 

Cooke Panchro/i 65mm Prototype to be at IBC 2012

65mm Cooke S4. Expect to see a 'mini' Panchro/i

version of this lens come this time next year.

Just as the 135mm is getting ready to ship, Cooke announces a prototype 65mm Panchro/i to be making an appearance at IBC 2012. This will eventually make the Panchro/i set an 8-lens set. I'm betting we'll see a Panchro/i 40mm prototype by IBC 2013, if not sooner. These guys have been really pumping up the production lines of late! They recently hired new staff to keep up with the demand.

Thought I'd throw it out there, but I kinda wish the 40mm came first and then the 65mm, but hey.

 The real question is if the Panchro/i 65mm will be great enough

to inspire a tattoo similar to the Cooke S4 65mm one above.

Zeiss 40mm Super Speed

Rumor has it, a few were made and exist in the wild. If you find one, please let me know. This might be the loch ness monster of the lens world.

Jim Frazier: Frazier Lens Advantages & Build

From American Cinematographer, Seeing is Believing by Christopher Probst (February 1999)

"This device does have a very large depth of field, but it is not infinite. The depth that is created does not break the laws of physics; it occurs because of the design of the optical relay system that is used. If you were to take a 10mm fixed-focal-length lens and put it on a camera, you'd get a certain field of view and depth of field at, say a T8 aperture. If you were to put the equivalent lens on the Frazier — which in this case would be the 14mm, which delivers about a 9.9mm field of view — you would actually have a similar depth of field. Now you may say, 'Wait a minute! If that's so, why do people talk so much about the depth of field with this lens? Why wouldn't they just rent a 10mm instead?' The reason is that with a 10mm lens, the diameter of the front element is about six inches. If you were to take a bumblebee and put it on that lens's front glass, it would only fill about five percent of your frame. Because of the Frazier system's optical configuration, when you put the bumblebee on the front of the 14mm taking lens — which is about an inch and a half in diameter — the bee will fill about half of your frame. Yes, you'd have a large depth of field, but more importantly, you're able to get objects really close to the front of the taking lens to get into macro magnifications. So in a practical sense, the Frazier system's depth of field is more available and useful.

Another problem with other lenses has to do with the entrance pupil of the lens. With a lens that has a six-inch diameter, the entrance pupil is actually some distance inside the lens. So as you bring your face in close to the lens, your nose will start to bulge and your ears do something weird with perspective distortion. With a smaller-diameter lens, the entrance pupil is still inside the lens, but at a much smaller distance [from the front]. If you look at the mathematics, it turns out that you could then bring someone's face all the way up to the lens and not see any perspective distortion. This relationship has a lot to do with how the taking lenses, the field lenses and the system have been optimized, which in this case is in the area between six inches and three feet. When you can't see the perspective, you can't tell the size of an object or the distance it's at, so a sort of optical illusion is created."

-Iain Neil (Then Panavision Executive VP of R&D/Optics)

"With the Frazier lens, macro work has never been easier. A cinematographer now has an unparalleled freedom of movement in the macro range. In fact, unlike conventional macro lenses, there is no pull-focus necessary. The camera can simply float in and out on the subjects without any loss of focus and without any distortion or curvature of field — even when the subject is almost touching the lens. This is particularly invaluable for scale model and tabletop work, where both depth and distortion are major issues. I knew from my commercial work that when you put a product close to the lens, you don't want to see this great curved field. I love playing with perspectives [and the perception of perspectives,] so I concentrated on building these units without any distortion. In my earlier prototype units, the illusion — which I knew was there — was ruined because of distortion. In commercials, clients usually don't like to see their products distorted. If the product has straight lines in it, they want to see it [photographed] with straight lines."

- Jim Frazier, ACS

"One significant aspect of the Frazier lens which may not be obvious is that the taking lenses — which also house some field lenses — are designed as sealed units. With the Frazier taking lenses, you're actually getting a taking lens plus part of what really goes in the tube of the main system. In other systems, if you stop down to a T8 or T11, or all the way down to T32, you can have a major problem with dust. If there's one little particle near an intermediate image, you could end up seeing that speck on the film. But with a sealed taking unit, you can pretty much avoid dust. Of course, you still have to keep the optical instrument clean, but at least we have avoided the most likely cause of dust showing up on the final image...

...The longer focal lengths illustrate why increased depth of field, in itself, is not the only selling point of the Frazier lens system — it's a combination of features. For situations where you may not want the object right up to the lens, but you still want the flexibility of the swivel tip, the image rotator and the larger depth of field, we've added the 85mm, a 105mm and a 135mm, which respectively deliver 60mm, 75mm and 95mm cine fields of view. These longer lenses still offer a large depth of field, but it will start at perhaps 2 to 4 feet and then go to infinity."

-Iain Neil (Then Panavision Executive VP of R&D/Optics)

Chris Carter: Film vs. Television Composition

From American Cinematographer, Elusive Truth by Christopher Probst (July 1998)

"It's interesting what a 2.35:1 composition does to dramatic weight. Things that you're used to having to force on television — like a two- or three-shot — are standard on the feature screen, which carries a much broader dramatic image. Then when you get into a close-up, it has a totally different impact although I did feel that some scenes played better close than they did in the distance, because close shots put us more into the character's stories. Rob and Ward both have such a good sense of composition that I was actually quite amazed at the fluidity and lack of on-set discussion about composition and lens sizes."

-Chris Carter, Creator of The X-Files

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

Guillermo Navarro: Swing-Shift Lenses

From American Cinematographer, Fly Girl by Andrew O. Thompson (January 1998)

The cinematographer made frequent use of Clairmont's Swing-Shift lens system, as he had on his previous project, the offbeat super-hero adventure Spawn. He found this to be particularly useful for shooting in-car conversations which required that the faces of two characters be in focus, and for lending dramatic tension to certain scenes by bringing together or pulling apart the actor's faces.

"In one sequence, Jackie is in court being arraigned on charges of cocaine possession. One shot includes both the judge behind his podium and Jackie back in the gallery seats, and we brought the shot together at the moment when he is deciding her fate. We had to swing the lenses drastically, because it's a very severe shot-- a close-to-the-lens profile of her, and the judge way back in focus."

- Guillermo Navarro, ASC

Janusz Kaminski: Lenses on Amistad

From American Cinematographer, Breaking Slavery's Chains by Stephen Pizzello (January 1998)

"The Zeiss 27mm is my favorite lens, and Steven likes it too. We also used the 20mm, 24mm, and 29mm. For closeups or exterior day shots, we'd go with the 85mm, 100mm and 135mm Zeisses. I'm not a great fan of zooms, and neither is Steven, so we didn't use those. Aside from some of the courtroom scenes, I really didn't use specific lenses to create emotions. The scenes involving the boats were so dramatic and realistic that they didn't need much help from the lenses."

- Janusz Kaminski