What is an Anamorphic Lens?
Anamorphic lenses can capture both horizontal and vertical information in a frame. However, they can capture much wider footage horizontally, compressing it onto the sensor. This allows for a much wider field of view than traditional lenses, which, when ‘desqueezed’ gives videographers the widescreen cinema look.
What’s even cooler is that anamorphic lenses can be used on both full-frame and crop-sensor cameras. So, if you’re looking to get that signature anamorphic look, you don’t necessarily need to invest in a new camera body.
The only downside is that traditionally anamorphic lenses have been expensive. Sirui Anamorphic lenses have broken that mould, and Sirui have created a high-performing and budget-friendly Anamorphic range.
What are the benefits of an Anamorphic lens
An anamorphic lens has a lot of benefits. The main one is the ability to shoot in widescreen. Compressing the image horizontally onto the sensor allows for a widescreen capture. This preserves resolution when shooting for cinema or widescreen aspect ratios, as you do not need to crop the image to attain the required aspect ratio.
Anamorphic lenses offer a unique look, including flares and oval bokeh. Both give the footage a cinematic look which is synonymous with higher-end productions.
How does an Anamorphic lens work?
An anamorphic lens is a type of lens that captures a wide aspect ratio on film or digital sensors. These lenses are used in cinematography and still photography to give images a unique look.
Anamorphic lenses have a unique optical design that allows them to capture a wider field of view than traditional lenses. This is accomplished by using a special barrel distortion that compresses the image horizontally.
The anamorphic look is often characterized by horizontal flares, oval-shaped bokeh, and increased depth of field. Many filmmakers and photographers believe that the anamorphic look lends images a certain “cinematic” quality.
If you’re interested in giving your images an anamorphic look, you’ll need to purchase an anamorphic lens.
Are there different types of Anamorphic lenses?
Anamorphic lenses come in a few different varieties,
The most common anamorphic lenses are 1.33x, 1.6x, and 2x, and these refer to how much the lens squeezes the horizontal image onto the sensor. For instance, a lens with a 1.6x squeeze ratio will capture 1.6 x the width of the focal length. If a 50mm 1.6x lens is used, the vertical focal length will be 50mm, and the horizontal focal length will be equivalent to 31.25mm.
The Sirui range includes both 1.33x and 1.6x anamorphic lenses as well as a 1.25X adapter allowing for up to 2x on the 1.6x lens range.