Shooting stills with Anamorphic lenses

Nisah Cheatham

I think a few people are waiting to hear the answer to this question, but no one is apparently shooting stills with anamorphic lenses. I've been equally as curious. 🤷

Sarbajit Chakraborty

I just am waiting for the lens to arrive. I got one from Amazon to give it a try, so if I don't like it, I can return it! But will share the results!

Ken Deckinger

Hi Jeet! :-) Cool idea. I don't have any experience in this, but in my opinion, I think your photos would look amazing with an anamorphic lens. I always feel like your shots have that cinematic look already, so this would probably just help them and emphasize it!

Sarbajit Chakraborty

I just uploaded a few photos into my gallery.

Things I like:

1. The aspect ratio - I don't know why, but the aspect ratio for anamorphic lenses is somehow more pleasing. Just my personal opinion.
2. New way of seeing things - it's just a new toy for me and that itself is just fun for me!
3. The lens output quality - I have found that there are specific lens manufacturers that I like the colour coming straight from the lens. Fuji native lenses, Viltrox, and now Sirui. I don't like Sigma!

Things I didn't like:
1. The lens is manual focus - This was the cheapest of the anamorphic lenses, and since this is an experiment, I got a manual focus lens. Makes it difficult for street photography
2. The viewfinder image - unless you add external monitors X-H2 cannot natively desqueeze. So the picture looks odd on the camera
3. Just that it needs adjustment - The frame that you capture is wider than what you are used to, but not longer. That is difficult to get used to.
4. Portrait orientation is out the window - the major advantage of this is for landscape orientation. So your pictures are not going to be Instagram worthy

Nisah Cheatham

@[Sarbajit Chakraborty](185b0ac5-48af-471d-98e2-3c6a6602decc) Eagerly awaiting your assessment! 😎

Kristian Pal

@[Sarbajit Chakraborty](185b0ac5-48af-471d-98e2-3c6a6602decc) I'm looking forward to seeing your results. I think the greatest challenge is that the "cinematic look" is not overwhelming everything else.

Sarbajit Chakraborty

@[Ken Deckinger](c3048578-7544-410e-a042-d00e6ec6333e) I went out yesterday with one! I have yet to look at it post processing, so fingers crossed!

Ken Deckinger

@[Sarbajit Chakraborty](185b0ac5-48af-471d-98e2-3c6a6602decc) I'm excited to see!!!!

Ken Deckinger

@[Sarbajit Chakraborty](185b0ac5-48af-471d-98e2-3c6a6602decc) I just looked at your profile's photo gallery. Man, I LOVE those. What lens is that? I want to get one now.

Sarbajit Chakraborty

@[Ken Deckinger](c3048578-7544-410e-a042-d00e6ec6333e) it's Sirui 50mm f.18 w/ 1.33x anamorphic. It's specifically blue flare, not neutral, and manual focus only. They have a Saturn series which is a bit more expensive, but has neutral flare options. They also have an autofocus series available for 20mm and 40mm focal lengths.

Ken Deckinger

@[Sarbajit Chakraborty](185b0ac5-48af-471d-98e2-3c6a6602decc) awesome. Found it! https://amzn.to/3RmdM3I

Nisah Cheatham

@[Sarbajit Chakraborty](185b0ac5-48af-471d-98e2-3c6a6602decc) Nice work! Thanks for the update and breakdown. I didn't think about a few of those "things I didn't like", but yeah the desqueezing in-camera (or lack thereof) would be annoying.

Which leads me to something for @[Ken Deckinger](c3048578-7544-410e-a042-d00e6ec6333e) and team - when clicked on to see a bigger size, wide photos get cropped here on BPH. Also - they aren't really that much bigger.

Ken Deckinger

@[Nisah Cheatham](cf53a09d-1eb6-45e0-b529-06e3bf21aaf4) Ah! That's a bug. Thanks for telling me. Mind giving me a screenshot so I can see it? Thank you!!!!!!

Will Pratney

@[Sarbajit Chakraborty](185b0ac5-48af-471d-98e2-3c6a6602decc) Hi Sarbajit - thank you so much for sharing!
My favorite aspect ratio in film is 239 (W) x 100 (H), aka 2.39:1. It's IMO the perfect ratio for big screen to immerse the viewer fully in the material being presented; any wider and they have to begin to look left and right to see what's going on, and any higher and they visually step out of the immersive experience, visually comprehending the entire frame. The jump from 2.35 to 2.39 is significant, because the latter better correlates to the way the viewer experiences life visually (again my opinion). For what it's worth, here is how it and a few other popular aspect ratios compare to 16:9:
4:3 = 12:9
3:2 = 13.5:9
16:9
2.39:1 = 21.51:9

I, too, considered getting the Sirui 50mm anamorphic to shoot stills with (as well as video). I think one of the draws of anamorphic is that you can technically shoot in a normal FOV, but once de-squeezed end up with the practical width of a wide-angle FOV.
Some of the cons of the Sirui 50mm anamorphic I found however in my research were:
- weak bokeh
- vignetting on some cameras
- not sharp at edges
- has some barrel distortion
I like the color of the flares and overall color, though. And achieving a true anamorphic ratio at such an affordable price is of course a big draw. Thanks for posting your likes and dislikes with it, and sharing some of your work using it with us.

Sarbajit Chakraborty

@[Will Pratney](403c4019-f334-4e7b-8a59-eac48a4324bc) I have not been able to try out the bike of the lens yet. I would have expected with a minimum aperture of 1.8, it would be good. I will say the 2:1 ratio is something that I'm enjoying.

As for the vignetting, I have not noticed that, though, I have primarily hovered around f4-f8 range