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Now, I've seen fads come and go, and over the last year or so one of the biggest seems to have been anamorphic lenses for shooting video with digital SLRs, specifically old Iscorama models (as well as old C-mount lenses, but that's another fad). The prices on eBay are astonishing - £2999 or so - but no-one buys them at that price. I assume a Chinese company is, as we speak, churning out cheaper copies that are just as good but will cause the market to crash. I guess the inflated prices are in case there's someone shooting a pop music video, for example, and the producer says "get me that effect! From Star Trek! With the weird lens flare! Now!", and you don't have that filter in Adobe Premiere or whatever they use to make pop videos.

It appears that the major draw is the flare rather than the wider aspect ratio. It fascinates me because I spent a lot of time defishing fisheye images, which is a similar process although the anamorphic images are squashed horizontally rather than in a circular fashion. I wonder if there's a cheap old crappy old Soligor wideangle lens that's so distorted and crap that it will produce the same effect, hmmm?

Sorry for the lack of insight. I was struck by the workings of capitalism; people selling stuff for inflated prices that they don't want or need, to people who don't want them either so that they can sell them on again. It's almost like a metaphor for something.

Hi,

Anamorphic camera lenses were originally intended for use with film that was then projected using another anamorphic lens that undid what the camera lens did. This was in order to get a wide aspect ratio on-screen, of course.

As usual, someone showed the film back thru a standard lens, saw the odd effect, and then just had to play with that. ;P

It reminds me of the fisheye craze in the early 70's. Everyone had to have a fisheye!

Later!

Stan

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Amateur Photographer
Professional Electronics Development Engineer