AuthorPostedbyAnamorphic Stills.
Anamorphic Stills With Ditto Models.
Ditto is a new agency started by Martin Callingham, whom some of you will know, as it was he that started Mustard Models a number of moons ago. Well now he and senior booker Kat have started Ditto and so I was delighted to reconnect with them both in order to collaborate to work up some fresh concepts for image making and create some home page imagery for the ditto web site.
I have become interested by a new generation of Anamorphic Lenses that have become available in recent months. I won’t go into the technicalities of what anamorphic images are here other than to say they capture an image that is squeezed through the use of an anamorphic oval block within the lens. They have traditionally been used in cinema production, and in the past been big heavy manual focus affairs that are difficult to use and very, very expensive ( a used 4 lens set of Arri Master anamorphic primes will run you £100,000+VAT).
This is changing with a number of Chinese manufacturers producing new designs that are much more compact and affordable.
Whilst they are still generally manual focus the smaller size makes them much more capable for use in stills image making as well as moving image. A couple of very recent new releases have tamed some of the crazier distortions that these lenses whilst retaining some of the qualities like oval bokeh and the occasional horizontal flare typical of anamorphic lens can give you that make them, in my opinion, a better starting point for still image production for clients.
So what’s the point?
Well I like them as they introduce a different look to the rather clinical effects that modern digital sensors will give you out of the gate and allowing me a great starting point. I am looking at how to achieve a distinct and memorable look that is reminiscent of scenes from a movie perhaps, images that can elevate scenes and locations.
I suspect advertisers will like them for the space offers to the sides of an image allows for multiple formatting and layout options from web to ads.
What I like best however, is you get the perspective, focus fall off and compression of the focal length you are using (in this case 85mm) but in the horizontal you get a wider field of view based on the squeeze factor of the anamorphic block. In this case it is 1.5x so in effect in the horizontal your 85mm becomes a 42.5mm lens. When shot on a 3:2 aspect ratio camera you final image is 2.25:1 with no cropping. Nice.
