DP: John Carl

Shot in Lynchburg, VA and Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

We recently purchased an Iscorama 36 MC anamorphic lens and it has quickly become our favorite lens. We're finding the look of anamorphic to be a refreshing change from the "Canon L glass look". The bokeh stretches differently. The light flares differently. The lens vignettes a bit. The focus is softer. And of course the 2.66:1 aspect ratio looks more cinematic than the usual 16:9, quite different than just adding black bars to regular 16:9 footage. It also has the added benefit of making whatever lens you're shooting with have a slightly wider focal length. This is especially nice for the Blackmagic Cinema Camera since it helps counteract the absurd 2.3x crop factor.

We paired a variety of "taking" lenses with the Iscorama to see what looks and speeds were possible. Each had its own quirks. We were interested in letting the image be imperfect to see what "soul" could be found...

Camera:
75% Canon 5D Mark III (more towards the beginning)
25% Blackmagic Cinema Camera (more towards the end)

Lenses:
Vivitar 28mm 2.5 M42 mount + Iscorama 36mc 1.5x
Iscorama 50mm 2.8 M42 mount + Iscorama 36mc 1.5x
Canon 85 mm 1.2L + Iscorama 36mc 1.5x

Adapters:
Genus 77mm variable ND filter
Polaroid 72mm Close-Up +1 filter (only on a few tighter shots toward the end.)

Graded in Premiere with Colorista II and the built in Adobe curves tool. This is obviously not a scientific lens test. We just wanted to see what the lens "felt" like and found lots of excuses to point it at the sun. I would not recommend indulging in this many sun-flares for an actual film but for a lens test it was just fun. :)

What do you think of the look?

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