Firstly, shall I say, that this is probably never been tried out before and I am attempting a combination of lenses that might otherwise not have ever been considered to combine and test. Now, Anamorphic on a budget is always a touch and go subject when it comes to what combinations to use, especially when there is already a fair share of creators out there doing their own tests, sometimes with the same suggested gear. I know that the Helios 44-2, for a lot of folks out there is a somewhat standard taking lens. I’ve seen Contax-Zeiss 50mm’s used, as well as a bunch of other well regarded vintage optics. However, I’ve never seen the name in the title above used before with this distinct combo.
As a disclaimer, I know that when you use a taking lens under the 50mm you risk loosing resolution, as you have to crop away the barrel that becomes prevalent in the image. However, when using a 40mm, you are loosing a lot on the sides in the 2x squeeze, however, if you are to work it out, you can use other anamorphic modes and then desqueeze late in post to experiment with resolution saviour, if that is at all possible here. I haven’t yet gotten into the nitty-gritty of this experiment, just a couple of tests in my lounge room.
The Utron as a taking lens just occurred to me the other day, as I have been cleaning out my closet and selling a few lenses I don’t use any more. However, I did sell one lens, the Jupiter-9, from 1965, which I used exclusively with the ANA-lens and I loved that combination. However, it was extremely impracticle to handle and the Jupiter-9 build quality was far from acceptable to use in a professional setting (after explaining that fact that it is a Frankenstein!) and things slipped and became loose each adjustment ~ basically extremely frustrating to use handheld.
This is where this, more modern combination has starred today! The examples below are grabs from the footage:
I am going to test out this combination the next days and then cut up a short little video showing off the results to see if this combination might make sense to use in later productions! So, before I leave this post here, some nerdy specs are needed:
Voigtländer Ultron EF mount is a 40mm f/2 lens and when paired with the ANA-sankor 16c you get a 2x squeezed image, thus resulting in a wide 20mm FOV.
Thanks for reading!
– Patrick
