(upbeat urban music) - So, today we are checking out some budget anamorphic lenses from Sirui. I have no idea how to say that but they tend to launch
their lenses on Indiegogo and they crush it on there, 'cause this first 50 mil, I think they were trying
to get 100,000 bucks and they got over 1 million. Then they launched this 35 mil, and that got almost 2 million. They just launched a 24, so that's great, now there's actually a set, 24, 35, 50. So, let's see how epic our lens works, while Dylan tells us about
our sponsor Story blocks. (upbeat dramatic music) - [Dylan] In a world,
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a Filipino Vin Diesel. (laughing) - All we did was take this flashlight and shined it at the lens, and this is a normal lens, so
this is a typical lens flare. But, you know, with an anamorphic lens, it's like (growls) By the way, thanks to Storyblocks, we're giving away this
50 mil anamorphic lens. What do they have to do to win? Give away boy. - Share an embarrassing
story in the comments. - Oh, that's gonna be funny. And, it has to be a true story. Also, you do have to have an email carer because this is an email lens. Now there's a few things that make shooting
anamorphic very appealing. The most obvious is the lens flares. You notice them right away, but two, you get that
ultra wide screen look and sure, you could just
take a frame like this and just slice off the top and bottom or letter boxing it,
which is where you put those matte black bars
on the top and bottom. But the problem with
just slicing that off, you're just cutting out extra resolution and also you're losing field of view and there's also just a
cinematic quality about it, that's pretty tough to describe, but you definitely feel it. And for example, the
bokeh in the background instead of a perfect circle, usually you end up with an oval. Now this lens isn't quite full frame. It's APSC, so when you attach
it to a camera like this, a seven S3, which is full frame, you'll notice that the edges get cut off. Now, I could jump into the super 35 mode and I'll clear that area downside is that this camera can only
do that mode in just HD instead of 4K. So, instead I could go to
the clear image zoom in right around 1.3 to 1.4
is where I clear it. So, now I can still
shoot 4K with this lens. So, now that we're
familiar with this lens, let's go and shoot something cool. [Inaudible]. (motorbike revving) (upbeat music) Right. So, now that I've had a
couple of days with this lens, I think it's nice and sharp. It's definitely fun and the
footage you can get with it is really cool, but
there is one major issue that I have with it. So because of that, I personally
probably would never use it on a professional project. This is a 1.33X anamorphic. So, basically that means horizontally the image gets squeezed onto the sensor. Now, I just have to
tell our Adobe Premiere that this is a 1.33X anamorphic, and then it will de-squeeze the image. Everything comes back to
the normal proportions and we get a nice super wide screen, but take a look at this
closeup of Steve here. It's definitely way overstretched, even though I put in everything correctly and it becomes very obvious
once you put it next to my spherical Sienna lens, right? So, then I was thinking, okay, maybe this actually isn't a 1.33, maybe it's closer to a 1.3 or maybe 1.25. So I de-squeezed it slightly less and now everything looks better even if I put steep in the edges, everything looks nice
and proportional again. Kind of annoying, but whatever. I just applied that
scale to all the clips. But then, half of the clips
seem like it was too squished in all of a sudden, so now I'm
scratching my head thinking, "Why is this happening?" What I then realized is that
when you pull your focus to a close-up, it squeezes it less. So, when you stretch it back out it over-stretches everything. So, basically the amount of
squeeze that this lens gives you is very inconsistent and it
depends on where your focus. So, every shot you do, you might have to slightly tweak the amount you de-squeeze it. I mean, for the most part, I only really notice it when it's in the first 10 feet or so, but I guess that's why
these lenses are seven, eight bucks opposed to 5,000, 10,000 or, and those are the high end
ones are fifty grand a pop. There's a few other technical things like inconsistent wide balance and some vignetting around
the edges and stuff like that. But I can get over all
that because, you know, this is a budget lens. Biggest turnoff for me is definitely that it's not a consistent 1.33X. You might also notice that you
can't get a great macro shot with these lenses, but that's
more of an anamorphic thing rather than this lens in particular, you can always get a diopter slap that upfront for those macro shots. Now, this is as close
as I can get to Steve on these two lenses, you
can definitely a closeup, but that's about that. Put that into perspective. This is how close my
cinema lenses can get. Now, I do appreciate that
these do open up the F1 eight. So, when it got dark, it was no problem. I just opened up and I also
liked that it didn't flare up like crazy, really only when
the motorcycle headlights went straight into the
lens, which was really cool. Now they opened up the
F1 eight, which is great, but they only closed down to F 16. So, if you are shooting
in bright daylight, make sure you bring some ND filters. There's some threads on the front, so you can just rotate them on. I've been avoiding handheld because there is no
stabilization in this lens. Now, if it's a bigger camera, it's not going to shake as much. So, that's not a big deal. Or I can also try turning on IBIs, but still it's not going to
be nearly as stable as a lens with image stabilization built in. All that looks ethic
gimbals are of course going to give you some pretty good results, but it is tricky running
a manual lens on a gimbal. Now, the 35 mil actually
comes with these lens gears that you can just slide onto here, which is real nice. Especially for times like this. Now, I can go ahead and
control the focus from here. Oh, this is where it's at. This video should just be titled, "Making Dylan look epic". I got to get the sun in the
back to get that lens flare. Oh, that big, epic. - You're totally gonna want to screen-grab this for your Tinder. - Oh, yeah. Now, one thing you really
wanna watch out for is to make sure that your
camera stays nice and level, especially if there's
any flares in the frame, because usually you could just punch in, rotate a little bit,
fix the problem, right? But, if there's a flare,
when you fix it like that, it's gonna also rotate the flare. So, definitely keep an eye on your level when you're shooting. There's also ways to fake the anamorphic. Look, for example, this is
a true streak blue filter made by Schneider. See, if you take a close look at it, you could see those blue
lines going through there, but it disappears as soon as
you put it up to the lens. Actually, right now, you
can kind of see it still, which is not good because
we're all the way out to 16. But, once you zoom in, they
just kind of disappear. If you take a light and shine it. See that. But, one thing you also
have to watch out for is that you don't want to
rotate it the wrong way. You need it perfectly on there. I used this on a project a while back and I didn't really love it because it just tends to flare too easily. For example, if there's
a blown out window, this anamorphic lens would
kind of maintain that flare, but this just makes
everything just go crazy. And, the moment even
made one for your phone, which was actually kind
of fun to play with. They also made one for our drone, which I wouldn't really recommend. It just messes with the gimbal
on the drone too easily. And, then there was also these adapters that were kind of popular
where you can just throw it on in front of any lens and
it turns into anamorphic, but I hated those. I remember I was editing a project and someone delivered a bunch of footage where they have the
adaptor on the whole time and it was on just slightly crooked. All the footage was skewed
when I de-squeezed it. And I remember having such
a headache trying to fix it so everything doesn't look all messed up. Now, the price of that adapter is pretty comparable to this 50 mil. So, I would just much
rather shoot on this. And they say seven, doesn't
have an anamorphic setting. So, I am looking at a squished in version on the back of the LCD,
but it's only 1.33X. So, I can still kind of get away with it. If it's 1.8 or 2.0, the
is going to be so intense, you're definitely gonna need
to monitor it correctly. You can always feed over to a monitor. This is the CN7, and this
has anamorphic settings. A lot of the higher end
monitors will do that and also high-end cameras
like the airy red, black magic, even some
Panasonic Mirrorless cameras. Those have an anamorphic setting
just built into the camera. So, that's very convenient, but overall, I think it's really cool that we're seeing some sub $1,000 lenses come into the market
and if you're just try to get your feet wet with
some anamorphic lenses and enter that world. I think this is a great
way to get started. Then, if you're trying to
shoot some more professional project and want less
of the imperfections, that definitely recommend
looking into renting some of the bigger and
better anamorphic lenses. But yeah, this has been really
fun shooting anamorphic. I really haven't shot much
anamorphic in the past. So, this was really a
cool experience for me. But yeah, that's all I got for this video. I am out of things to say. (upbeat music)
