With the crazy resolution of the Sony A7r III, I thought it would be fun to try out some photos with the 2.35 cinematic crop. I’ve done this in the past with my landscape photography using a 3:1 or 2:1 crop, but I’ve never done it with anything casual and the results are very cool and cinematic.
I was inspired to do this because JonasRask has recently been shooting with that Hasselblad X-Pan film camera and the images just look so cool. Then coincidentally Laroque has used his GFX50s to create some wide crops, and they just look absolutely incredible as always.
I’ve wanted to shoot anamorphic with stills for years and am constantly checking ebay for any old anamorphic lenses, like the Optex 16:9, Isco Wide Screen 2000 or Anamorphic Proskar 16 (2x), but still haven’t found any great deals. There are some converted Helios 44-2 lenses that look cool, but the apertures are locked at around f3.5.
SLR Magic makes some modern anamorphic lenses, but I feel like their gear is just slightly overpriced for experimental stuff. I don’t know if they’re good or not, but when you’re a Hong Kong company you have to price yourself a little more competitively to get over that made in China stigma, even though some great stuff comes out of China these days – like those Mitakon lenses. Especially that APS-C 35mm f0.95.
For these photos I shot RAW with the Sony A7r III and the 50mm f1.8 lens. The 50mm 1.8 is actually really good for the price. It’s a 6 element lens and has some really nice contrast and detail. I’m not sure how sharp it is compared to other 50s for Sony, but I honestly don’t usually pay much attention to center sharpness considering nobody actually looking at any photo cares about sharpness, especially on Instagram. Out of focus is one thing, scaled in 100% crop pixel peeping sharpness is another.
It’s just this lens characteristic that photographers get hung up on, it’s probably one of the least important characteristics of a lens unless maybe you’re a product photographer or landscape photography, maybe. Granted, there are some lenses that have terrible sharpness and of course, when it’s a problem, it’s a problem, like those old Russian Jupiter 9s.
I guess what I’m trying to say is, when this Sony 50mm f1.8 goes on sale, it’s a must have lens with beautiful contrast and bokeh, and nice auto focus speeds. I’ve been having a lot of fun with it, even though it feels like a cheap toy.
To process the colored shots, I used an Astia look by VSCO. I’ve never loved the in-camera Astia look from Fujifilm, or at least haven’t been able to get my head around it. So now I’m making an effort to figure out how to make it work. In this case, the VSCO version of it is looking pretty good. My problem with my Fujifilm’s simulator Astia is it always seems to make the skin tones look a little too orange, but here its working, so I’ll definitely need to experiment with Fujifilm’s Astia a little more.
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About Me
I am a professional freelance commercial / trailer editor. I mostly edit trailers and tv spots for games such as Call of Duty, Destiny, Gears of War with a few Netflix shows thrown in the mix. The other half of my time is spent shooting photography. I am based out of Los Angeles CA.