The new Laowa anamorphic lenses are targeted at indie filmmakers with small packages, but how do the Nanomorphs hold up?
Venus Optics makes some fascinating lenses, and between its incredibly popular probe lens and its very useful Zero-Distortion wide lenses, the company already has a place in many indie filmmakers’ lens kits. But with the launch of its new Nanomorph lineup of lenses, it should also be a name to keep in mind for anamorphic work, as well.
Nano-what?
The Nanomorph lineup is (at launch) three lenses, a 27mm, a 35mm, and a 50mm, all with a 1.5x anamorphic squeeze factor.
What is a 1.5x anamorphic squeeze factor? Well, traditional anamorphic lenses had a 2x squeeze, designed to work with a sensor that has a 4:3 aspect ratio, so they would roughly double the width out to around 2.39:1 or so (once cropped to get rid of edit lines). With modern sensors being formatted in 16:9, a 2x squeeze gives you something closer to 3.5:1 when expanded, which is very, very wide. So lens manufacturers started making other squeezes, with 1.5x being very popular to give you something close to 2.66:1 or from a 16×9 sensor.
Author: Charles Haine
This article comes from No Film School and can be read on the original site.
