$1,500 vs $30,000 Anamorphic Lens

I once wrapped on a commercial and the airline postponed my flight while the Cooke set continued on to LAX. The case of lenses sat unattended at the luggage pickup for over six hours. It was a very nervous day.

I own the Sirui set and love it (mostly). However, you did no comparison here of following characters walking towards camera. The short focus throw on the Sirui is their biggest downfall in my opinion. The Cooke’s long throw makes those shots much more obtainable. This is critical information when choosing a lens. This Sirui set is great when you’re not moving in Z axis space.

You are frightened in a taxi but not in the sub…? 😂 But thanks for that highly interesting information about that difference in this two worlds! In two days my 24mm lens will come to me… well, of course not the Cooke… 👍

THanx a lot!! THat's a great video!
Just do not want to buy a sirui any moree :(((((

The pictures - look - So out-saying them selvs!
and ofcourse most people like sirui picture - cause the do not understand the beauty of the picture, it's just more sharp - and people love it!

Cook is awesome! You could use runwayml to separate the background and stretch it a bit.

Great vid, dude. Mucho gracious

Thank you for breaking this down for us.

Have you tried the Great Joy anamorphic lenses? 2X squeeze, about the same cost as Sirui’s, and a softer, neutral flair available. Lens breathing is also well reviewed elsewhere. Wondering what your thoughts on those lenses are…?
I think the Cooke lens you tried has better contrast and color rendition than the Sirui; of course the bokeh is nicer. Of course, also, out of the question for budget shooters!

Awesome video! Just rented the Sirui lenses again. As you mentioned one characteristics of expensive lenses are the soft roll off in the shadows/highlights/subject vs the sharper cheaper lenses. It all depends what you like.

Too bad you didn't get to see a 70mm screening of the The Hateful Eight, was as revealing as being there with the cowboys....

You failed completely
you are not using a real film camera, the quality obtained is far superior to any slr , you can not compare a lcd screen to a real celuloid projection ( and the 65mm gives you a three dimensionality unmatched by any modern digital cinema , let alone your little camera ) . And you don't have access to the actual negative celluloid that was filmed for comparison, remember that it was projected in a gigantic real movie theater and still looked good, something that those cheap lenses can never match, sorry ...

They usually say that you always get what you pay for, but I don't think so now. thanks for the information..

125k....

Wholeheartedly agree!
Found myself that you get a big step in improvement from cheap 100-400$ lenses to moderately priced lenses in the 2k$ regime, but beyond that you will be the only one noticing the improvements.

If i were to buy a cooke anamorphic, id probably buy the zoom, its most of the focal lengths of the prime set for the price of 2 primes ($60k), surprised more rental houses dont carry them

Thanks for the comparison
Have you also tried 2 lens breathing?
Thanks again!!!

I liked the Cooke lens more. I thought it had more character. Opinions vary.

nice

Honestly. The winning poll image looks better because the talents poss is better allowing more contrast with the lighting not necessarily the image/lens quality

Love ur content mate and the passion u have for filmmaking have been watching ur videos since I was in college keep up the amazing work 🤟🏻

negative fill!!

Why Sony, Nikon, canon, doesn’t make lens like this for their mirrors less camera?

Can you compare HDMI output latency between nikon Z6 and panasonic s1h? Perhaps you just know which manufacturer has the lowest HDMI latency?

Anything follow the law of diminishing returns

What Nikon did you use for this shoot ?

Waste of money. NOBODY is going to notice that difference

Not to bash the Cookes but you can’t really compare them to the lenses Blade Runner was shot on. It was shot on the C-Series which is probably the most vintage anamorphic set you can shoot on without getting distracting. The Cooke anamorphics are pretty modern, they still have lots of character but they’re very different from the Panavision look. So are the Siruis. And you can’t really add the same kind of softness you get from old anamorphic astigmatism in post. Obviously set design and lighting are much more important than lenses to replicate a look but when it comes to nuances there is a difference between old and modern looking anamorphics. Something like the cheap SLR magic Anamorphot 1.33 50 comes much closer to the look of the C-Series than either of the lenses you’ve used. Especially when used on the right taking lens. And it’s below 1000 bucks.

Forget the glass, that scene recreation was amazing!

if you test a spherical lens vs sirui you cant see so much diference that 's the bigest problem.... :(

What about lens breathing when focusing, any difference? I have heard anamorphics are known for breathing a lot in general

You didn’t mention it but I saw a difference in the desqueeze which has been an isssue for the Sirius, I have to eyeball the desqueeze depending on my focus depth and aperture and in your doc footage your subject was much skinnier in the sirui than the Cooke when normalized. Just a quirk you have to account for.

whoa! same dude still doing great videos. happy to see it!

Could have saved yourself a grand by going to Panavision in Greenford and did this test for free! They have C series there from the original movie.

The higher price definitely is because of how these lenses are fabricated, not mass manufactured. It is not exactly because of the quality, rather it is rarity. Someone that makes robots in small numbers, I can definitely say the products we make actually do not compare to the mass produced robots quality. Low volume production is a huge challenge and limits the techniques of fabrication and materials u can use.

You know what affects me, YOUR audience, NOT subconsciously? That oval art or mirror or whatever it is on the wall behind you, making your head shape look strange off and on….
I’m an audio engineer btw. 😂

i has difficult time suspending reality with stretched bokeh. no anamorph for my brain

Who let him cook?

Really nice shot recreation

Emulation to render the tones a bit more like bladerunner would add that extra umph

Aaaand now try to rack focus on both lenses. You'll see that the squeeze factor on the Sirui will change making it practically unusable on anything but static shots.
That won't happen on the Cookes.

$1500... $30,000... Whats the difference?

It's an interesting test in that that movie wasn't shot on cookes I don't think. I think they shot C series anamorphics. Cookes render color a bit warmer naturally so it would be surprising if I was mistaken. Also these cooke anamorphics came out not too long ago in the grand scheme of things. If they use cookes it would have been their original set of anamorphics their S2s which are super rare now. I've shot on them twice in my career and they are gorgeous but even in LA there's only around 4 sets. But I'm almost sure it was C series anamorphics from panavision.

There's a lot of details between glass. 90 percent which is subtle but that's part of the job to think about the little details of a lens that help tell a story or build an image.

Seems like there are even more impections with the cooke. Beauitufl

Microcontrast of skin is noticeably better on the Cooke!

Well they do say too many Cookes spoil the broth, Come on tell me you put that Cooke on your Canon 350d?