Budget Anamorphic… Is it worth your money?
Historically, anamorphic lenses have been pretty much out of reach for most smaller productions and solo shooters due to their high prices and limited choice, but over the last couple of years that’s been changing. We’ve seen new lenses pop up with much more approachable pricing and big claims, there’s even lenses with auto focus…
So when Sirui offered to send us one of their Astra Anamorphic Cine Lenses, our interest was certainly peaked.
A disclaimer before we go further, Sirui sent us a lens however they haven’t paid us and don’t have any control over what we say, or how we say it. We’re free to tell you how good, or bad these lenses really are. Thanks Sirui for letting us test this independently.
Sirui gave us full choice from their Astra 1.33x Anamorphic Lenses set of three. A choice between 50mm, 75mm and 100mm - more thoughts on this range later. All three lenses are T1.8, have focus gearing in the same place so swaps are easy, can be offered in an E-mount, L-Mount or Z-Mount configurations. You can also choose between having a neutral or blue flare for your lenses, although you’re stuck with it once you do, think carefully.
One of the most exciting things about this lens, is the cost. Currently in the UK you can pick up each lens at £879.00 or the full three lens set for £2,639.00 which comes with it’s own storage case too.
The lens we had on test, and therefore our reference for this review, was the 50mm in E-Mount with a neutral flare. We chose this as we figured it would be the more versatile lens we could test over the coming months.
We wanted to drop this lens right into our production workflow, so we immediately put it to work on two of our motorsport productions at TT Circuit Assen in the Netherlands, and the legendary Spa-Francorchamps in Belgium. The later being a 12-hour endurance race with cars driving into the night, providing us with the perfect opportunity to test this lens in low-light conditions.
These motorsport shoots aren’t friendly to gear either, with variable weather conditions and plenty of dust and general motorsport dirt we put the lens through its paces on our Sony FX6.
We’ve just shared a full in-depth review of this lens on our YouTube channel, if you want all the details. But as you’re getting this email, we’ll give you a little written summary of our thoughts too.
Overall I think the value proposition of the lens is great, the image is characterful without being obnoxious, flares are subtle but when you get one it adds a nice touch to your image and the oval bokeh and background stretch is playful. The lens produced lovely images in both day and night conditions and we had no durability issues, in fact it’s very solid construction and material choice is something other lens manufacturers should take note of.
The auto-focus also performed reliably, it isn’t quite as snappy as you’ll find on a G-Master stills lens but it’s certainly useable and makes solo-shooting on this lens completely viable. We had to de-squeeze the image on our external monitor only to ensure the FX6 still had AF but that workflow worked fine for us, something to keep in mind before purchasing though depending on your setup.
The lens isn’t without its compromises but for the price it certainly can be excused for some. Not to mention that shooting Anamorphic does restrict your ability to re-purpose content for different aspect-ratios, something that has become increasingly important in modern content workflows.
We also were left thinking “why only 50, 75 and 100mm?”. We’d have loved to see a wider lens than 50, which felt a little narrow in some cases so we’re not entirely sure if the range is suitable for all workflows, there were times we would’ve liked to have something wider.
A fun lens to test nonetheless, and a lens we’ll continue to use on our projects when appropriate. Watch the full review for our thoughts on who this lens is for, and more details on its pros and cons.
That leaves the question... "Would you consider using anamorphic in your workflow?"
And let us know what else you’d like to see us test and review.
Thank you to Sirui for sending us the lens, and allowing us to test it independently.
Catch you next week.
Lucas