RE: Lomo's
But the hard thing now is to find one in decent condition...

@B3Guy
Irregardless of its mount, it's still tough to find one in good optical condition.
For best mechanical function - on m4/3 camera - is to get the OCT19 adapter and an OCT19 lens. Then you can use it normally like any lens, without any support.
The OCT18 version breathes heavily, requires lens support and overall is not as convenient to use. But still, I've seen it flare very crazily. Ask EOSHD!

@Roy_Batty I have the Redstan clamp, it's good. The cheap eBay ones are actually extension tubes with holes drilled. I have one of those as well. Think about what it does. It may be simple but if your £1000 lens drops on the floor as a result of saving £30 on a clamp, it wouldn't make much sense!!

@ed_lee83 The OCT18 certainly breathes. Heavier than Rupert Murdoch at a select committee. Bulkier than John Prescott. Picking one up on eBay is a complete crap shoot. You don't quite know what you've got until you've tried it out. Some are even soft until F5.6, when you do finally find a way to mount it. (Sounds vaguely sexual!!). Ed found a support that is perfect but I still had to take some further steps to get it working probably, like drilling a hole in the bottom of the LOMO support bracket so it could screw to the platform of the support. LOMOs give a beautiful image with great flare, but since they're now much more expensive it doesn't make sense to go through the same pain to get an OCT18 one to work. I recommend selling household furniture and getting an Iscorama 36 1.5x instead. The only other option right now seems to be the LA7200 or Kowa anamorphic. If you can deal with focussing two lenses and being unable to rack during a shot, the Kowa is a bargain. The only bargain left really! It is such a shame the good stuff is so rare. If there were more Iscoramas outstripping demand, the price would have never got into such an inflated state. But it's high for a reason - they're amazing.

@B3Guy Welcome to the priory!! :)

The LA7200 is so difficult to find diopters for because of it's large front element, and most diopters are small and round like filters, not square. There are the LOMO diopters but these are rarer than unicorns and about as expensive. Century and Optex smaller front elements. These represent the best bargains at the moment along with the Kowa. The rest you have to pay a lot more for.

Could we begin research into better 4:3 MJPEG? Currently it seems upscaled from 480 lines. What is going on here exactly, anyone with better knowledge than myself tell me what the current theory is and how we can go in direction toward improving resolution.

@EOSHD +1 if I ever have that much cash and time I for one am going after a unicorn, not some worthless diopter :-)

@ed_lee83 It is not de-stretched properly. Definitely needs to be wider than it is. -25 is not enough.

@ed_lee83
beautiful short, entropy in the city. Anamorphic looks a bit stretched(ratio) but filming/editing was very nice.

I believe these are the correct resolutions for anamorphic...

2.35:1 (1920x820)
2.66:1 (1920x720)
3.55:1 (1920x540)

It's a good idea to make some blank JPEGs that size and import them into FCP or Premiere just to make sure the percentage squash, stretch or aspect ratio adjustments are right. Overlay the JPEG on the video and resize the video until it matches.

Wow worth a try for $10. Can you post some samples from it?

The practical realities of these lenses is quite poor, they are big and heavy, hard to mount, and the minimum focus distance is probably about 5m :) But let me know how you get on.

How's it going @telkitachki?

Thanks for trying it. 8m focus, that's a shame but kinda expected. This is why I say to people not to use projection lenses even for $100 it's just not worth it. $10 makes an interesting experiment though.

They're unusable in practical shooting, you cannot really focus them or attach them. You can't DIY rebuild them either. Not sure about the design but it takes special expertise, knowledge, materials, tools and precision i.e. an optics factory, to do anything, least of all fitting the glass in a different housing. It's just not worth it, for the time and money it would cost even IF it was possible, you could've bought five Iscoramas by the time it was done. The LA7200 mod is a special case since it's not really a lens as we know one. It is more like two bits of non-focussing bent glass. The regular anamorphic lenses are as complex as DSLR lenses and just as hard to modify or to take apart.

Here is a price guide to current usable anamorphics

Cheapest:
Proskar 2x - $300
Kowa 2x (older 16-C) - $300
Sankor 16-D or similar - $400

Mid-range:
Kowa (8Z, 16-H) - $500
Isco 2000 (similar to LA7200 but less flare) - $700
Optex / Century 1.33x - $700
LOMO OCT18 2x - $1200 and a large amount of luck
LA7200 1.33x - $1000+

Top-end
LOMO OCT19 - $1500-$2000
Isco Centavision 2x - $2000+
Iscorama 36 1.5x - $2500-$3000

There's a more detailed buyers guide with review of each lens and the pros / cons in my book http://www.eoshd.com/anamorphic-guide

Good luck!

@EOS,

This is what I found
1.85:1 = 1920x1038 (35mm U.S and U.K widescreen standard for theatrical film)
2.35:1 = 1920x817 (35mm prior to 1970)
2.39:1 = 1920x803 (35mm anamorphic from 1970 on sometimes called "Panascope")
2.66:1 = 1920x722 (full frame Super 16mm negative when anamorphic lens is used)
2.93:1 = 1920x655 (MGM Camera 65, early version of Ultra Panavision used until 1962, with 1.30X anamorphic lenses ratio for used for "Ben-Hur" 1959

No real difference from yours.