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Question about Kowa 16-D Bell & Howell Anamorphic
  • ReinoutReinout

    Hi guys, Question; I've owned a Bell 'n Howell anamorphic adapter for quite some time now and used it in several occasions. I bought a Helios 44-2 lens to carry it on my GH2. Overall results have been pretty good, though not amazing. Recently I've started wondering if the lack of sharpness and vignetting that bothers me in some situations, is more the fault of the Helios lens, than my anamorphic, as it looks pretty worn, with oil on the blades etc.

    This made me wonder what other type of taking-lens would be an option for my anamorphic adapter. As I read in Andrew Reid's anamorphic guide, my Kowa should cover a 35mm lens on a GH2, So my eyes fell on the inexpensive Slrmagic 35mm F 1.7

    Has anyone had any experience with adapting an anamorphic onto the Slrmagic lens? Or in general using a 35mm lens for a Kowa-type adapter?

    Thanks!

  • 5 Replies sorted by
  • artiswarartiswar

    @Reinout - The SLR magic is going to be fairly soft as well. Its hard to determine without examples with and without the anamorphic adapter to test sharpness. I shoot with a Schneider anamorphic and a rather soft Canon FD lens and it comes out pretty damn sharp. If I had to guess, I would say it's the Kowa. But it could very well be the Helios as well. Do you not have another prime to test? Or even a Panny zoom?

  • kavadnikavadni

    I think if you look at something with your eyes, then look at the same thing through the back of the Kowa.
    If it's the cause of the 'softness' you will know.

    Also I have about 8 Helios lenses, and they vary significantly

  • ReinoutReinout

    Thanks for the replies! After some testing I am pretty confident that the Helios is at least a large part of the problem. Without anamorphic filter it really has a blurry feel to it, especially when opened up. At wide-open apertures, almost 70% of the image is covered in a slight hazy white vignette.

    I can imagine the rather cheap Slrmagic is also not the sharpest lens out there, but as I can order it new, at least I can be pretty sure its not a defective or damaged lens.

    Biggest issue will be the chance my Kowa will vignette on a wider lens than 50mm. But maybe that's just a chance to take..

  • OedipaxOedipax

    The sharpest results I've seen from my 16-D have been with old Nikon AI primes. I have a couple Helios lenses as well and I'm often tempted to use those with the anamorphic lens, but the results are usually noticeably softer than just my 50mm f/1.4, for instance:

    Make sure you're taking care to really get the focus dead-on as well. My preferred method is setting the aperture to f/1.4 and using the thin focus plane to really figure out if I'm in focus or not. If you try to fine tune it while stopped down, it can get really difficult to see the difference. Once my shot's focused, then I stop down if I want. But you should be able to get nice sharp images even wide-open with good glass if you're properly focused, that's one of the great things about the Kowas.

  • ReinoutReinout

    @oedipax Notoriously late in replying, but that footage looks great! Should try Nikon primes sometimes. Your footage doesn't have the vignetting I experience with the Helios, especially in bright daylight.

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