Muddying the anamorphic waters (Part 3 - Getting Clearer)
 

The original page:
http://www.sevensmilingsharks.com/mu...anamorphic.htm

Page 2

http://www.sevensmilingsharks.com/mu...amorphic_2.htm

New Page which under more controlled conditions gives a far better picture of how you will fare. Gives me pause. If Century Optics is not going to debut a model soon, I may give it a try.

http://www.sevensmilingsharks.com/mu...amorphic_3.htm

Yeah, the anamorphic lens does seem to help resolution if a few situations. But for $800 I can't see justification for its purpose. Especially with the amount of barrelling/fish eye distortion it produces as the camera approaches 0% zoom. This effect isn't really evident in these newspaper tests, but there was a comparison posted a few weeks back that showed it. I've also played with the anamporphic lens at a local shop and decided not to buy it after witnessing the warping at wide zoom (very prominent at Z15 and lower).

Only half of what I shoot with this cam will be going to widescreen and all of it goes to DVD. I can live with LB - especially with the lower compression artifacting in LB mode due to the black image areas and I will wait for Century Optics to release a solution. If they don't, then I probably will just live with LB. I have a feeling the lifespan of my VX100 will be fairly short with all the announcements regarding the MPEG2 HD standards and potential for upcoming HD cams at NAB '04.

I will try to reproduce a similar test. Without a good field monitor, I have yet to obtain focus in telephoto. The matted stretched pictures are probably good enough for most home video applications that spending $800 per is not worth it, especially considering the hard to (or impossible to) focus issue.

My observations so far on the focus problem is that the further you are away from the subject and the more you zoom, the harder it is to focus. Both distance and zoom play a part from my observations. I'll see if I can set up a good test under controlled conditions in the next week or so and post screen shots.

Has anyone used or heard anything about the OpTex
DV Anamorphic Attachment lens for the DVX100? Could this be any better than the Panasonic version?

I don't believe on exists. There is one with a 72mm thread, but designed for the XL1s (I think).

Yeah, it does exist. Optex makes an Anamorphic adapter for the DVX 100.

It's not for the DVX100. It's generic and has some serious limitations if used on the DVX100:

http://www.zgc.com/html/anamorphic_attachment.html

Century vs Optex Anamorphic
 

Any overall comparisons between these two for XL1, etc. In other words, is there any reason to wait for Century?

I would rank them this way by image quality and usefulness:

(1) Century (theorotical and probably $1500 or more

(2) Panasonic (reasonable image quality and useful for most of zoom

(3) Optex (reasonable image quality and not useful for much of zoom

Note, I've used neither and only examined footage from #2.