8 ms·
Shooting photos with an IMAX projector lens
- tomcam 6y agoStep 1. Get an IMAX projector lens...
- m463 6y agostep 0. theater goes out of business in era of pandemic (just a guess)
- xwdv 6y agoI don’t get it, none of these pictures look particularly mind blowing for all that hassle.
- dheera 6y agoAgreed. Also I thought IMAX shot 70mm film which means by using it on a 35mm camera he's only using a small fraction of the image circle. A wide angle lens actually designed for 35mm would perform better if so. What he did is sadly a good tactic to get publicity/followers though, which in the photography world directly translates to more customers and revenue.
- Hnrobert42 6y agoI agree that it was disappointing, but I give him an A for effort. Even though the idea didn’t really work out, I thought the video had some interesting information, like the part about building a custom mount, having to change a setting to enable photos without a lens, and the lighting.
- elliottkember 6y agoThe comments on this post are more negative than I expected. I really enjoyed this guy’s enthusiasm and his “guerrilla” setup. It’s easy to criticize his method, but he went out and shot some skaters with a big weird lens!
- behringer 6y agoI think it's more to do that his shots are not very good. Some photographers have more exciting pictures than others. This lens would be much better suited to nature and panaramic shots. Portrait shots not so much.
- hug 6y agoOn the contrary, portrait is about the only thing you can do effectively with this lens. Since it doesn’t have a flat plane of focus, you can never get any more than a small portion of the picture in focus. You could maybe do a shot with only a single tree in focus, or something, but not a regular landscape.
- klyrs 6y agoIt's a fun if janky build, and he's using the "wrong lens for that" distortion as an analog framing effect. Not mind-blowing, just some curiosity and follow-through.
- m463 6y agoI have a wide angle lens, and if I recall correctly, getting the background to blur is harder for the short focal length. This one is very wide and still blurs the background. (who knows, it might not be anything out of the ordinary)
- skylanh 6y agoDepth of field increases as the focal length decreases. It's exceptional enough that there are very involved manual procedures for taking 10-20-30 pictures with a telephoto lens wide open, and stitching them together to give a wider angle appearing picture. Completely spit balling, but I suspect that front lens element is worth about as much as a house.
- CarVac 6y agoWhat a waste on such a small format camera. The IMAX film format is larger than even 6x7. At least use a GFX-100 (which itself isn't even 645).
- codetrotter 6y agoIt’s obviously a project made for fun. And you are asking the guy to shell out $10,000 for a new camera body? Edit: of course, renting is an option. But personally even with insurance I would not be comfortable with the risk of renting such expensive equipment for a project that was purely for my own entertainment/curiosity.
- 75rchkiyt 6y agoLarge format film cameras are under $1000 In the case of large format, 4 x 5 inch films can record approximately 298.7 million pixels, and 1,200 million pixels in the case of 8 x 10 inch film.
- codetrotter 6y agoThe $10k I was talking about is for the GFX-100 that parent commenter suggested.
- jedimastert 6y agoThey aren't using a film lens, they're using a projector lens. I don't think the comparison applies?
- supernova87a 6y agoHmm, I don't think you want the IMAX projector lens, you want the IMAX camera lens. I don't think it works exactly "backwards" where a lens designed for the limited purpose of projecting onto a known static plane is what is best to actually acquire the images (?)!
- buildbot 6y agoIt does work, but you are right that the optimization is definitely different. I think imax lenses are easily 5-6 figures unfortunately. Edit: It was a lens apparently, wow. It doesn't look like any of the IMAX lenses I can find online!
- anonu 6y agoI actually think this was mislabeled in the video. It appears to be a camera lens - not a projector lens.
- Hnrobert42 6y agoThe photographer in the video say it is a projector lens. He could be wrong, but it is what he claims.
- supernova87a 6y agoLooking at some stories online, it looks like the actual camera lens looks much more normal sized: https://theasc.com/ac_magazine/August2012/DarkKnightRises/image3203.html https://theasc.com/ac_magazine/August2012/DarkKnightRises/im... https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/you-cant-afford-this-expensive-hollywood-camera-gear/ https://www.premiumbeat.com/blog/you-cant-afford-this-expens... https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/lens-100mm-movie-camera-imax/nasm_A20120258004 https://airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/lens-100mm-mov... Methinks the projection lens is so oddly shaped to function with the curved theater screen, etc. and is not what is used to take the images.
- kabes 6y agoNo, this is definitely the projector lens.
- EarthIsHome 6y agoThis reminds me of the article that takes an old spy plane lens (Kodak Aero Ektar 7″ f/2.5) and mounts it on a large format film camera [0]. [0]: https://emulsive.org/articles/building-a-naked-aero-ektar-speed-graphic-the-aerographic-project-part-6-conclusion-and-example-images https://emulsive.org/articles/building-a-naked-aero-ektar-sp... [1]: https://www.flickr.com/groups/aeroektar/pool/ https://www.flickr.com/groups/aeroektar/pool/
- gerikson 6y agoThis is the first article about the Aero-Ektar that doesn't freak out about its radioactive thorium-glass rear element.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- aaronbrethorst 6y agoI loathe that stupid YouTube face that they all make. https://news.avclub.com/why-does-everyone-on-youtube-make-the-same-dumb-face-1825179202 https://news.avclub.com/why-does-everyone-on-youtube-make-th...
- nitrogen 6y agoWhy does everyone feel the need to screw with scrolling (the avclub link scrolls much faster and weirder than the Firefox Android default)? It's disorienting.
- TwoBit 6y agoBecause they read some blog post about this cool thing you can do...
- waiseristy 6y agoOne must have the almighty algorithms odd face fetish blessing
- Cthulhu_ 6y agoIt's not even the algorithms themselves, it's human behaviour and the magic "engagement" metric. Of course, it's also a self-reinforcing thing; there's articles telling people to put reaction faces on their preview images to increase engagement, there's articles telling people to use jump cuts, enthousiastic / shouty voices, certain microphone / camera setups, etc. Thousands of "do this ONE TRICK to boost your engagement on youtube by 0.34%" kind of articles and tutorials, trying to cargo cult aspiring video makers into doing the same thing that some of the top youtubers do. I'll stick to my series of disembodied hamhands and Scottish space nerds, thank you.
- dkdbejwi383 6y agoI hate the jump cuts. It's just distracting when a sentence has been spliced together from four or five takes (or maybe just two which they alternate between). It's as distracting. And hard to follow. As it would be. To read a sentence. That has had full stops added. All over the place. Like this.
- Bayart 6y agoThere's a guy called Mathieu Stern who's got an entire Youtube channel [1] dedicated to exotic lenses. [1] https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYX22a35sKhA0T6ee7uZfvg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYX22a35sKhA0T6ee7uZfvg
- HenryBemis 6y agoOn his "front page" (latest mentioned video) he is talking about a lense called "BOKEH" and my mind immediately went to the movie "Bokeh" (https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3722062/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt3722062/) which is a great Drama/Sci-fi film, and a standing glorifying ad of Iceland's eerie and majestic scenery/landscapes. If you like sci-fi, give find it
- max_ 6y agoThis seems to yeild some of the "portrait mode" effects. Seen in smart phones.
- skylanh 6y agoDepth of field effects caused by long focal length lenses (preferred in portraiture for this reason), called "bokeh". In this case the light is coming into front lens elements, and it doesn't appear to be corrected for distortion, and then not uniformly focused onto the surface of the camera's sensor. Potentially this was for a Imax dome. So, no, this doesn't have anything to do with smart phones. In ye' olde times, induced background blur would have been a gaussian blur in software. I'm not sure what special magic they do today. https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.05698 https://arxiv.org/abs/2006.05698 suggests things have moved on.
- steerablesafe 6y ago> In ye' olde times, induced background blur would have been a gaussian blur in software In any case, gaussian blur is definitely the wrong kernel to do it. There could be definite improvements before jumping to deep learning.
- Dirlewanger 6y agoDidn't Photoshop release a feature in the past couple years that does exactly this? Simulated depth of field? And I remember watching the demo video and it looked damn good. Plus there's that Lytro camera that also allows you to move the point of focus around in the picture in post-processing.
- ygra 6y agoPhotoshop has had a lens blur filter for ages (I think at least back to v6), the trouble usually is to get a useful depth map so it can work properly.
- ygra 6y agoIt's surprisingly common among people who try to fake the blurred background. It does look very wrong, though.
- brian-armstrong 6y agoThis lens looks interesting but I think I'll wait until Ken Rockwell reviews it before I decide if I want to buy.
- robotmay 6y agoKen Rockwell might be the most interesting reviewer I've come across in years. What he favours is well known (e.g. metal over plastic) but his opinions always feel honest and he's pretty pragmatic on what he recommends. Unlike most reviewers (across all review subjects) he provides a lot of technical data to the point where it feels like it's "ok" to form a different opinion from him, and that you don't have to write off his whole review. He doesn't tend to get stuck on one fault with a lens like many people do. And his website is easy to read and navigate, which is rare for review sites.
- mafuyu 6y agoKen's site is great. I don't like his photographs and I often disagree with his opinions on gear, but he's very consistent and knowledgable. I always check to see if he has a review before I buy a new lens or body, especially if it's film.
- supernova87a 6y agoAre we talking about the same website? Maybe I'm too distracted by the formatting of the website. I find his pages to contain ridiculously large size photos that make the article hard to read. No tables or organization of information in a consistent way (or across lenses, cameras) that makes comparisons or reading easy. Very hard to tell if he's actually expert at something or his credibility. All of his observations are just qualitative (as is any typical amateur enthusiast camera website). I much prefer DPreview.com's reviews of cameras and lenses.
- maurits 6y agoThere is a vibrant community of people experimenting with old vintage lenses. Mirrorless full frame camera's are relatively easy to make/get adapters for. See Mathieu Stern for inspiration. [1] [1]: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYX22a35sKhA0T6ee7uZfvg https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYX22a35sKhA0T6ee7uZfvg
- djaychela 6y agoYears ago I got a bit into photography, and I got a cheap M42 lens adapter after I picked up a Pentacon 135 2.8 [1] - for only £8! It's a great lens, and while I'm not a tech expert, it just has a really different look to any of the standard Canon-fit lenses I have. It looks a bit like the images in the imax, and it's not just that it has shallow DoF because of the aperture (I have a sigma 35 that goes down to 1.4). If I wanted a 'vintage' look to a photo, I'd use it, and it's great having a large aperture lens for very little money that you can see in action as it's manual. [1] - https://vintage-camera-lenses.com/pentacon-135-2-8/ https://vintage-camera-lenses.com/pentacon-135-2-8/ - I have the version 2 (less desirable!) one.
- MayeulC 6y agoI quite like that format, it looks like a youtube video, but unrolled. I much prefer this than watching a whole video. Less bandwidth, less ads, I can skip to the part I want, the content' doesn't keep going on while I want to re-read something or examine a picture, while it is light on processing power. In short, I can scroll at my own pace.
- aj7 6y agoI disagree. His utter inability in video, and the necessary still-photographer kludge that results, are glaring and obnoxious. And, in this awful, disjointed slide show, he manages to make the same mistake YouTube makers make, time wasted on trivial, semi-irrelevant “making,” here, the woodworking part.
- MayeulC 6y agoWhich I've happily scrolled over while I reached parts that were more relevant (to me). It isn't that easy to do in a video, here I saw at a glance that the section was going to be uninteresting, and if there had been interesting tidbits, I wouldn't have had to sit waiting for him to finish drilling in between. Well, at least, I got a simple answer to the question the title prompted me: "how does it look". I got baited, but didn't have to sit trough it. (the answer is "not bad, a lot of depth of field, that lens is bigger than I imagined, and the resulting quality doesn't seem to be worth it). OK, to be fair, I had missed the "lens" part, and was really curious.
- jsjsbdkj 6y ago> It almost has a tilt shift kind of quality like it’s you’re focusing on one point. It shouldn't be surprising to anyone that knows anything about cameras that if you don't have the lens lined up properly you'll get a tilt-shift effect. This is basically a rig that does controlled "lens whacking", where you don't mount the lens but you hold it freely to let light bleed through the mount and mess up the focal plane (https://philipbloom.net/blog/the-art-of-lens-whacking-real-lights-leaks-and-ones-done-in-post/ https://philipbloom.net/blog/the-art-of-lens-whacking-real-l...) I bet if the lens was mounted properly it would look... like a normal wide angle lens.
- nacc 6y agoI don't get it. Where is the spec? What's the aperture size, focal length of this beast? What about abberations? How does it work in extreme conditions that a normal lens can't take a good image? So many questions, but the author decided to use it to take portraits in day light ...
- jordache 6y agothere is nothing compelling in this experiment, for anyone who has prosumer-level understanding of photography the lens was designed for a film format with much larger surface dimension. The lens' image circle is likewise large - much larger than the sensor in the camera this guy used. The digital sensor will simply be overlayed with a cropped portion of the full image circle projected by this lens. big deal!?
- second--shift 6y agoThe idea is interesting but as a side note, why does every web site try to ask me to sign up for their newsletter as I'm moving to close the tab? Why did this trigger/event end up in browser spec? Biggest anti-feature ever.
- hnarn 6y ago> It’s pretty gorilla. Very, very gorilla, but it works. I've never heard this expression before. Does he mean "guerilla", as in "improvised"?