The Laowa Nanomorph 1.5x anamorphic lenses from Venus Optics combine innovative design with high-quality optics to create a set of anamorphic lenses for Super35-sized sensors that are incredibly compact and lightweight, enabling you to take your anamorphic cinematography to places undreamed of in the past. The lenses are available in three focal lengths—27, 35, and 50mm individually or as 3-lens bundles—in a variety of interchangeable mounts, producing three distinctly colored anamorphic lens flares. Squeezing all that innovation into a compact size required a unique design of the anamorphic optics, placing them within the lens, which has the effect of eliminating the change in squeeze ratio as you pull focus, potentially leading to unwanted visual artifacts. However, with the squeeze ratio remaining unchanged throughout the focus range, the Laowa Nanomorph lenses can focus closer than most other anamorphic lenses.
|
Focal Length |
T-Stop |
Close Focus Distance |
|
27mm |
T2.8 |
16.9" |
|
35mm |
T2.4 |
23.6" |
|
50mm |
T2.4 |
27.5" |
Squeeze
The lenses feature a 1.5x squeeze, allowing you to capture an image with a 2.66:1 aspect ratio on your camera with a 16:9 sensor, with which you have some room to adjust your frame in post when delivering a 2.4:1 image. In addition, the 1.5x squeeze provides for strong oval-shaped, out-of-focus highlights, and cinematic bokeh.
Flare
One of the most identifiable artifacts associated with anamorphic cinematography is the signature anamorphic lens flare or streak. This is usually blue in color and extremely noticeable. While filmmakers try to find ways to use this blue streak to set the mood, the blue color can become a distraction. Laowa has come up with a solution by creating three sets of lenses: Blue, Amber, and Silver. The Blue lenses maintain the traditional blue streak, but the Amber series creates an amber streak, which is more conducive to period pieces or warm scenes. The Silver set of lenses have a neutral flare, which means they take on the color of the light source that is causing the flare, allowing you to create the signature anamorphic streak in new colors, for a boon to your creative storytelling.
Mounts, Mounts, and More Mounts
Seven to be precise, with five interchangeable mounts for working with mirrorless cameras—M43, Canon RF, Sony E, Leica L mount, DJI DL, Nikon Z, and the Fuji X—allowing you to switch between cameras by just changing the mount. For using the Nanomorph lenses on cameras with either a PL or EF mount, a PL/EF mount version is also available, and each on of these lenses comes with both the PL and EF mount, as well as shims.
Cine Ready
With integrated 0.8 MOD focus and iris gears that share consistent placement from lens to lens, the Nanomorphs make swapping lenses easy and fast. Their compact size and lightweight build are a boon to handheld shooting and allow you to fly these lenses on a drone, or even a single-handed gimbal. The mirrorless lenses take a 55mm filter on the front, and the PL/EF mount lenses take 77mm filters to help protect their optics, especially when flying one on a drone. For cine work, studio, as well as indie, these sharp lenses make a strong case for anamorphic shooting.
Which set appeals to you―the Blue, Amber, or Silver? Please let us know if you’re cine ready, in the Comments section, below.
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