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Hey Guys,

Hope all are doing well. Say, has anyone had experience (or are you using) a 16 x 9 anamorphic lens?

I see we have a setting on our units for anamorphic 16 x 9; does that work? Also, with that setting, will that still leave an image with black borders on the top and bottom of a screen as well as thinner side borders - when viewed on a typical widescreen TV?

Finally, would a burned DVD of something shot and edited 16 x 9 anamorphic, would that look "normal" even if played back on a 4:3 TV? With borders in this case, fine, but would the image be squeezed or stretched, etc.?

I'm getting a few mixed opinions, some saying the image will still have to be stretched in order to truly fit one's widescreen TV. I have Sony VX2000s and am tossing around the idea of getting one of these (or a couple) to shoot widescreen with; the trade-off of course is I will lose a bit on my zoom abilities.

Any feedback, pros, cons, etc. would be much appreciated.

Thanks,

John

Hi John,
When i produce a 16:9 anamorphic project it fills the whole wide screen TV.
When you play it on a 4:3 TV the image is streched/squeezed up and down.
I use a Wide Angle Lens on my FX-1 and it looks great !!! both in 16:9 & HD.
I got the Sony lens specifically for that camera and i'm happy with the lens
and its ability to zoom in tight.

Syl

Hi John,

.If you recall my lecture in MOLINE and last year in IOWA, I am an advocate of 16:9, even in standard definition. The entire country is widescreen in regards to TV sales...actually HDTV.

.Our units handle widescreen very well in 16:9 anamorphic. Soon there may be a release of cinemascope which I will write about later in this posting.

.ARABESK has a 16:9 setting. When a DVD is authored, everything will look fine on a widescreen (WS) TV or monitor as this project setting of 16:9 anamorphic keeps transitions etc in a proper aspect ratio.

.There are NO flags in ARABESK that communicate with DVD players and cause them to automatically change to a letterbox format on a 4:3 TV

.GOOD NEWS: ALL DVD players have the ability, within their respective menus to be manually set to letterbox when an anamorphic picture is detected.

.GOOD NEWS: You can also use your cineconverter software to change the 16:9 aspect to 4:3 and then proceed to burn a DVD as a 4:3 project AND if the project is small enough, you can place TWO projects on one DVD designating 16:9 and 4:3

.CINEMASCOPE or 21:9 capability has been released in Germany. This involves placing the newer camera(s0 via the menu on anamorphic or 16:9 or wide (depending on the camera ) model and using an ANAMORPHIC lens in tandem with this setting for an even more dramatic WS presentation. NOTE: All HD cameras are widescreen and have the ability to utilize the WIDE/ANAMORPHIC function in SD mode as well.

.Be careful using the widescreen or anamorphic setting on any 4:3 type camera like the VX or PD SONY series. There is a loss of resolution that really "breaks-up" the picture on LCD screens and large widescreen televisions. This is an artificial setting using only a small portion of the 4:3 SD chip in the camera.

.Lastly, certain ANAMORPHIC lenses do not allow the videographer to ZOOM throughout the entire range and use the focus ring thus a blurry, unfocused picture about 40%.

Thank you both for the insight and Lou for the great explanation. More for me to think about.

John