Anamorphic Viewfinder For 16mm

Has anybody used or heard of an anamorphic viewfinder for SR3 or XTR prod ? Homemade solutions are also welcome.

Leo Mac Dougall
AC Paris

>Has anybody used or heard of an anamorphic viewfinder for SR3 or >XTR prod? Homemade solutions are also welcome.

Hi Leo,

When I used Joe Duntons ( http://www.joedunton.co.uk/ ) 16mm anamorphic lenses with an SR3 they provided me with a 'de-anamorphasising' eyepiece. It was pretty rubbish though.

I think they cobbled it together from an old Moviecam eyepiece and it was a nightmare to orientate it properly or to see both edges of the frame without wiggling your head from side to side.

Having said all that though, god bless 'em, they knocked it together with 24hrs notice and with more time I'm sure they could make a much better one; their lenses are excellent after all.

Tom Townend,
Cinematographer/London.

Leo Mac Dougall writes :

>Has anybody used or heard of an anamorphic viewfinder for SR3 or >XTR prod? Homemade solutions are also welcome.

Century makes an anamorphic magnifier for the Sony PD-150's flip-out LCD screen.

You might be able to adapt that lens (or a centre cut out from it) to the film-camera's eyepiece. Why not ask Century if they'd be willing to work with you on that?

Dan Drasin
Producer/DP
Marin County, CA

>Century makes an anamorphic magnifier for the Sony PD-150's flip-out >LCD screen

That's a 1.33x anamorphot and he would need a 2x one. And I question the optical quality for this use.

Aaton has an anamorphic viewfinder for the Aaton 35-3 (built by P+S Technik), but I don't know if it would mount to the XTRProd. I forget if the eyepiece fitting for the SR-3 matches to the 535 or any other Arri 35 camera, all of which have anamorphic viewfinders available. The older SR cameras have the same viewfinder thread mount as the old (BL-3 and earlier) Arri 35 cameras, so you could easily put one of those eyepieces on one of those 16mm cameras.

Mitch Gross
NYC DP

>Has anybody used or heard of an anamorphic viewfinder for SR3 or >XTR prod ? Homemade solutions are also welcome.

Panavision London has a 9 inch Arri III anamorphic extension eyepiece which has been machined to fit an SR3. It uses the SR3's diopter adjustment eyepiece (rather than an Arri III) as this gives better magnification. They only have one of these, but it is the best solution that I've seen.

Hope that's of use.

Chris Ross
DP London

>Has anybody used or heard of an anamorphic viewfinder for SR3 or >XTR prod? Homemade solutions are also welcome.

If you can't locate a de-anamorphic, or the one you obtain vignettes or has uneven focus plane or other problem, you could just focus and shoot off your ground glass as-is with squeezed image and use a 16:9 LCD monitor onboard as an easy heads-up compositional aid.

Don't know if the ratio would be right for you but it could be close enough for director, etc. Are you squeezing 2:40 to 1:33 or to 1:66, or ?

It's not a great solution, but it could work.

I had to shoot a show similar to this method a few years ago and over a time, your eye will get more used to composing and "seeing" what you really have.

Sort of.

Royce Allen Dudley
DP/LA

It's a simple question as to whether the 35 finder/handle will fit onto the 16mm camera. They may be identical--I don't know. But if they do interchange then you can use the anamorphic finder made for the Aaton 35 camera. Don't know about the corners getting dark or any of that, but I suspect the issue may more on the lines of the image being a bit small in the viewfinder. Depends how and where they deal with the image magnification. P+S Technik built the anamorphic finder for them, but this is a straightforward question for any Aaton house that rents both the 16 and 35 cameras. Try Abel Cine Tech, IceCo. or any of the other big Aaton dealers. Or just call Aaton.

Mitch Gross
NYC DP

Thank you all for your answers … the SR2 (even SR3) + Arri 3 anamorphic is the most obvious solution. I'm still looking into Aaton, and called Kish Optics : the person vaguely recalled a fibre optic system, but probably for the 35. I'm still waiting for the French solution.

Leo Mac Dougall
AC Paris