Anamorphic

Anamorphic Chop Shop – Panasonic LA7200 fix with +0.25 Diopter – Part 1

August 16, 2015

Does sticking a +0.25 diopter between the taking lens and the Panasonic LA7200 actually fix all the Panasonic’s issues? Let’s test and see!

Thanks to Rob Bannister, my partner at Creative Camera Rentals (creativecamerarentals.com), for getting me the +0.25, and Gearhouse Camera Rentals for the Panasonic LA7200.

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Hey everyone, Tito Ferradans here and we’re going a little mythbusters on this episode of Anamorphic Chop Shop.

So, I think EVERYONE who owns or owned a Panasonic has probably seen this video from Eyepatch Entertainment and spent hours on end trying to grab a +0.25 diopter and fix this piece of glass. Well, thanks to my friend Rob Bannister, my partner at Creative Camera Rentals, I was able to get my hands on a huge 77mm +0.25 B+W diopter and got the Panasonic LA7200 from Gearhouse Camera Rentals, again, here in Vancouver, which got me a nice deal on the lens again, so I could FINALLY test what’s being said in the video.

I don’t have a RED Scarlet at hand (getting the glass was already hard enough), but I’m going with my loyal 5D3 and the new-old Canon 50D. I’m shooting this before going to my tests and then later I’ll try to piece together what the shots tell us but I’m gonna take a few guesses at HOW and WHY the shots on Mark’s video look so good and sharp. First, the Scarlet shooting at 4k has a 1.6 crop factor, which leads us to a “smaller” sensor as the area being used. Same goes for the GH2, even a smaller sensor. Second, his taking lens is pretty wide, from 17-35mm and mostly at f/4. The Panny can perform good naturally at f/4 and such wide angles. I’m thinking the shots would look pretty much identical had he taken off the diopter between the lenses. I might be wrong, of course!

So what I’m gonna do is shoot a few tests with full frame, using the exact same setup with and without the diopter, not even moving the camera. I’m picking my Contax Zeiss for these and going with a 28mm and a 35mm so you can try to keep an eye on what changes. Then, some random shots of a hike I did with friends and Davie Street at night, shot with the 50D and using a Canon 17-40mm f/4L as taking lens. I’ll mix the shots with and without the diopter in the edit and see if you guys can identify them based on image quality. That should be the supreme test for performance increase, right?




Well, click here to go to the test video (each shot is numbered, to make guessing easier) and next week I’ll have them with all the specs listed, overall and specific comments and also an explanation if this trick actually works or not! It would be awesome if you left some comments on what you expect to happen, why you think so and guessing which clip was shot with/without the diopter!

  • TFerradans. · Anamorphic Chop Shop – Panasonic LA7200 fix with +0.25 Diopter – Part 2 August 23, 2015 at 10:03 am

    […] back to our Anamorphic Chop Shop, I’m Tito Ferradans and in this episode we’re going back to what I presented last week, about Mark’s video on fixing the Panasonic’s issues with chromatic aberration around […]