'Moment Air' Anamorphic Drone Lens Launches on Kickstarter for $200

Maybe describing what an anamorphic lens does might be helpful!

Maybe describing what an anamorphic lens does might be helpful!

I work regularly with Anamorphic lenses. There are several technical and creative reasons to shoot anamorphic as opposed to regular spherical lenses.

1. Anamorphic flares. AKA JJ Abrams flares that are a horizontal streak, rather than a circular curtain flare. They are pretty and you can avoid flares over the whole image and instead have it along the bottom or top depending on angle and composition.

2. Anamorphic Bokeh. Bokeh is the out-of-focus shape that appears on severely de-focused points of specular light. Think a strand of Christmas bulbs out of focus. On a standard spherical lenses, these resemble a circle, more or less. On an anamorphic lens, they are oblong, or elliptical. () vs O. This can be "magical" in look or style.

3. Cinemascope ratio. This aspect ratio is significantly wider than 16x9. It is the aspect ratio of choice for many hollywood larger-than-life films and was initially popularized in the 70s. Many films finish in this aspect ratio even if they did not shoot anamorphic, effectively cropping their image. Put another way, it has a strong Cinematic Aesthetic. It says, "We're watching a movie, not a TV show or web series."

4. Large-format feel. This is a little harder to describe, but basically an Anamorphic lens "doubles" the width of sensor or film gate, so a 35mm gate becomes a 70mm in terms of horizontal resolution. This is an arguable contention, but the result is that you end up with an image that feels as though you captured a larger format image. Its most apparent at middle range lenses (25-45mm) where you can frame for a Close-Up, but you really get a medium due to the wide format. An easier way to say it is that you see more of the world around the subject, without having to back away or use a wider lens. Hard to put a finger on, but I think its the best quality of anamorphic lenses. (IMHO)

5. Because an anamorphic lens is effectively doubling the width of your sensor, its a way to get to a higher-resolution capture if your camera is limited. On a 3.2k sensor, the Anamorphic de-squeeze puts you at 6.4k horizontal resolution. This is not as sharp as a 6k sensor capturing with a spherical lens, but technically you are capturing a "6k" image at reduced horizontal sharpness. The difference is negligible to the human eye.

Here's a nice long article on a camera thing for a drone, complete with pictures and quotes. Lets monetize it and throw on a line at the very end about the iPhone so we can justify putting it in our iPhone news!

Maybe describing what an anamorphic lens does might be helpful!

basically squishes a wide screen image onto a non-widescreen medium. Someone more focused to cinematography can elaborate but that's my high level understanding.