Hey filmmakers Chung Dha here, this video we are going to show you how to get the most out of your Anamorphic lens on Sony mirrorless cameras like the Sony A7siii, A7iv, A7iii or any of the A6000 series. Though Sony mirrorless misses anamorphic features, there are some tricks that I have found to be very useful.
Sony mirrorless only films in 16:9 and misses the ability to film in 4:3 aspect ratio. With a 4:3 it enables you to get better coverage when you are filming with a squeeze larger than 1.33x, so you wont end up with an overly wide video.
For example with my Sony A7rii combined with the Kowa 16S which got 1.8x squeeze. If we just film UHD 16:9 normally we end up with a 3.23:1 aspect ratio which is extremely wide and needs to crop away the sides to get to a more normal scope aspect ratio.
But if we film with 4:3 using the Kowa 16s after de-squeeze we would end up with a 2.35:1 aspect ratio which is a more normal cinemascope aspect ratio.
One feature in the Sony mirrorless we can take advantage of is the frame guides as there is a 4:3 guide. Though we are still filming a 16:9 video, we only need a 4:3 portion of it as we crop away the rest in the edit. So Instead of framing for the full 16:9 UHD 4k which is 3840×2160, we focus more on the framing of the 4:3 section of it, which is 2880×2160 and end up with 2.8k video.
The benefit of this is we can get a wider field of view when we set up the correct taking lens. For example this video has quite the heavy vignetting, but it’s only outside of the 4:3 section of the video. When we de-squeeze it, we still have a good video. But when it is without the vignetting you will notice that we have a much tighter shot, losing a lot of the top and bottom of the image. Though there are also benefits to filming a full 16:9 coverage as you will have more room to reframe the image or to do a digital pan.
Another great feature to make use of is the clear image zoom, when your lens is a bit too wide and vignettes inside the 4:3 guides, we can use the clear image zoom to crop in a little for this. Also most anamorphic lenses don’t focus well close up, but using the clear image zoom we zoom in for a closer shot instead.
A major drawback still is that you cannot desqueeze the image on a Sony camera as it makes it harder to judge how it will actually look and an external monitor with a desqueeze feature is highly recommended when filming Anamorphic on a Sony mirrorless camera.
