Dyaliscope Champion

• Anamorphic Adapter by Dyaliscope
• Double Focus
• Mount: 60 MM

This is a long projection lens, so you know what to expect!

This was a challenging shoot. The setup was pretty heavy, regardless of how light the Sony A7s2 is, because the Dyaliscope is heavy. Focus was also stiff, so I did some modding to a Rectilux HCDNA in order to get single focus. When I had this setup mounted onto the 135mm taking lens, a passerby could claim I was shooting closeups through a telescope - and not in a good way. Overall the image looks "diffuse" to me and the highlights really bloom even when stopped down. It's not a bad bloom entirely, but it's a boom nonetheless. Bokeh gets quite smeary when wide open, giving a dreamy look that could be useful depending on the project.

The Dyaliscope Champion is a 2x stretch, double focus, large and heavy projection lens. Not the largest nor heaviest of the French batch, but still bad. The lens weighs 620g and - at least - features 60mm threads on the back, which allow you to use step rings or a clamp to mount it and align. At this load, I'd recommend using rails when filming with this setup.

The front is large. So large that your only option for clamps is making your own, through 3d printing. It's in fact so large that a regular HCDNA won't fit over it. So, unless you're willing to mill out pieces of your HCDNA, your only option is diopters.

The Dyaliscope shows consistent performance through the entire range of lenses I tested. It displays similar results on similar apertures regardless of focal length. That's a positive thing. And the edges aren't as bad as most scopes.

The flares are one of the highlights of this lens, with shiny yellow colors and a good variety with elements. It reminds me of the Aivascope MkI.

Vignetting on this one is pretty bad. It shows intense dark edges at 50mm on S35 crop, which is concerning, and only clears at 85mm, which means the threshold for getting 2.4:1 clear on full frame with this lens is above 100mm. The frame is clear of any vignetting at 135mm on S35, which is just over 200mm on full frame.

This lens fuels my disliking for projection lenses. They're a necessary evil in a market that gives us very few new offerings. This forces new anamorphic filmmakers to hash through lots of repurposed things, many of them far from ideal. Some work out, others don't. If you really have to make this lens work, you can, but it's not something I'd recommend. The rig becomes impractical and the results are just ok.