Great Joy 60mm T2.9

• Anamorphic Lens by Great Joy
• Single Focus : Synchro Focus
• Mount: E, RF, Z, L

If Sirui’s initial anamorphic offerings were unexpected, here we go for an even more surprising release from Great Joy, a company I never heard of before this lens! It seems they were listening to people’s qualms with Sirui and decided to take their own shot at it.

Today we’re looking at their 60mm T2.9 full frame 1.33X anamorphic lens.

Making it a tradition, Great Joy’s is a mirrorless lens. It’s not compatible with EF or PL mounts, but you can get it in E, RF, Z or L mounts. Mine is L. And we have zero play at the mount.

It’s a solid chunk of glass and metal, weighing 790g, or 1.7lbs, and it’s one of those lenses that are heavier than they look. The body is already cine-style, with geared iris and focus, alongside markings in meters and super smooth operation. Minimum focus is 0.7m - just over 2 feet - with about 180 degrees of throw. The front threads are 67mm.

The 60mm focal length combined with the 1.33x squeeze gives you a 45mm horizontal field of view, which is plenty wide in full frame - for reference, this is a hair wider than Sirui’s widest lens, the 24mm on MFT. Still, I already anticipate comments saying 60mm is too long. Hold your horses, it’ll get better when we get into the adapter later in the video, I promise.

Using the S1H open gate mode, we get full coverage and no vignetting, which is pretty neat if you’re into a 2:1 aspect ratio like we’re doing for this video - this aspect ratio is called Univision, and we talked about it in the Cookbook! You should check that out.

For 16:9 cameras like pretty much all other bodies besides Panasonic’s, you get the “traditional” 2.36:1.

The lens is super sharp wide open and it only improves as you stop down.

I’m curious about your take on the flares now. There was a lot of bashing on Sirui’s super blue flares, so Great Joy went the other way and has the most muted flares I’ve ever seen on an anamorphic lens, toe to toe with some of the cleanest adapters, like the Isco Ultra Stars and Schneider Cineluxes.

The lens is synchro focused, meaning the squeeze will change as you focus closer, peaking at 1.3X at minimum focus, and 1.33X at infinity. The lens also breathes a little bit, with a wider field of view at infinity when compared to minimum focus.

Now, here are a few things I wish we had! Number one is: I miss flares. If they were warm, that would be dope and special. They can still be subtler than the norm, but them being so hard to see was a bit of a disappointment. Last, it would be amazing to see a faster base lens. T2.8 is plenty good, but in today’s age of f/0.95 lenses, it does feel a bit slow by comparison.