Kowa Prominar Anamorphic-35

• Alias: Kowa C-35

• Anamorphic Adapter by Kowa
• Double Focus
• Mount: N/A

This Kowa is a heavy lens, at 600g, or 1.5lb, plus the weight of the HCDNA so I had a Rapido clamp mounted to 15mm rails, which made alignment a lot easier when swapping taking lenses. This is one of those lenses that feels heavier than it looks. If it didn't deliver such beautiful images, I'd say it's too heavy.

Part of the select club of 1.75x scopes, this Kowa has no front or rear threads, making clamps mandatory. Focus comes as close as 1.5m or 5ft, and the body has marks in ft. Due to its double focus nature, I'd stick to the HCDNA, which is the only single focus solution right now capable of covering the big front glass and making this lens shine.

It's hard to place this Kowa on a price chart. It is that rare.

Image quality is pretty good at all apertures, and the smudges you see at f/1.4 are because the newspaper wasn't perfectly flat against the wall and DOF was shallow enough to get parts of it blurry. At 135 and wide open the Kowa struggles a little bit, but still holds up alright. A little sharpening in post and you're ready to go. Prices rise.

Flares are not super crazy, but very much present. They show a reddish hue a bit deeper than the Kowa B&H and Iscoramas. Remarkable flares from a remarkable scope. Price goes up!

The initial problem with vignetting was that the HCDNA was sitting too far from the front of the Kowa. Heavy vignetting until 50mm, then almost clear at 85mm and finally clear at 135mm. After getting the back of the HCDNA wider, we were able to clear a lot more of the frame, getting 2.4:1 clear around 50mm on Full Frame and no trace of vignetting at 85mm. Once we remove the HCDNA entirely, you can clear 50mm! And get a tiny bit of dark edges at 40mm using Canon's pancake. Price goes up a lot.

This Kowa was a beast of a lens, it's large, sturdy, could be used as a bludgeoning weapon, delivers Kowa-like sharp images, goes pretty wide for its stretch factor and has unique reddish flares. I am not surprised at the asking prices on these after testing. It's too heavy for my style, I mean, I got these skinny arms that will die upon a heavy handheld setup.