Panasonic AG-LA7200

• Anamorphic Adapter by Panasonic
• Fixed Focus
• Mount: 72 MM

Time to talk about another classic anamorphic, the Panasonic AG-LA7200. It's the widest anamorphic adapter available. Made for the DVX100, the camera that revolutionized indie filmmaking, the name of the lens reads LA for Lens Adapter, 72 because it has a 72mm deep filter thread and 00 because the front has no threads of any kind. Stretch is 1.33x to convert the DVX100 4:3 sensor into 16:9. On a modern camera it stretches 16:9 perfectly to 2.36:1, Cinemascope aspect ratio. Well, considering the size of the front element, it would be hard to have threads there. The adapter has a cool looking square design which immediately implies you're not using a regular lens. The Panasonic is one of the go-to anamorphic adapters for beginners since working with it is rather simple. Just screw your lens at the back, align and go out to film. Don't worry about focusing or anything, just do it on your taking lens and you're good. Later on you'll struggle with close focus or larger apertures performance, but not at the start.

Time and time again the Panasonic is used in a major-super-cool-internet-hit such as Prospect. There are plenty of other reviews and tutorials about it.

Let's talk about some stuff that isn’t mentioned so much around, like there are two versions of the lens, one with this small hood and one without it. The one with the hoodie can hold 105 diopters by wedging them in there! Also, at some point Andrew Reid posted that the Foton-A diopters worked really well with the Panny and that caused the extinction of the Foton-A diopters. It's hard to find diopters for this adapter due to its massive front glass.

Aligning the LA7200 is pretty easy. Loosen the screw to lock and unlock rotation and, if you don't have a flashlight or a good flare source, here's a trick I learned from another video on how to align it using the Panny's original lens cap: straighten out the square in the middle of the frame and you're good to go!

It's a light lens, at 400g, with the downside of having a full plastic body which can easily crack and break. Square glass elements also lead to no oval bokeh, of course.

The LA7200 is able to get good detail inside its focus range, from 4m to infinity. It’s very poor at close focus and has bad image quality at the edges, but still somewhat better than the Centuries.

This adapter REALLY struggles with long lenses, rendering terrible results at 85mm and 135mm.

The LA7200's flares are strong, thin, long and super saturated blue. They're similar but not identical to the Century's. I guess it's the quality of the glass and coatings used in these DV adapters.

With no vignetting at 28mm on full frame. At 35mm you even get rid of some of the worst edge areas. It shines with wide angles and works very well with modern wide zooms such as Canon's 17-40mm f/4 or 16-35mm f/2.8L, covering the entire sensor of an APS-C camera.

The LA7200 is easy to handle and performs incredibly good at wide angles. Good for that documentary-feel camera. It doesn't like longer lenses, requiring diopters even more than the Century, and diopters are hard to find. It's also very soft at faster apertures, showing its best performance when the taking lens is stopped down to f/4 or f/5.6. It flares pretty easily, flares are easy on the eyes and helpful in alignment, which is also a breeze due to the lens' rectangular shape. It's a very simple lens and gives you good stuff right out of the box, but in order to get incredible shots, you'll have to know it well and play its strong side, finding solutions creatively and sometimes tweaking your shots to the lens' needs.