Vistascope 8mm

• Alias: Delrama

• Anamorphic Adapter by Old Delft
• Fixed Focus
• Mount: 25.4 MM

The Vistascope 8mm is a baby anamorphic that has a very different design than other adapters. In terms of performance, we're talking about a fixed focus adapter designed for tiny film. I couldn't get full frame coverage no matter what. By itself, this is not an easy-to-work-with adapter. The magic happens when you add diopters in front of it. Due to its design, this adapter doesn't deliver oval bokeh, and its flares are unlike others.

This is a square adapter. It has a prism design where two mirror surfaces are responsible for squeezing the footage by a 1.5x factor. That is why bokeh isn't stretched and flares are non-standard.

Old Delft, in Holland, made two versions of the Vistascope - or Delrama. They had this one for 8mm cameras and projectors, and a bigger one for 16mm film. These adapters have focus locked at 4m - or 400cm, as stated on the top of the lens - which translates to 12ft, all the way to infinity.

This thing is tiny, and weighs only 105g. For mounting it I followed the steps of Julian, over at EOSHD, and made a clamp out of a 49mm lens cap.

In order to attach diopters to it, I made a custom 3d-printed part and glued it to a 49mm step ring.

You didn't actually expected this to be tack sharp, did you? The same way it happened to the baby Isco, this is a good time to have a small sensor camera, since the quality loss becomes less noticeable.

No streak flares at all! Sort of. Some streaks show up, but they're quite different, plus you also get some reflections from the sides, since they're not blacked out. I kind of like the dirty look it creates, I can't wait to see how much more interesting this will be on the bigger version.

Baby anamorphics will require you to go quite long on bigger sensors. On crop mode - S35 - I was only able to clear 2.4:1 aspect ratio past 50mm.