Anamorphic Lens

Recently Lee had mentioned to me about Anamorphic lens and the look they create. This peaked my interest so I began looking into them. The definition of Anamorphic is: producing, relating to, or marked by intentional distortion. These lenses utilise all of the image, stretching the image into a full format, so that the when you transfer the image into a full widescreen format, the image returns to scale, with the added benefit of giving the image more detail. Another advantage of the Anamorphic lens is the lens flare. The lenses have a thin wire incorporated within the lens which then reflects the light onto your image, giving you these lens flare effects. 
A full Anamorphic lens will go for anything from £300-£2000 plus depending on which one you go for. Obviously I don't have the budget for to go out and purchase an Anamorphic Lens. So I began looking into a cheaper alternative and a way to recreate these types of effects with a low budget. I quickly found that you could purchase a Anamorphic filter for around £80 pounds. The filters give you some of the same effects but not them all. They distort the image somewhat and give you a the lens flares, they do not however give you the true widescreen format compared to the lenses themselves. 
Finally I found it was possible to create an Anamorphic Filter for less than £5 with just a piece of black card and a fishing wire. I'm hoping to get the Black Magic out again some time this week, so I can make some of the filters for the Black Magic lenses.