Almost all of us have seen a widescreen film. The exotic Cinemascope aspect ratio registers automatically as a signal: this is cinema. Not television, not an old home movie, not a photograph. It’s widescreen, and so it promises an experience. With a bit of luck, even a very good one. And every filmmaker would like to shoot a good film. So it’s only logical that we subconsciously itch to reach for the widescreen format whenever the situation allows it even slightly.
As soon as you dig a little beneath the surface, you find that widescreen films are often shot using a technique called anamorphosis, meaning the image is squeezed optically during capture and stretched back out later.
Having a genuine anamorphic adapter or lens at your disposal used to be an impossible dream. The price of the glass was astronomical, and the results would have been hard to use anyway. So the magic of widescreen films remained locked away for professional cinematography alone. With the arrival of digital technology, that changed.
- A top-tier lens for widescreen shooting can now be had — but the prices are still extreme, in the tens of thousands of euros. Usually it makes more sense to rent one for the duration of the shoot.
- Optics from more affordable classes — but still of usable quality — will run from around 300 to 5000 euros. Generally we’re talking about anamorphic adapters used in cinemas or in home projectors for watching Cinemascope films. At this level you’ll need to expect compromises in the result.
- And then there are the toys. This article is about those.
You can buy an anamorphic adapter for mobile phones. Prices run from roughly 20 to 200 euros. Count on the quality matching the price. There are already several manufacturers offering them on the market. Some are better, some worse.
- Pholes Universal Anamorphic Lens For Mobile Phone 1.33 (this is the marvel I tested).
- Kapkur Anamorphic
- Moment Anamorphic Lens
- Moondog Labs’ anamorphic adapter
- Beastgrip’s Anamorphic lens
- Ulanzi Anamorphic Lens
- Sandmarc’s Anamorphic
- Inverlee
For the test I picked the cheapest, unbranded adapter. I practically never shoot on a phone, so it isn’t worth buying something better. And from what I could see watching videos on YouTube, there isn’t much to choose from in this league anyway. The same problems are everywhere, more pronounced in some cases, less in others.
Since I tested what is probably the worst adapter available, take this review as representing the lowest quality tier of anamorphic shooting on a phone. It’s hard to imagine worse results.
- If I put you off, you’ll probably shoot your first serious anamorphic video on better gear instead.
- If I don’t put you off, you may spend a few pleasant hours with it.
You can skip straight down to the results, but first a few words about what’s actually going on here.
- A 1.33× anamorphic adapter means that if you shoot at a 16:9 aspect ratio, you end up with Cinemascope, i.e. 21:9. Note, though, that 1.33× is a fairly modest squeeze and the typical characteristics of anamorphic film barely show up.
- You’d be better served by a 1.5× adapter or stronger. That turns roughly a 4:3 image into a widescreen one, and the associated effects become far more pronounced. It’s just that adapters like that are hard to find for phones.
So when choosing an adapter for your phone, curb your appetite — for now you’ll only come across 1.33× units, which isn’t quite the widest image possible. I haven’t seen anything stronger, and it would probably be difficult to make one good enough not to destroy an already problematic phone image.
[su_note]The adapter reviewed in the text below therefore has a factor of 1.33×[/su_note]
- If you shoot by the book and set the aspect ratio to 4:3, you’ll stretch the image out to roughly 16:9. I think we’ll quickly agree that this doesn’t make much sense, given that the phone already shoots 16:9 on its own. The adapter adds nothing substantial to the image. The anamorphic characteristics barely appear, while you introduce optical flaws into your shots in abundance.
- If you shoot 16:9, you will indeed end up with the desired Cinemascope ratio (21:9), but count on distracting vignetting and other problems at the edges. Put simply, we’re talking about a toy.
So let’s mount it on the phone and try it out.
The adapter attaches to the phone with a fixed clamp. If you’re unlucky and your phone is half a millimetre thicker, you’re done.
The mount pretends to be solid, with the option of screwing it down. Even so, it slides around on the phone and shifts position easily. That was my experience. I came back with plenty of soft shots. I’d attach it, and it would move.
The adapter assumes the lens sits at the edge of the phone.
- If your phone’s lens is in the middle rather than near the edge, you’re done.
- The clamp does hold the adapter, but it also grips the display, which means you’re done operating it with your fingers. A spacer might solve it, but for a test I didn’t bother. All you can do is set the app up beforehand, attach the adapter and then trigger with a physical button, because the display won’t respond to touch.
- If your phone has a lens that protrudes by half a millimetre, the adapter won’t sit parallel but at an angle. That degrades sharpness and image quality.
Quite a few limitations, I’d say. Never mind, we wanted to play.
Above you can see a shot recorded with the adapter, unaltered. Below it is desqueezed to Cinemascope. This was the first test and we weren’t paying attention to whether it would be sharp. As you can see in the image on the right, if the adapter isn’t mounted correctly, parts of the frame are very soft. That, incidentally, is typical of all similar phone adapters. If it isn’t on the optical axis, sharpness is gone. And you’ll never have it on the optical axis. You’ll always place it by eye, and it holds there roughly until the first larger movement of your hands.
Mount the adapter slightly differently and everything changes.
A tip from experience: if you have a proper video app such as Filmic Pro or similar, switch it to anamorphic recording. The app will desqueeze the image for you. I worked with the squeezed image, and that makes composition harder — you’re essentially framing blind.
One of the important characteristics in the world of anamorphic film is the distinctive lens flare. As you can see, this adapter doesn’t produce a properly horizontal one — it’s always slightly different, depending on how well you manage to get it onto the optical axis. The arrow on the left points to the area of softness. With the adapter mounted this way, it has shifted over to the left again 🙂
Another shot showing lens flare. Again, the streaks aren’t perfectly straight.
Often you only get small reflections. Vignetting is already visible at the bottom right.
Frequently no light effects appear in backlight at all, or only mild ones.
Occasionally you manage to mount the anamorphic adapter almost precisely. The shot then starts to look almost sharp. You even begin to regret that the shot couldn’t come from a proper camera with more dynamic range than a phone.
An ordinary view of a city clogged with cars.
As you can see, by the time I’d turned around, the adapter had already slipped to the left and we have a soft edge.
Some shots come out rather nicely — the slight cylindrical distortion can be felt a little here.
Another example of lens flare with the anamorphic adapter.
Here too we can see that when you manage to mount it correctly, the image is reasonably sharp.
Right then, on to the verdict
Widescreen video is a beautiful thing, and it can bring a filmmaker real joy. If you want to shoot something that distantly resembles cinematic footage, you have the option of buying an anamorphic adapter for your phone. There are several solutions on the market, and the more expensive ones will give you marginally better results. Don’t expect good or excellent ones, though. It’s usable for YouTube purposes, or for a clip for a band just starting out, where the quality demands are low but the urge to play at cinema is strong. Or simply for every other case where it doesn’t matter that the result will be slightly soft, particularly at the edges, and vignetted. (Count on that with the more expensive phone adapters too.)
If you do want to choose an adapter, here are a few tips:
- If possible, pick an adapter made specifically for your phone model so that it sits exactly where it should. That way you avoid problems like not being able to tap the display, and the image won’t be softer than it needs to be.
- If you can get a rig for your phone and adapter, go for it. Mounted on a solid frame, the adapter sits far more firmly and reliably. After all, if you want to shoot widescreen you’ll be working with the phone a lot, and it’s no fun clipping the thing on before every shot and then nudging it around by guesswork so it’s at least somewhat sharp for a moment. In sunlight you won’t see much anyway.
- If you go looking at reviews, watch out for affiliate sites running “reviews”. They’ve infested almost the entire internet. They’ll praise anything to the skies just so you’ll buy it and they’ll get their commission. You’re better off looking at the pages of enthusiasts who actually shoot with this gear and aren’t dependent on driving sales. It’ll save you disappointment.
- And bear in mind that many filmmakers demonstrating or reviewing this kit will only show you the best footage. They won’t show you the problems, because that would mean admitting how many shots they ruined.
[su_note]An anamorphic adapter for a phone is a pleasure. It’s a bit of boyish mischief. Something you don’t actually need. If you’re shooting serious video, the drawbacks of this optical accessory outweigh its benefits. That disqualifies it from any serious use. But if the drawbacks aren’t a problem for your purposes, then it’s an interesting experience. At the very least. [/su_note]
You can probably tell that I’m more against than for. Here are the reasons why every current phone adapter delivers underwhelming results:
- The main effects we want an anamorphic adapter for barely show up on a phone. Don’t expect the classic hallmarks of anamorphic film — the beautiful lens flare, or the oval out-of-focus city lights in the background beyond the depth of field — from these toys. The phone’s sensor is simply too small for that.
- In backlight, the optical flaws of a cheap anamorphic adapter are more distracting than attractive. They’ll appear at strange angles, or in places you wouldn’t expect them.
- You have no certainty that the image will be sharp. You do, however, have complete certainty that the image will be less sharp than without the adapter.
- You have no certainty that the adapter is, and will remain, mounted vertically. If it’s slightly tilted, you get unpleasant geometric distortion that you won’t like.
- The image will be vignetted — the body of the adapter is already intruding into the corners of the frame.
- If you don’t have an app that natively supports anamorphic work, you have no real control over the final composition and you’re shooting by eye and approximation.
You probably won’t get any genuinely serious work out of a product like this. If anamorphic film appeals to you, enjoy it. It’s a change of pace, and however problematic the results, you’ll probably have a slightly different feeling while shooting. I know, it’s more of a toy than a working tool. But a toy can bring pleasure too — hand on heart, do you know a single filmmaker who isn’t a tinkerer and a tester at heart?
Naturally, for serious video production I’ll continue to stick with conventional 16:9 cameras. With a wide-angle lens you can capture a quality shot, and if you crop it a little, you get widescreen video at a technically decent quality. Yes, it will be obvious that it’s widescreen but not anamorphic. Then again, only a few dozen people in the country could tell anamorphic from non-anamorphic footage by eye. Everyone else would just wonder why this particular video of yours looks somehow softer and lower in quality. Because that’s exactly how your first truly widescreen picture can end up.
Finally,