An affordable anamorphic setup is tricky. Yet here you got an example of a super affordable (but professional) setup for beautiful anamorphic imagery. This combo of GREAT JOY plus  BMPCC 6K can do marvels. Watch it below.

Thanks to “Of Two Lands”

We’ll start from the end. The YouTube channel “Of Two Lands” is a great educational resource for indie filmmakers. You should definitely check it out. This time, they examined the new anamorphic lens from a company called GREAT JOY. We wrote about their first piece of glass which was the 60mm. This time, the guys at “Of Two Lands” explored the GREAT JOY 50mm T2.9 1.8x Full-Frame Anamorphic Lens on their BMPCC (Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera ) 6K. To make the story short, the results are pretty decent, especially when taking into account this affordable setup. Note that the lens costs only $1,500 USD, which is pretty amazing by itself.

GREAT JOY: About

This is how the company GREAT JOY describes itself: “Born in China, Team GREAT JOY is a promising enterprise of senior professionals and engineers from various backgrounds. We are dedicated to providing affordable & good quality lenses and connecting creativity and future technologies for moving images and professional productions worldwide with Exceptional Quality, Exceptional Value, and Exceptional Affordability”. GREAT JOY has launched their anamorphic lens on Indiegogo. “Our first 1.8x anamorphic set campaign has achieved incredible success and has been selected as a Project We Love on Kickstarter. To this day, we continue to receive positive feedback from backers” the company states. As for the 50mm T2.9 1.8x Full-Frame Anamorphic, it has achieved almost $600,000 USD backed by more than 445 backers.

Anamorphic, and Affordable (!?)

The terms Anamorphic lens and Affordability don’t come together that much. For a long time, a true anamorphic glass has cost a fortune. However, Atlas has started to disrupt the industry. If we’re not mistaken, Atlas was the first company to offer a TRUE anamorphic glass for below $8,000 USD. Nevertheless, with the release of the wide Orions (25mma and 21mm) which cost around $15,000, Atlas can barely use its first slogan “Anamorphic for all”. Luckily, the Chinese chimed in. And there are a lot of them, including in the anamorphic space. For instance, GREAT JOY offered its X1.8 FF anamorphic for just $1,5000 USD. But how does it perform?

1.8x 50mm: “ True Anamorphic Look”

GREAT JOY states that its anamorphic lenses deliver a “True anamorphic look and more cinematographic feel”. The company provides 6 mount options for different camera models: EF, PL, E, RF, L, and MFT mounts. Other mirrorless cameras can also use GREAT JOY T2.9 1.8x Anamorphic Lens with EF or PL mount adapter. The lens is solidly built from aluminum alloy and has a relatively light weight of 1040g/2.2 pounds. The lens offers 270° focus rotation with a minimum focus distance of 0.7m. The lens housing features an industry-standard 0.8 MOD focus and the lens comes with M5 to 1/4″-20 UNC support screws. Furthermore, the focus ring of the GREAT JOY 1.8x 50mm lens features a step-less aperture design, providing smooth and seamless aperture control from T2.9 to T22. With 33×24 mm image circle, GREAT JOY 50mm T2.9 1.8x Anamorphic Lens supports shooting in 3:2, 4:3, and 16:9 aspect ratios and side-cropping to 2.35:1 format. If shooting in 4:3 full-frame, you can get a 2.4:1 image without any vignette.

A delicate flare

One of the most notable characteristics of an anamorphic lens is the flare. A lot of anamorphic lens makers tend to exaggerate and boost the flare, by making it take control of the image. More flaring is not equal to more cinematic. The flare has to be elegant, and…sophisticated. Well, GREAT JOY almost nailed it. Why almost? Because the flare is barely noticeable.  As stated by Of Two Lands: “I liked the image. I loved the soft edges, the sharpness at the center, the bokeh when shooting wide open, and I also liked that the flares were not too crazy, and felt somewhat natural”. Also, Of Two Lands has mentioned something interesting: “It made me shoot differently. Shooting anamorphic is so unique and refreshing. I slowed me down, but in a good way”. Indeed, shooting anamorphic needs more filmmaking calculations. Hence, it can turn you into a better filmmaker in many ways. Watch the test footage – shot on the Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K (Do yourself a favor and watch it in full resolution (4K)!

Closing thoughts

We wrote this article to review the footage of “Of Two Lands” which was shot on a very affordable anamorphic setup. However, we found ourselves talking about the disruption in the anamorphic lens industry, started by Atlas, Xelmus joined (an outstanding piece of anamorphic glass BTW), SIRUI, and now GREAT JOY. We think everyone can confirm that Atlas and Xelmus are located in another league than SIRUI and GREAT JOY. And there’re huge differences between SIRUI (hard flare) and GREAT JOY (delicate flare). Nevertheless, we have a choice and that’s great (Joy?)….This leads us to think about the purpose of this strange name…GREAT JOY…