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Building a micro anamorphic setup for the Pentax Q

My project was to build two light anamorphic setups - one for my Pentax Auto 110, which I really love, and one for the Pentax Q, which I never use but does yield decent results in the "digital aesthetics" field. 

Since the project didn't work out for the Pentax Auto 110 for now, I will share the more successful results of the Pentax Q.


This was the base idea:

  1. Find a filter that can be screwed onto the best zoom lens (to avoid cropping)
  2. Remove the glass from this filter to keep the ring with the thread
  3. Replace the glass with a donut-shaped piece of wood or cardboard
  4. Fix a small cellphone anamorphic lens onto that 


Here's how it went:

Find a filter that can be screwed onto the best zoom lens (to avoid cropping)

This one was easy. I decided to use the 02 "Standard Zoom" lens for the Pentax Q which has a thread of 40.5mm. And used a Fotasy Pro 1-D as filter.

Remove the glass from this filter to keep the ring with the thread

That was equal parts fun and dangerous (or maybe it's the same thing?). Since the filter's glass part doesn't stay in position because of a circular screw as on some filters, I removed the glass part with a hammer and a twice-folded paper towel between the hammer and the glass to prevent glass bits flying everywhere. I had to remove some parts of glass that were still glued around the edges at the end but it came off nicely.




Replace the glass with a donut-shaped piece of wood or cardboard

In order to build the wood piece, I used a Cricut maker. This helped me make the part out of a strong material, and also to perfectly align the two cut circles within one another.








In the end, the piece of wood matched perfectly the shape of both filters.
After all, we're just building a 17mm to 40.5mm adapter ring!

Fix a small cellphone anamorphic lens onto that

To put the Anamorphic lens into the filter, I just glued the two together using caulk. Since the Anamorphic lens I used had a circular rotation (I think the brand is Ulanzi), it kept the ability to rotate to be aligned even after being glued on.





Once mounted on the camera lens, the result is a hyper-portable and light anamorphic setup.



Horizontal stretch position:


Vertical stretch position:




The results came out very satisfying, whether it's for still images or videos. Examples below.

Still images - using the anamorphic adapter for both vertical and horizontal stretches:



















Videos - mixing vertical and horizontal stretching (use the fullscreen button and switch to 1080):



















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