"Anamorphic lenses don't give any more details than cropping when using GH2 AVCHD codec."
They can, 1.5x or 1.33x, but don't always do depending on the lens and how its setup. I can guarantee you that if you put a hawk 1.33 on even the lowly GH2 you'd end up with more resolution than just by cropping.
Even if you are just delivering 1920x810 you are supersampling vertical detail into that smaller frame size.
Anamorphic lenses don't give any more details than cropping when using GH2 AVCHD codec.
The speciality lenses give the good old anamorphic "looks". Horizontal line flare, oval bokeh, dreamy looking corners, etc. Since a cheap anamorphic lens wouldn't give such looks, I just crop the output.
Hate to keep bringing up the KineRaw like a fanboy, BUT.....
The KineRaw-S8 can do anamorphic crops in cam and unsquease in the viewfinder. It can also do 4:3 HD ratios so you can use 2x Anamorphic lenses....all at 2k RAW. And that's the entry level model. I'm sure the KineRaw-S16 and S35 will also be able to do similar ratios.
But it's probably at least a year till they are released outside of China.
it may give the look of letter boxed film, but its just a crop for the most part.. not sure how these cameras process the video etc.. but assume its just a in camera crop... it would take a lens to actually make it anamorphic.. shooting with a anamorphic lens gives you more detail as you get 1920 x 1080 that is stretched, then correct the aspect in post. more pixels = better image quality if the pixels are equal. What has more pixels? 1920x1080 or 1920x810
As for the ratio.. seems like a balance between the two
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