Not every test happens on a job. This one happened on holiday at the lake, with my wife and daughter in front of the camera instead of a client.

I used it as a chance to properly put the Blazar Talon anamorphic lenses through their paces on the Nikon ZR the 35mm T2.1 on a gimbal for the first part of the video, and the 50mm T2.1 handheld for the rest. The 35mm rode on my Zhiyun Crane 2, which is still holding up impressively well even with lenses of a certain weight on it that gimbal simply refuses to quit. The 50mm I shot handheld, relying on the ZR’s own in-body stabilization.

Everything was shot in RED RAW on the Nikon ZR, mixing 4K and 6K at 25p, graded in DaVinci Resolve and edited in FCPX. Desqueeze came out at 1.53x for the 35mm Talon and 1.57x for the 50mm worth noting if you’re setting up monitoring for these specific lenses.

I’m genuinely in love with this lens set. The character they give the image is something else, and autofocus performs well on both Sony and Nikon bodies on the Nikon side, paired with the Megadap ETZ21 Pro adapter, it’s honestly better than I expected from a manual cine-style anamorphic.

One caveat worth being upfront about, though: on the Nikon ZR specifically, recording occasionally stops on its own, seemingly at random. It doesn’t happen constantly, but it happens often enough that it’s a real concern for professional work on a wedding, that’s the difference between having a moment on file and losing it forever. I haven’t seen the same issue on Sony bodies with the same lenses. Something to keep in mind if you’re considering this combination for client work rather than a personal project.