Moment is Making an Anamorphic Lens for Drones

Most feature films are shot with anamorphic lenses. That's why, when we see this type of shot on YouTube, we call it "cinematic". It's going to be available for your drone soon. Get ready, it's going to be incredible. 

Moment launched high-quality lenses for smartphones. They started it's development with Kickstarter, and expanded the range of lenses from there. They released the Anamorphic lens last year, which has gorgeous flares and works seamlessly with their well-developed smartphone apps. 

They've shot some footage to give you an idea of what the lens can do, and it's impressive. Anamorphic lenses cost around $25000 US, and it can't be used with a DJI Mavic drone. Moment is giving us a compact way to shoot image-stabilized, anamorphic footage.

What is an Anamorphic lens?

What Is Different About the Footage From a Drone Versus That of a Smartphone?

The smartphone app can desqueeze the footage while you're shooting. It can give you a live feed of what you're capturing, in the way it will display when you edit it in your NLE. A drone doesn't have this dynamic ability, and will give you a "squeezed" look, which you can only correct in post.

Lens Features

• The lens shoots anamorphic - It's made using cinema quality glass that is usually only present in 4K cinema cameras. The design is aimed at minimizing chromatic aberration with a unique set of coatings to have those lens flares associated with vintage anamorphic lenses. 
• Feather Light Construction - It's going to be mounted on a drone, so it needs to be light, and they've done just that. This enables the drone to maintain it's smooth capturing of footage. They've used aerospace grade composites and metals, with a new construction. They're calling it Featherlight™.
• New Lock and Balance Mounting System - There is no standard for how to attach and balance a lens on a drone, so we made one. Introducing our Lock and Balance Mounting System. It’s a two part design with a lens on one side and a counterweight on the other. The two parts clamp together over the drone’s camera, creating a secure lock that doesn’t impede the gimbal. 
• Ability to Attach ND Filters - You press the filters on, and it gives the ability to expose correctly in sunlit environments. 

The Filters?

They're also releasing filters for the lens, which will give you a required shutter speed to prevent jittery footage and a smooth motion blur similar to the way our eyes and brain processes what it sees. 

Conclusion

For a company who decided that they want to provide quality lenses for a person interested in creating videos, they've just stepped up their game. Being able to shoot anamorphic footage a couple of years ago would've set you back over $100 000. Now, it's compact, and could be your differentiating factor in the videos you make. 

They are looking at releasing the lenses in November 2019. If you have a Mavic drone, and you want to shoot anamorphic, find out more here.