The Pixboom Spark is such an exciting camera because it opens up a lot of creative possibilities in a very compact body.
What would be your go-to lens for the Pixboom Spark — and why?
Curious to know your setup. I’d love to hear what everyone is planning to use.
Initially, it will be the PL lenses I have, which are Dulens APO mini primes and Triassic series.
When I get an L-mount adapter I’ll be able to use my TTArtisan 100mm 2x macro and 500mm lenses on my Spark.
Those will probably be my go-to lenses for a while until my needs evolve.
I’m crossing my toes that Sony glass will work great 
I shoot lots of experiments so my all time favourite Sony 70-200 II is probably gonna be go to.
Combined with new 100mm Macro GM
And both accepts 2x Teleconverter
If I wouldn’t already own 70-200 then 50-150 F2 is very very interesting as well.
I was also looking into anamorphic lenses or adapters - since Spark fps is limited by vertical resolution, I was hoping to somehow use horizontal resolution to that advantage.
But I have no experience with anamorphic lenses and it seems like they squeeze in a wrong dirrection?
Anamorphic lenses squeeze horizontally, unless you rotate them 90 degrees.
Does PL mounting allow for such 90deg rotation?
Depends on the lens. PL lenses have 4 “wings” and the mount has a registration pin. A lot of PL lenses have registration slots on all 4 wings, so it can go in at 90° increments, but some lenses only have one slot in the proper orientation.
Depending on the mount, you could always move the pin to a different location (if the mounts allow for that) or temporarily remove the pin to use non-rotation-friendly lenses.
I also have the Dulens Mini Primes (and 25mm Triassic to fill the focal length gap), so those will be my go-to lenses for personal and certain paid projects. Besides those, I have a Laowa probe that might be fun to try (though I’m gonna need a whole lotta light).
Is there a way to know if something like this:
Nanomorph 1.5X Anamorphic [60mm T2.9 Macro 1:2] - Laowa Cinema Lenses
Would work rotated 90deg on Spark?
Or that’s an email to laowa?
Most likely all my Sony lenses, hopefully we get auto focus in the futur. But also I can’t wait to mount a fisheye on this camera!!
Yes, that has pin slots on all the wings (I’m assuming the one we can’t see on the back side matches the rest, though it would still work fine even if it didn’t for some reason) so can rotate for vertical.
At the Laowa demo day, the first time we put the Laowa anamorphic on my camera, we did have it accidentally rotated 90 degrees. The result looked… very strange, since hadn’t planned for it. Also, I AFAIK there is no way to rotate the anamorphic de-squeeze in camera, at least I haven’t found any way to do this on my Black Magic camera.
So your monitoring would probably look squished and you’d have to do some custom de-squeezing in post, which probably would be relatively easy to do in Fusion or Nuke.
Probably the best bet is to use a SmallHD monitor (or whatever other monitor supports custom desqueezes) to get a normal looking image from the camera.
Why couldn’t Spark support this😄? Honestly, this sounds like a great idea.
Vertical anamorphic de-squeeze would be really useful for monitoring these kinds of setups, especially when the lens is rotated or used in a less traditional way. We’ll definitely take a closer look at this as a potential feature.
