‘I THINK WE’RE ALONE NOW,’ shot by Reed Morano on LOMO Round Front anamorphics is an excellent example of their distinct character.
It's hard to find too many sets of LOMOs like this anywhere. They are 100% LOMO anamorphic glass with vintage Cooke Speed Panchro primes as the base spherical lenses. They have the same beautiful flares, bokeh, and distortion as traditional LOMO Round Fronts, but they are slightly sharper and have a slightly better T stop than the originals. Our set of LOMOs also have custom made 114mm fronts that work perfectly with our custom modified Bright Tangerine matte boxes. This means you can use a LWS or swing-away matte box and easily work with filters and diopters. The focus scales are also marked in feet (imperial) instead of metric.
LOMO Round Front 2x anamorphics are vintage Russian lenses made in the 1970s and 1980s. They have beautiful, smooth (never busy) bokeh, and pinpoint highlights are rendered as perfect ovals at all T stops due to the optical design and the 18 blade irises. They produce some of the best lens flares of any anamorphic lens. They deliver stunning cyan "blue streak" lens flares. They have very pleasing barrel distortion especially in the wider lenses. Distortion decreases on the longer lenses. The lenses are very flattering on faces, and do not cause mumps (unflattering stretching/widening of faces).
Their focus design produces minimal lens breathing when pulling focus, lower than pretty much any vintage lenses and less breathing than even modern anamorphic lenses including the new Cooke Anamorphic/i primes. The 75mm and 100mm have almost no breathing, it's minimal in the 50mm and moderate on the 35mm. Also worth noting, all the lenses in the set can be shot wide-open with excellent results.
There is a reason VANTAGE FILM chose LOMO Round Front anamorphic lenses as the glass that ended up in the first HAWK C-Series anamoprhics. That's right, the first Hawk lenses are rehoused LOMO Round Fronts. Vantage has good taste, because these Lomos give you the classic anamorphic look, and they are some of the best all-around vintage anamorphic lenses available.