Sirui Intros 24mm f/2.8 Anamorphic Crop Lens

Sirui announced a 24mm f/2.8 anamorphic lens to go along with its already-released 35mm f/1.8 and 50mm f1.8 variants. The lenses are available in crop mirrorless formats from Canon M, Sony E, Fuji Z and Nikon Z, along with Micro Four Thirds.

Lenses of 24mm or wider are difficult to make cheaply in anamorphic format. This lens will retail for $749, and is currently available on Indiegogo. The other lenses in the line are already available on major US retailer sites.

Anamorphic lenses distort an image to stretch it vertically, allowing later correction – now typically digital correction – into a very wide, cinematic aspect ratio while maximizing the use of all of the sensor photosites. It is almost always used solely for video applications.

One of the foibles of a wide aperture anamorphic lense is its oval-shaped bokeh, which most people find distracting, if not displeasing.

Sirui is a Korean company better known for its tripods and, particularly, its ball heads.

The lens is fairly dense, weighing in at about 1.75 pounds, which is about 15 percent heavier than even the Sigma Art version of a full frame 24mm lens. It has 13 elements in 10 groups and only 8 aperture blades, providing a little bit of a straight edge look to the bokeh at this focal length. The anamorphic effect is 1.33x.

The launch was first noticed on the Canon News site.