When the anamorphic lens arrives, I will add it to the matching (24mm) spherical lens from the same manufacturer (Sirui) and have, thanks to two MFT cameras with different sensor sizes (GH5s 1.8 and G9II 2x crop) cameras.
My thinking is the anamorphic on the G9II, working as (in ff terms) roughly a 50h/35w ff equivalent, the spherical on the GH5s, effectively shortening it to a 43mm, then cropped down in height to about an 80h/50w, the common denominator being a 50mm equivalent on one plane, but 35w coverage or 80h magnification.
Add to this a decent choice of other lenses, all spherical, but the key to it is this semi harmonious duality.
My first still from the anamorphic. The front subject is about 6” tall and 2’ away. The rear subject is twice the height and about another foot behind. Rendering is pleasant, Bokeh smooth, mild distortion obvious (curve not slight down angle). The poor grading is down to me using a Rec 709 codec (Natural) for speed over quality. The main issue I faced was focus as everything is quite small on the camera screen.
At the same horizontal width, the spherical will have about 75-80% more vertical magnification, modified slightly by the sensor size difference, but sharing roughly the same perspective, i.e. a standard lens on MFT. The feeling of depth and separation is very similar.
This is the spherical 24 cropped from the same place for (roughly) the same effect. No attempt was made to colour match, just fiddled as my eye took me, but they do look the same out of camera.
The above is the most likely scenario. The same distance with similar perspective, but different effective magnification.
So, what is actually different?
This is the anamorphic image cropped in to “normal” 16:9, for comparison to the spherical lens below.
The spherical lens as shot from the same place. Compared to the image above, there is a feeling of normality even without the wider view in play, in other words, they cannot be made to look the same.
Now comparing the two with the same horizontal coverage.
The extra width of the anamorphic really shows and there is a slight increase in depth expansion as well. The top image looks straighter and more normal. Notice the height of the files match closely.
Pushing the spherical back to match the coverage changes much. The compression effect between the two subjects feels very telephoto. My big takeaway from these two is the lack of intimacy the spherical offers. You can crop in to match the image height, which it looks like is somewhere in between the natural two.
If I were to swap them over, I would get a 43/28 and about an 90/60, so one wider and one tighter.
If I want the subject to be the same size in both images, the spherical lens will have to go almost twice as far back to achieve the 32mm (ff equivalent) coverage, but the reality is, I want the standard-wide and tight-standard dynamic, so the idea is the have them the same distance from subject, similar perspective (a “normal” lens range), but very different magnifications. This will allow me to shoot the same scene differently from the same distance on my own or shoot it differently from two distances.
*not sure about my math here, not my strong suit.