Kevin Luiz tests DZOFILM's Arcana 1.5X anamorphic primes on a helicopter shoot, finding the cleanest, most affordable full-frame anamorphic set yet, with a few gaps to fill.
It’s wild to think of the journey we have been on revolving around anamorphics, especially as of late. Eleven years ago, I wrote an article on a Bell & Howell 2X DIY setup that required substantial rigging. Flash forward to 2026, and we now have fully compact anamorphic cinema primes with full-frame coverage and beyond at an affordable cost.
When DZO Films launched its Arcana 1.5X lineup and approached me to pen a review on them, I jumped at the opportunity. While the launch material was limited, I could see almost immediately that the lenses had something “special” to them, with very few concessions. As I began to test them, that analysis rang true. In an effort to put them through their paces, we created two separate works, one in a semi-controlled documentary environment and the other in an uncontrolled environment. Both works are a good reflection of these lenses in action. So let’s dive in and see what makes these new anamorphic primes so unique.
The DZO Arcana 1.5X primes, at the time of writing, come in three focal lengths: the 32MM / 45MM / 75MM T2.1.
They all sport a beautiful silver champagne-colored aluminum alloy housing, a smooth 270-degree focus rotation, feature 14 blades in an oval shape (more on this later), and have an image circle supporting a full-frame sensor. They come in PL mount (with notches for vertiscope mounting), feature a front filter thread of 77MM, and have a gear pitch of 0.8 MOD. The Arcanas all have a T2.1 aperture, and all close down to T16. Notably, their weights are all roughly the same, with the 32MM & 75MM coming in at 709G and the 45MM coming in at 695G. This makes them great for mounting on the DJI R4D.
From what I can tell, all of the lenses are front-designed anamorphics. There are 15 elements in 13 groups. Their coatings, however, are quite possibly the clearest coatings I have ever seen in an anamorphic at this price point. The front element is a brilliant white with no yellow or green tinge whatsoever (unlike most budget scopes). Working toward the interior of the groupings, you can see reflections of blue, purple, and faint teal coatings. This is quite exceptional, as the coatings have a direct impact on the warmth or coolness of a lens’ rendering, as well as its flare characteristics. Overall, the lenses are fairly neutral with a tiny amount of warmth to them.
Flaring can be a contentious topic of debate. For the record, my favorite type of flare color comes from Panavision, with the purplish-blue-like tones as the primary. In a perfect world, I love pink secondary flares, but I find blue or teal to be acceptable as well. The biggest downside to most of these budget anamorphics is that their cheap “clear” coatings typically yield a green or yellowish primary, and quite often green secondary blobs. That is not normal for traditional scopes and, in my professional opinion, is a clear indication of “corners cut” in the multicoating process. Green is not really a “thing” in cinema, but of course, there are always the rare exceptions.
Thankfully, I can report with confidence that the DZO Arcanas render a truly neutral flare pending the source. The bias of the source has a direct impact on this rendering, but the cleanest of lights with a high CRI will show that these scopes provide a “white” primary and a teal secondary. Attached below within this article, you will find my comprehensive test on this, showing how each light impacts their respective focal lengths. The test was conducted wide open with a variety of lights. Noteworthy, as you close your aperture down, the lines break up into more traditional shapes with multiple separations. They’re not the most interesting flare shapes, but they’re wholly acceptable for the budget landscape comparatively.
Coming from a background of DIY scopes in the early 2000s, progressing on to more complete sets like the Arcanas, it’s hard to come to any other conclusion than that we are “spoiled with choice” these days. There are so many options available to us now in this category that you could spend a solid week ingesting material from all of the selections on the market.
With the Arcanas, their IQ is very good. I would say they strike the perfect balance between a center-sharp image and a nice gradual taper toward the edges, offering that traditional cascading bokeh. Which brings me to the next point. The apertures are oval-shaped by design. Similar to Panavision lenses, the Arcanas offer a designed mechanism of the aperture blades that maintains the oval shape as they open and close. In practice, this means your 1.5X stretch has more of a 2X look to it. However, that does not mean you will have perfectly ellipsed bokeh in every shot. I have found, in some instances pending the angle, some lobbing off of the shapes, which is less than desired. So, with anything, it is scene-dependent.
The rendering reminds me of my GreatJoy 1.8X set. Stellar performance with a center-sharp image, cascading on the sides and background, and minimal to no edge compression. The Arcanas have some decent barrel distortion on the 32MM, and some mild barrel distortion on the 45MM and 75MM. This choice with barrel distortion brings your subjects forward, offering a three-dimensional “pop” to your subject matter. While some may say these lenses offer a “clean” look comparatively to, say, something like a Blazar Mantis or Remus, just remember: you can always dirty up or detune a lens; you cannot clean one up that is inherently compromised. This can be done with screw-on filters, adjustments to the lens itself, or post-processing effects. Because of this, you can use the Arcanas for a number of jobs, whereas with the competition, they may only be suited for certain types of work.
What shocked me the most was when I was handed the PDF that contained the IQ comparison chart. Relative to the competition, it was eye-opening. There’s virtually no CA, ghosting, or coma on the Arcanas, whereas with something like the Remus lineup, they’re riddled with it. As I put these lenses through their paces and magnified them at 300%, looking at the edges and backlit details, that’s what I came to find to be true.
The last element that I genuinely enjoyed was the minimum focus distance. The 32MM has a whopping 1-foot-7-inch minimum! That’s especially rare, as most anamorphics are typically 2 feet and beyond. The 45MM has a 1-foot-9-inch minimum, and the 75MM has a 2-foot-7-inch minimum (as to be expected with a longer focal length). The 32MM was especially helpful in the interior of the cockpit of our helicopter, as I did not have to rely on diopters to gather the shots in such confined quarters. Not only that, I did not have to rely on center-framing the pilot, as there was no edge compression to speak of in the lateral panning of the lens. I can’t stress enough how crucial this is in such a circumstance. If you were to use something like a Remus, Mantis, or Viper, you might have to run a diopter pending the choice, and undoubtedly would have to center-frame your target because of edge compression. In this scenario, that would have been a nightmare, but not with the Arcanas! A true winner in this class.
It’s not all “rainbows and kittens,” however, as the expression goes. There are some slight concessions here that I would like to lay out. Minor focus breathing is witnessable in these lenses, but nothing extreme. Additionally, I find the neutral flares to be “universal” for the application, but I would really like DZO to lean into a blue set, or better yet, a “Panavision Purple” coating. White is something new to this world of anamorphics, and while it’s adaptable, it’s a little boring pending the source.
The biggest pitfalls I found with the Arcanas, however, are twofold: the lack of additional mounts and the lack of additional focal lengths. PL is a great mount choice, but with that mount come oversized mechanics and expensive adapters. I’d like to see these lenses come in swappable EF, M, and perhaps even F mount. I’d also like to see a back-focus adjustment dial that is toolless. While I am a pro at shimming these days, it is quite a cumbersome experience and really needs to be taken into consideration with every system or adapter swap. This is because tolerances change by fractions of a degree with each manufacturer.
Regarding the focal lengths, the 32 / 45 / 75MM seem like a great starter set, but I felt like it was incredibly short and incomplete. Consider this: on a 36 x 24mm full-frame sensor with a 17:9 read mode (36 x 19MM), the horizontal equivalency of the Arcana 1.5X on a 2.39:1 canvas is roughly 25 / 35 / 59MM, respectively, once destretched (taking into account the post crop). While roughly 60MM can constitute a portrait lens, that is really shy for any major distance work. For our helicopter documentary, our team had to rely on spherical telephoto lenses instead of grabbing an additional Arcana. I’d really like to see a 90 / 125 / 150MM added to this set to round out the options and allow them to be taken into serious consideration for paid work. Without these options, we are left with a pretty gaping hole in uniformity.
With all of this in mind, I can honestly say these are quite possibly the best budget anamorphics I have personally used to date. They offer the best mechanics, size / weight, IQ, rendering characteristics, and performance out of any other sub-$3K set on the market. You would be hard-pressed to find a balance of these features in any other offering without any major concessions.
If you are an owner / operator looking to diversify your lens kit, or simply getting into anamorphics for the first time, I can’t think of a better set to invest in at the time of writing than the DZO Arcana 1.5X lenses. They’re not perfect, and to be honest, scopes really shouldn’t be, but for the dollar, these come as close to what you’d want for a budget set. If DZO offers more focal lengths and addresses some of these minor tweaks, I think they’ll have a true home run on their hands.
Take a look for yourself, and we hope you enjoy the working samples we created.