Atlas Lens Co | Cinematographer/Director Carrie Stalk Shares Their Experience Shooting on Atlas Mercury Series Anamorphic Lenses

For the short film, The Salt Between Us, my goal was for the lens and camera to act as a looking glass into a memory. When aiming to evoke nostalgia, my first instinct is to reach for vintage anamorphics for their painterly feel and softer edges. Knowing that I intended to shoot primarily with longer focal lengths to achieve a compressed look, I chose a large-format sensor to maintain flexibility in tighter New York City locations without compromising the sense of vertical space in frame. When looking for characterful, anamorphic lenses with full-frame coverage and a modern body design, there was no better choice for the job than Atlas Mercury 1.5x lenses.

Their fast T2.2 aperture gave us the light we needed during our night scene, allowing real firelight to serve as the practical key on our characters. Wide open, the Mercurys naturally draw the eye to the center of the frame. With their mild vignette, watery edge softness, and strong micro-contrast, they created a natural sense of depth and diffusion that mirrored the vulnerability between the characters without feeling overly sharpened or polished. And despite our acquisition format, the Mercurys were exceptional at resolving the Blackmagic PYXIS’s 6:5 aspect ratio at 4832x4032 resolution.

Across the aperture range, the lenses have subtle shifts in character, almost as if you have multiple lens sets per focal length. That flexibility allowed me to dial in the look based on the emotion of each moment; an invaluable level of control for any DP.