Having fun with ARRI's 8R Lens

Back in August we launched the Gigafactory and gave the world its first peek into the gigantic factory it is becoming. While there for the launch, I happened to bring ARRI's 8R 8mm rectilinear lens with me in case I needed anything superwide without distortion. I'd actually learned about this lens' sister, the UWZ 9.5 - 18mm zoom while attending a Master Class Bill Bennet, ASC was conducting and sought to see if a prime existed and viola!

While at the Gigafactory, this little amazing scale model was out in the front lobby providing the coolest little peek into the factory layout, I had to capture that on camera in a unique way.

I popped the 8R on our Alexa and rolled the Fischer Dolly over to it with some flat boards, placed the lens 1/8inch from the model, looked into the eyepiece and was amazed at the view I saw.

The 8R provided this immense amount of depth with the parallax dolly movement for something not much more than 20in deep.

It looked unreal and most people thought this was a CGI render when Tesla posted it on Facebook. Funny enough, the lens isn't fully rectilinear when the glass is a 1/8in away from an object but no one but me is going to do that :)

This is definitely a piece of glass I've fallen in love with and plan to use it and the UWZ 9.5-18mm on a horror short film I'm writing which takes place in a very confined space. As well as some more Tesla stuff ;)