Hawk Lenses

Hawk Anamorphic Lenses at C&I Studios

Anamorphic lenses are the fastest way to make footage read as cinema, and Hawk anamorphic lenses are the ones cinematographers ask for by name. C&I Studios owns a Hawk65 set outright and keeps it in house between our Fort Lauderdale and Los Angeles studios, so the glass goes out on our productions without a rental line, a pickup window or an availability call. The same camera team that preps and maintains the lenses between jobs is the team that puts them on the body on set. Anything a production needs beyond what we own, from a second set to a different focal range to a specific camera body, we source through rental relationships in major cities globally and fold into the same crew and schedule.

What Anamorphic Glass Does to a Frame

An anamorphic lens squeezes a wide horizontal field of view onto the full height of the sensor, and the image is stretched back out in post. That is where the widescreen frame comes from, and it is also where the rest of the look comes from. Out of focus highlights render as ovals instead of circles. Point sources throw long horizontal flares. Focus falls away toward the edges of the frame with a softness a spherical lens never quite matches, which pulls attention to the subject without a vignette or a grade doing the work. Backgrounds compress and stretch in a way that makes a location feel larger and deeper than the same room shot spherical. None of this is a filter. It is a property of the glass, and it is in the raw footage before an edit or a colour pass touches it.

Why Hawk

Hawk lenses are built by Vantage in Germany and have been on features and commercials for decades because of how they render rather than how they measure. The flares are controlled rather than everywhere. Skin holds its texture without going clinical. Contrast is gentle enough that highlights roll off instead of clipping, so a window or a practical in frame reads as light rather than as a problem to fix. That combination of a distinct look and a disciplined one is why Hawk sits at the top of most cinematographers’ lists, and why we made the investment to own a Hawk65 set, the large format line, instead of renting one job at a time.

Owned Rather Than Rented

A rented set has to be booked, insured, picked up, checked and returned, and it is only yours for the days on the paperwork. Owning the glass changes how a production is planned. Tests happen whenever there is a spare hour on the stage. A pickup day gets the same lenses the main shoot had. A last minute reshoot does not wait on a rental house to have the set free. Our Hawk lenses are prepped, cleaned and collimated between jobs by our own camera team, so they arrive on set ready to shoot rather than ready to be checked.

Access to Any Gear You Need

Whatever we do not own outright, we can source. Our rental relationships run through major cities globally, which covers the larger builds and the specialist requests that no single owned inventory carries. A second anamorphic set for a two camera day, a focal length outside our own case, a large format body, a lighting build beyond our own inventory. All of it arrives with the same crew and on the same schedule as the rest of the kit, handled by the people already building the shoot. Between what we own and what we can source, there is no gear requirement we cannot cover.

Hawk Across Our Work

The same approach runs through everything we make. Our video production department crews the shoot, our post production department handles the desqueeze, edit, colour and audio, and our lighting team lights for the glass. Work shot this way is on the our work page, the full inventory item by item is on the video production gear list, and the visual summary of everything we own is on the gear page. To talk through what your production needs, contact C&I Studios.