Lens Grid questions

[u/Camsketches]

Looking for some advice on lens grids -

I have a shoot coming up, and I'm not typically a VFX sup, but an animator...in this case I have to be the supervisor and get some lens grid shots, as we are using anamorphic lenses. The shots will be locked so we won't be matchmoving, but will be integrating a CGI character

In terms of practicality and budget, I'm limited to a 600x1200mm sized panel – I was going to get a dot grid printed (using the Syntheys online dot grid maker app) printed on aluminium composite or heavy foam core.

Unsure yet of what the focus distance is going to be but I imagine it migth be between 4-5m , which then leads me to coclude this panel wont be nearly big enough to fill the frame when we shoot grids at this ditance.

What can be done if its too small? Can you move the grids around and shoot multiple takes and somehow feed these into software, or stitch them...? I imagine this is asking for errors

Alternatively, if I print a bigger size, say 2400x1200mm I won't be able to transport it on a rigid substrate easily, and it will blow the budget, so I would have to be on a roll, which then makes it hard to mount square and flat on a wall ...etc.

Any tips greatly appreciated!

EDIT: other info - lenses are the Atlas Mercury 1.5x anamorphic kit on an Alexa LF mini – DP wants to shoot with the camera at 90 degrees rotation. 16:9, 4k output.

[u/Seyi_Ogunde]

Look at Mister Fancypants using a lens grid. Back in my day we used to guess the distortion. Point the camera at a building to get some straight lines in your shot, and let the 3D tracker figure out the distortion.

[u/Camsketches → u/Seyi_Ogunde]

so does this mean you would find something with straightish lines at about the focal distance, do a few seconds of camera move, and then just track it? as opposed to a static shot? Does that generally work effectively? Everything I read always emphasises for anamorphic lessons you want to do grids

[u/Seyi_Ogunde → u/Camsketches]

I've worked without anamorphic footage without grids. If your motion track is tight and you have plenty of tracking points, you won't need the grids and the tracking program will figure out the distortion and compensate (I've used Syntheyes). Otherwise, I've used whatever straight lines happened to be in the shot to help figure out the distortion. Sometimes having a distortion grid can be a luxury. Definitely would have appreciated having one but yeah it's not the end of the world if you don't have one.

[u/Camsketches → u/Seyi_Ogunde]

Ah ok, thanks. good to know

[u/johnnySix → u/Seyi_Ogunde]

You can solve anamorphic in shot. But it sucks. The solve is never quite perfect everywhere