GoPro Anamorphic Lens Mod In-Depth Review

Last September, when GoPro announced their new GoPro Hero 13 Black, they also announced new ‘HB Series’ lens mods. Essentially, these were more advanced lenses than GoPro has made in the past, and included a little bit of ‘smarts’ within them, letting the camera know which specific lens was mounted. This in turn, would allow the camera to configure optimal settings accordingly. The first lenses that were released included the macro lens, a new Max lens (Ultra Wide) mod, and some ND filters. All of which had the tiny little chip on them that told the camera what to do.

However, they also announced their Anamorphic lens, with availability sometime in 2025. Well, that time has come. As of today, it starts shipping. I’ve been using the lens for the past month, putting it through its paces in all sorts of conditions, from sand dunes to underwater, in the air, and everything in between.

The anamorphic lens is a bit of a specialty lens, though, and designed to give a super-wide aspect ratio of 21:9 (compared to a more common 16:9 aspect ratio used in most TV’s today). Some would call this more of a ‘cinematic’ look to it. Generally speaking, anamorphic lenses are as expensive as all get-out, though this one is reasonably priced at $129USD (or $103USD if a GoPro subscriber). There are other attributes of traditional anamorphic lenses, but most of those only apply to cameras (or lenses) that can deliver more depth of field that a GoPro does (e.g. differing bokeh light patterns, breathing with focus shifts, etc…). Still, the GoPro implementation definitely fills a gap for a certain audience, as I’ll get into.

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The Lens Hardware:

First up, let’s look at the hardware. The GoPro Anamorphic Lens is only compatible with the GoPro Hero 13 Black (and presumably newer units, once new cameras come out in the future). It is not compatible with the Hero 11, 12, etc… In fact, it’s not compatible in two different ways. First, it physically won’t attach. There’s a little locking notch on all GoPro HB-Series lenses, that prevent it from physically attaching to an older GoPro.

Second, from a software standpoint, it requires firmware/software to shoot in the 21:9 format, and enumerate all the different shooting modes (e.g. Ultra Linear). Meaning that even if you somehow ground-down the little metal notch inside the lens attachment point, it still wouldn’t have the right software. For context, this is no different than DJI releasing new lens designs on every single new drone they release (breaking ND filters and more). I don’t like it either, but I’d guess that GoPro will probably keep this lens attachment design for at least 2-3 years, as they typically do in the past.

In any case, the Anamorphic lens comes in a little case, including a top silicon cover that you can (should?) keep on it all the time:

To attach the lens, you’ll simply remove the front lens already on your camera. This just rotates 90*, and pops off. If you’ve never done so before, the first time it might be a bit sticky/tough to get off, but eventually it’ll release. Then inserting the anamorphic lens is easy. It’ll snap in place, and only goes in one way/direction, thus, you can’t put it on wrong.

GoPro’s site officially says the lens is “Durable and scratch-resistant”, though doesn’t provide any exact lens material specifics. Thus far, I haven’t scratched it, including even dropping it a few times on accident. Likewise, it’s fully waterproof (to the GoPro 10m/33ft spec), which is something I tested during some swims:

From a weight standpoint, it’s not super-light. It adds 43g of weight to your GoPro Hero 13 Black (a stock camera is 160g, and this is 203g):

That said, it’s honestly not something I noticed while cycling, be it in either a chest mount, or various hand-held mounts. I did notice it attached to the FPV drone, in terms of lower battery performance, but such is life with FPV drones.

Field of View & Resolutions/Frame Rates:

Now when it comes to the software side of things, this is really about all the different perspective options you have. GoPro of course calls these ‘Digital Lenses’, and essentially allows varying field of views, frame rates, and resolutions. Most of these will be relatively familiar to GoPro users, since they follow the same nomenclature as GoPro has used for years. That said, there are a few new ones here, albeit following roughly the existing formatting.

In short, you’ve got four core Digital Lenses you can use:

– Linear: This is for a non-fisheye look. Meaning, the footage would match that of existing cameras being ‘flat’ without curvature.
– Ultra Linear: This is also linear except an even wider perspective. This can have some slight curviture to it though in my testing.
– Wide: This starts to have a bit of fisheye at the outer edges in exchange for a wider view, though you won’t notice it much as long as the camera is level with the horizon
– UltraWide: This is just a touch wider than SuperView on a non-lens GoPro, and is the widest option with the anamorphic lens

Here’s a quick look at what the different views looks like when compared. The camera was tripod mounted, and simply changed between the views. Compare specifically the edges (horizontally and vertically) of the image, to see what’s in/out of frame.

Next, when it comes to resolutions, all of the above support 4K & 5.3K, and all of them are in a 21:9 aspect ratio. There is no lower resolution, nor other aspect ratio (the camera will record that aspect ratio either horizontally or vertically).

Further, in all modes, at either 4K or 5.3K, you can record the footage in standard or Log. Log would require additional post-processing. With either standard or Log, you can enable 10-bit HEVC, as well as High Bit Rate (120 Mbps). All other ProTune features seem to be the same in either mode as well.

However, when it comes to frames per second, your options with the anamorphic lens are):

5.3K: 24/30/60FPS (24/25/50 for PAL)
4K: 24/30/60/120FPS (24/25/50/100 for PAL)

That aligns with GoPro’s existing frame rate values for other modes sans anamorphic lens. Note that for 4K/100/120, only the Linear and Wide options are offered, not Ultra options.

When comparing it to something like the GoPro Max Lens Mod 2.0, here’s how that looks:

And finally, the regular GoPro stock/base digital lens options.

As you can see, quite a difference there. Ultimately for me, I feel like when shooting with the anamorphic lens, it’s the Ultra Linear option that really sticks the landing in terms of the best FOV range, without having any funky fisheye look.

When it comes to photos, you get all the same digital lens options as above, except you don’t get anything other than base .JPG outputs. Meaning, no Super Photo option or RAW output options. Here’s a photo taken from the unit (also in share of footage):

Likewise, there are none of the night effect modes when the lens is attached. Meaning, that the star trails, light painting/trails, and vehicle lights modes aren’t an option, which is too bad. It seems like between this and the more limited options for photos, either GoPro is using more processing on the backend, limiting processing power for extra tasks. Or, more simply, they just haven’t gotten around to implementing those extra modes.

The Footage:

Now, the thing with a lens mod is that this is mostly all about footage. Thus, above is a complete footage reel, edited fully on a 21:9 timeline, so that you can see it on YouTube in such an aspect ratio. Of course, YouTube only allows 4K & 8K as a playback resolution, not the 5.3K that GoPro shoots (roughly speaking, 5.3K is double the resolution/pixels of 4K). Still, it’s a pretty good proxy.

Nonetheless, I’ve also uploaded the full resolution (at 5.3K) export of that timeline, available here to download, if you want to see it without any YouTube degradation. Further, I’ve put a pile of clips in a file share as well, to download those.

One thing that’s worth being *super clear* about is that there’s no post-processing required. All of the “de-squeezing” aspects that are sometimes required with anamorphic lenses happen in-camera. So when the footage is written to your microSD card, it’s already in that 21:9 aspect ratio and fully processed. Said a different way, you don’t need to do anything at all with the app on your phone or computer, the footage is immediately ready to edit.

Of course, the anamorphic lens doesn’t change the fundamental imaging pipeline of the GoPro Hero 13 Black. Meaning, it doesn’t make night shots any better, in the same way it doesn’t make amazing daytime shots any worse. It just gives you extra width, while conforming to 21:9 without looking funky:

Now, that said, one element of anamorphic lenses is sun streaks (aka sun flares). This is a defining attribute of lenses, and one of the reasons people choose it. But in the case of bright daytime footage (e.g. midday), the sun flares on this lens are more like sun lines:

Here’s another example at sunset. In general, the sunset ones come out much better than many of the daytime ones, which end-up being more like sun lines, than lens flare.

Likewise, I found the lens incredibly sensitive to dust dots showing up, as you see in the below footage. This was on a drone, and while I had cleaned the lens just prior to it taking off, there’s still some slight dust dots that appeared due to the takeoff blowing up dust

I didn’t tend to see this on most daytime footage, but I was constantly cleaning the lens (and otherwise keeping the lens cap on). Again, don’t overthink this too much, but I just want to point out that you do need to pay far more attention to lens cleanliness on this lens, because it’ll draw attention to these dots, whereas on a regular GoPro lens, they just sorta disappear in most cases.

Wrap-Up:

One of the things I was most excited with GoPro’s new HB-series lenses (aside from automatic detection/configuration), is simply GoPro getting creative and offering an assortment of unique lenses. We saw that with the macro lens, and now too with the anamorphic lens. Neither lens is one that most people will use as a daily driver. At least, I mostly hope not. Just like the rest of photography/videography, these lens are specialty lenses for specialty situations. And more critically, they’re actually affordable. Nobody wants a $1,000 anamorphic lens for their GoPro. That market doesn’t exist. But a $129 lens? Sure.

For nearly the past month, in an effort to gather footage, I’ve shot everything with the anamorphic lens. That’s led to a few observations. First, I normally treat my GoPro cameras like crap. No lens cover, tossing them around in bags/luggage/pockets/etc… And everything works out great, has for about 15 years. But with the anamorphic lens, long-term, that won’t end well. And even short-term, the specks of dust/water on the lens are too visible otherwise. Second, while I love the the much wider field of view being captured, it doesn’t really translate to either social media or most of YouTube all that well. I was constantly cropping in to fit the rest of my ‘format’ narrative – else things feel like constant letterbox.

Of course, that’s logical. After all, the singular purpose of this lens is to conform to a 21:9 cinematic aspect ratio – more suited for a proper movie theatre than most our phones or TV’s. Thus to that end, I simply won’t use this lens much beyond this review. Yes, it shoots great footage in daylight and for for some people it’s exactly what they want (which is great). But as with all specialty camera bits, it’s about shooting for a specific purpose. Which, is to say if you’re shooting to conform to showing 21:9 footage on a big screen – then absolutely, the GoPro Anamorphic Lens is awesome for that at an affordable price. Otherwise, I think for most other people, creative use of the GoPro Max Lens Mod 2.0 will get much more usage and has more versatility. Just my two cents.

Still, I hope that GoPro continues making new and unique HB series lenses. I’d love to see a zoom lens for example, which would be great for mounting static cameras in tight spaces (or, all the triggering/automation options of a GoPro), but that need a longer focal length. As other camera companies have shown with their lens portfolios, the world is their oyster.

With that, thanks for reading!

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