Anamorphic format

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Anamorphic lens

Type	Optical technology
Inventor	Henri Chrétien
Inception	ca. 1915 (ca. 1915)
Manufacturer	Bausch & Lomb Panavision Todd-AO Cooke Optics Carl Zeiss AG Schneider Kreuznach ISCO Precision Optics Kowa Technovision Joe Dunton & Co. Vantage Film JSC Optica-Elite Atlas Lens Company

Figure 1. Shooting without an anamorphic lens, in widescreen picture format on 4-perf film; some of the upper and lower film surface area is wasted on the frame lines.

Figure 2. Shooting with an anamorphic lens stretches the image vertically to cover the entire film frame, resulting in a higher resolution but distorted image. When projecting the film, a reverse, complementary lens (of the same anamorphic power) shrinks the image vertically to the original proportions.

Anamorphic format is the cinematography technique of shooting a widescreen picture on standard 35 mm film or other visual recording media with a non-widescreen native aspect ratio. It also refers to the projection format in which a distorted image is "stretched" by an anamorphic projection lens to recreate the original aspect ratio on the viewing screen (not to be confused with anamorphic widescreen, a different video encoding concept that uses similar principles but different means). The word anamorphic and its derivatives stem from the Greek anamorphoo ("to transform", or more precisely "to re-form"),^[1] compound of morphé ("form, shape")^[2] with the prefix aná ("back, again").^[3]

In the late 1990s and 2000s, anamorphic lost popularity in comparison to "flat" (or "spherical") formats such as Super 35 with the advent of digital intermediates; however, in the years since digital cinema cameras and projectors have become commonplace, anamorphic has experienced a considerable resurgence of popularity, due in large part to the higher base ISO sensitivity of digital sensors, which facilitates shooting at smaller apertures.