Anamorphic
Anamorphic (anna-more-fic) is a type of optical distortion used in image acquisition (e.g. motion picture photography) designed to produce a widescreen (2.35:1) image, while maintaining optimal image quality from standard 35mm film stock.
During recording, a special lens is used that squeezes the image horizontally. Then, during post-processiong/presentation the image is stretched horizontally to restore the image back to normal.
The reason for this formats existence, lies in it's history.
While the widescreen format offered a new way to watch films, it had to be recorded on to the standard 35mm film format in order to remain economically viable. This meant that the horizontal size of the image on the negative of the film was fixed and in order to produce the widescreen image, the vertical size had to be reduced. By contrast, in theaters it was the vertical size of the screen that had to be maintained in order to produce the desired "wrap-around" effect, thus an increased horizontal size was needed. These two needs, by the cinematographer and the projectionist were, as you can see, in direct conflict.
For the cinematographer is was unreasonable to ask that the vertical image size be reduced because it meant that in the theater a larger blow-up would be needed to maintain vertical size and this would reduce over-all image resolution. And for the financiers it was unreasonable to create a new film format that was wider than 35mm film to produce the widescreen image because of the very large costs involved.
Many methods attempted to strike a compromise between these two needs.
Examples abound (Vista Vision, Multiple Locked Cameras, etc)
By optically squeezing the image during recording, you are capturing an image that is wider than it is tall (2.35:1 to be exact) while sacrificing none of the precious vertical size that is needed for optimum resolution. This image can then easily be stretched by the projectionist and the windscreen effect is preserved for a more aesthetically pleasing presentation.
Now days, many films are simply cropped in vertical size to produce the widescreen effect; this is made possible because film stocks have improved to a degree where the argument for anamorphic images is made largely mute.
DVD Video
One arena in which the argument for anamorphic images has not yet been made mute is in anamorphic video. Because of the aspect ratio of a standard television (1.33:1) nearly identical problems regarding widescreen effect vs. resolution are being encountered today nearly 50 years after they first popped up.
Referenced By
Widescreen
|
