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Type | Optical technology |
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Inventor | Henri Chrétien |
Inception | 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 |
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.